cut from under the couch would have been large enough to cover this semicircular area. There was a large smear of what looked like dried blood between the carpet nailing strip and the wall. A section of the nailing strip was taken up and several scrapings from the wall collected. One area near the upper center of the semicircle had another brown spot that looked a lot like dried blood on the cement.
This was the spot, Leisha had told Tal, where Scott Dunn’s head rested when he was in bed.
Carefully, Lewis cut away portions of the Sheetrock containing the dark droplets scattered over the walls, put them in bags and sealed them. The ID Section protocol dictated that everything that might have evidential importance be collected, carefully placed in boxes and bags, sealed and labeled, signed by the officers present, ready to be delivered to the appropriate departments. In this case, everything except the duct tape would be taken to the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab. The Lubbock Police Department had its own facility for examining fingerprints, but it had no forensic laboratory where other crime scene evidence, such as bloodstains, could be tested. The DPS had a crime laboratory in Lubbock, a few blocks from the police building. Evidence usually was sent there for testing. In some cases, the local lab forwarded evidence on to the State DPS Lab in Austin or to the FBI lab.
Lewis would take the duct tape back to the police department’s ID office and check it for fingerprints. Any other evidence he could obtain, such as fibers or hairs, would be turned over to the DPS lab.
While the ID officer was gathering the items, a woman came to the door and introduced herself as the apartment manager, Gail Rose. When English explained what they were doing, she nodded. “I thought something peculiar was going on, with Leisha driving Scott’s car all the time. It’s none of my business, of course, but Scott was always out there working on his car, which was parked right next to their apartment. Then suddenly, she’s driving it and it’s all torn up and I didn’t see Scott anymore. I thought they might have had a fight or something.”
English nodded. “I noticed the car. You say it’s torn apart?”
“Let me show you,” Gail offered.
He followed her outside to where the yellow Camaro was parked perpendicular to the building, in an area that contained spaces for about six cars. Looking inside, English understood what Gail meant. The back seat had been removed, the passenger seat was tilted a little to one side and the dashboard was missing. Unattached wires were protruding through the firewall. He remembered that Jim Dunn had told him Scott was transferring the motor and parts from this car to another Camaro with a better body. Apparently the work had already begun. He was surprised the car was operable.
Back inside the apartment, English showed Gail the stains in the living room and in the bedroom. She looked stunned. “That carpet was not stained or patched when Scott and Leisha moved in,” she said firmly.
In the meantime, White had called the DPS crime lab and talked with Jim Thomas, a chemist and the supervising criminalist at the lab, which analyzed crime scene evidence in a ninety-county area. Evidence received at this laboratory covered a variety of substances: blood evidence for DNA and serological examination, hair and fibers, glass, shoe prints, tire tracks, controlled substances and various types of trace evidence that might be involved in a criminal investigation.
Although Thomas was the lab supervisor, he also was involved in analyzing certain types of evidence and giving testimony about his analyses. On occasion the chemist responded when an officer requested assistance in the collection of evidence at crime scenes.
White apologized for asking Thomas to stay late on a Friday afternoon and asked if he would stand by to look at samples the detective wanted to bring him. Thomas agreed. White called his LPD supervisor, Sergeant Randy McGuire, and asked him to come to the apartment. When McGuire arrived, English told Leisha, “We really need to ask you to come with us to the department. We’ll need to talk more.” Leisha agreed. McGuire and English drove Leisha downtown to the police department for further questioning.
White hurried to the DPS crime laboratory and waited while Thomas conducted a preliminary test for blood on a portion of the wooden carpet-tack strip, used as a nailing strip, that White had pried from the wall in Scott Dunn’s bedroom. The method Thomas used was a presumptive test with Tetraethyl Benzedrine. Thomas’ test revealed that blood was present on the wooden strip. There was one big question that had to be answered before the detectives proceeded. “Is it human blood?” White asked Thomas.
“I can’t tell you right now,” Thomas said. “The test to determine if this is human blood will take a while, but I’ll call you when we run more tests.”
White nodded. “I’ll be at the office. Call when you know something.”
Tal English and Leisha Hamilton were waiting in English’s office when White returned. At 6:48 PM Friday, June 7, English read Hamilton her rights. She said she understood them.
Despite the unanswered question of whether it was human blood, White informed Leisha that the samples that had been found in the apartment were, indeed, blood. He asked her to let the police secure the apartment until a more complete examination of the premises could be done. Leisha nodded, gave White the key to the apartment and signed a consent to search it.
At that point, White called ID Sergeant Tomas Esparza, supervisor of the Identification Department, who had gone home for the day. White asked him to come back to the police department. When Esparza arrived, English explained the situation to him. Esparza said, “I’ll get with the DPS lab technicians and ID Officer Lewis and perform a complete examination of the apartment.”
English and White continued with their interrogation of Leisha Hamilton. Almost word for word, Leisha recited the same story of Scott Dunn’s disappearance that she had told earlier to English. She claimed not to have seen the stained area of the carpet and did not have any explanation about the carpet that was cut from under the couch.
She said that when she came home on May 16 and Scott was not there, an afghan that was kept in the bedroom was spread out on the floor where Scott had been sleeping that morning. The bedding was missing. Leisha said she thought Scott had moved out, taking the missing items with him.
“Was he always so orderly?” English asked.
Leisha said it was not like Scott to be neat and spreading the afghan out so carefully was not typical of something he would do. She was not curious enough, however, to look under the afghan to see if there was a reason why it had been spread out.
Leisha also said she did not really believe Scott would leave any of his property behind, because he was too greedy. At that point she again gave detectives a detailed list of items she said were missing from the apartment: a blue laundry basket containing seven pairs of jeans; seven T-shirts, black, with ProSound printed on them in pink; ten pairs of socks and eight to ten pairs of underwear. Also, she said, the bedclothes, consisting of a solid blue king-size flat sheet, a blue-gray comforter, a light blue thermal blanket, three pillows—two were standard size and one was smaller—the small one had a blue-gray pillowcase; one pair of gray western boots, size twelve; one pair of Reebok air pumps, white, blue and orange in color; a second pair of tennis shoes, white with black trim; three towels with white and yellow stripes running lengthwise; one brown towel with a design in the middle.
Scott’s brown leather wallet, containing about eight dollars, also was missing, she said.
Talking about her relationship with Tim Smith, Leisha said that she had gone out with him a few times and then tried to get rid of him, but he would not leave her alone. He had followed her several times when she went out with Scott. She said Scott and Tim did not like each other. Then, on being asked where
