Investigators probed at murder trial of airman - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Investigators probed at murder trial of airman

BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, Washington, D.C. — Attorneys defending airman and accused murderer Calvin Hill in court Tuesday pressured the case’s premier investigators into admitting oversights.

Air Force prosecutors contend that Hill killed Airman 1st Class Ashley Turner, a former friend and fellow wingman, in the Keflavik Naval Air Station dormitory they shared.

Less than 24 hours after her body was found badly beaten and near death, a Navy special crime response team flew from their bureau in Naples, Italy, to the Iceland base.

Throughout the trial, attorneys have cross-examined nearly every Air Force and Navy service member tied to the discovery of Turner’s body: the sergeant who testified he found her on a blood-soaked rug, medics who carried her away, security forces investigators and more.

Hill’s three-person defense team has all along portrayed the investigation as rushed and bungled. They did not relent in court Tuesday when questioning members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

“Wouldn’t you agree, at the beginning, that there was too much focus on Airman Hill?” asked defense attorney Capt. Jason Kellhofer, pacing the courtroom floor. NCIS Special Agent Dina Gigli agreed that there was.

Hill has already pleaded guilty to stealing roughly $2,700 from Turner using her ATM card. His three-person defense team says the crimes end there. But prosecutors say Hill cracked Turner’s skull with a dumbbell weight, severed her spinal tissue with a knife and left her to die in a seldom-used spare room by the dorm’s gym.

A spot of blood forensic scientists found on Hill’s shoelace — one matching Turner’s DNA — is a major puzzle piece in the prosecution’s case.

Gigli, under defense team questioning, told jurors that some agents believed the focus on Hill was at times too single-minded. Many approaches to the investigation, in hindsight, would have been made it stronger, she said.

Among them: Investigators should have examined which keycard-locked dormitory doorways were accessed by every one of the building’s residents. Investigators only reviewed what doorways Hill, Turner and Turner’s boyfriend — Staff Sergeant Ronald Ellis, now demoted to basic airman — were opened using personal keycards.

Gigli did, however, question nearly all of the dorm’s residents, she told jurors during prosecution questioning.

She also conceded that investigators should have more thoroughly questioned Tech. Sgt. Jerrod Sunderland, who testified he found Turner’s body and summoned an enlisted airman to help report her condition. She said the same of Ellis, who has pled guilty to drug trafficking. But Gigli added that, in her mind, Ellis remained a suspect for months.

Defense prosecutors also pressed NCIS investigator Maria Pugliese to admit that the blood spot on Hill’s Nike shoes could be the result of botched evidence collecting. But Pugliese strongly resisted implications that bloody sheets and gauze collected from Turner’s hospital gurney could have co-mingled with one of Hill’s shoes.

Anything bloody, she said, would have been tagged with biohazard markers and tightly sealed. “It’s not something that can leak. It’s not something that can break open,” she said. Though documents suggest some of the blood-stained evidence was opened by a security forces investigator to air dry, Pugliese refused to account for investigators other than herself.

Previous stories:

* Jurors shown images from crime scene

* Murder trial testimony focuses on blood spot

* Airman’s defense says others may be murderer