trial. during virginia s trial, the jury was taken to seal beach. for three days court was held high above the beautiful pacific ocean an a wind-swept cliff where donna hartman had fallen to her death. the trial lasted for three days. the longest time a court had been in session at a suspected crime scene in american history. jurors were asked to examine the cliff to determine for themselves whether virginia s story of an accidental fall made sense. after a four-day deliberation, jurors said it didn t, and virginia was found guilty of first-degree murder. she was sentenced to life in prison. what it really got down to was putting the facts together in a scientific communicated fashion to a jury, and they were able to make the decision based upon the totality of the facts. without forensic science, virginia mcginnis today would
she was dead. there was no way she could have survived the 500-foot drop. unfortunately, accidents here do happen. everybody wants to climb out and get that picture of the ocean behind them. so they re out on the edge, on the precipice, and things happen. one other fellow said people fall off the cliff like logs out here. the victim was 20-year-old donna hartman. it was absolutely horrible. when you know that one of the almost phobias that this young woman had was heights, and she dies in this manner, it s particularly a horrible event. she recently separated from her husband and had been living and traveling with her friends, virginia and b.j. mcginnis. donna was a wonderful young lady, but she was challenged. her iq was probably 85 or 90, somewhere in there. she was wonderful and friendly and thoughtful. her husband was in the navy. at the scene, the mcginnises
had a theory. i think that she was pushed off the cliff and didn t make it, and her hands were stomped on in order to get her to continue her fall off the cliff. but the injuries on her hands were more consistent with a struggle or that scenario than a simple fall off the cliff. this was a harrowing possibility. it meant that while donna was hanging on to the cliff s edge, one or both of the mcginnises sent her to a certain death. there was no what we call pattern injury to help determine as to what she was struck with. she could have been struck with a fist for all i know, or she could have been struck with an instrument. these were the wounds of someone who was fending off an attack and then died, as opposed to somebody who flopped down a cliff and had some things break along the way.
backhand slanting isn t necessarily evidence of forgery but it is evidence of someone trying to change the way they write. with a court order, investigators forced virginia mcginnis to provide a handwriting sample. i asked her to write alice kessain s name first in her own natural handwriting and then i asked her to write it in a backhand slant because that s how it appeared on the question document. forensic document examiners concluded virginia mcginnis had signed alice s name on the insurance policy. it was not any different from her handwriting. she merely had changed the slant in order to disguise her writing and make it indistinguishable from the rest of the writing on the form. two years after the murder, virginia and b.j. mcginnis were arrested and charged with donna hartman s murder. virginia now claimed she wasn t at the scene of the accident and as proof she reminded prosecutors she wasn t in any of the photographs.
speculate to look for vehicles, look to see if anyone can see. and that s the last photograph taken of her alive. it s almost as if she is in motion then, and the husband s hand is up against donna s shoulder. and the last four pictures were even more unusual. i think those four photos are surveillance video pictures. i think that was virginia mcginnis looking through the viewfinder of her camera to make sure nobody saw what they did. they re not photographs a tourist is going to take. and particularly the fact that the sequence to this day, i don t understand why they would take it. there is a shot looking down the cliff where donna fell. then three panoramic views. one to the left, another to the right, and the last behind them. now, if she has slipped and fallen, then who is taking sightseeing photographs? i mean, who cares about a camera. let s see if we can save her.