the neighbor down and took footprints from all three of them. todd hale s footprints didn t match. jacob hadley s footprints didn t match either. then there was carlos. it struck me odd as i inked carlos feet and asked him to step down from the chair on to the paper, and he was reluctant to do that. carlos walked down one side of the paper and then walked over the footprints he just made. something s just not right here. it wasn t hard instructions to understand and follow. it was almost like he was trying to obliterate his footprints. finally technicians got usable prints, and they were compared to the bloody footprints in christina s bathroom. this is our guy. it s his footprint.
we did use some light and oblique angles and some ultraviolet light. this is also used when we took photographs of the bun. the indentations strongly resemble a right toe, the ball of a foot and bits of the second and third toes. and it looked like there were ridge details in the soft bread that resembled prints. if these were footprints that matched carlos robinson, prosecutors had an open and shut case. our suspect dumped the buns on the floor and used the plastic bag to carry out the knife. the buns were fresh, and the barefoot person had also stepped in these hamburger buns. but if they weren t robinson s prints, then it raised the possibility of reasonable doubt or the possibility that robinson had an accomplice. so it was almost like we had to prove not just that the
between 9:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. robinson was alone with his children during this time. carlos wife was gone on the night this murder occurred. she was gone to visit a relative in a neighboring city. but investigators needed proof that carlos robinson was the killer after all and not just a neighbor who found her body and hadn t reported the crime. people often look for somebody that has a motive, and what we were trying to prove to the jury is that a person who barely knew the victim for four days had killed her and that the ex-boyfriend that was abusive to her didn t. then investigators discovered either another piece of evidence or a complication. in looking at the crime scene evidence, scientists noticed something in the hamburger buns. one of them was misshaped.
todd, they felt might have been a suspect because of the way he entered the apartment. he wasn t invited in. he opened the window, removed the screen and snaked himself in through this small opening. so they asked him to do it again while they watched. we allowed him to demonstrate how he climbed through the window and around that entertainment center. and he was able to do that even wearing some steel-toed work boots. hale got inside again without touching any of the items on the entertainment center. it was a little bit amazing watching him do that. it was like watching a burglar in action. next police ask christina s neighbor carlos robinson to provide a routine statement and he willingly complied. investigator described him as being very helpful, very cooperative. when the police left the room, of course, they keep their eye on him. he got down and began praying.
perfect match to the bloody palm print on christina s bathroom sink. and carlos dna matched the dna from christina s rape test kit. when faced with this incriminating evidence, carlos made a startling confession. he now claimed he had a consensual sexual relationship with christina in the couple of days he had known her. he also claimed he found christina s body several hours before todd hale did but he got scared and ran home instead of calling police. he insisted, however, he wasn t the killer. his reason for not calling 911 was because he was a black man and he would be framed for the murder. the medical examiner estimated christina was murdered