wronged by ferris. igaz, who also requested she not be photographed on the witness stand, testified that as the sun was coming up, she saw gabriel ferris returning to their honeymoon cottage. i heard the door to the house slamming, and gabriel coming up the stairs. did you notice anything at that time about his clothes? the first thing i said to him was how did you get the blood on your clothes? did he respond when you asked him about the blood on his clothes? he said, i hit a rabbit with your car and he got hung up in the wheel well and i had to pull him out. and that s how i got the blood on my clothes. ferris ex-wife testified that same night in their honeymoon cottage ferris turned on the 11:00 news. he got up real close to the television and when it was talking about cheryl miller, he was touching the television and he was making noises like he was crying but he wasn t crying.
why is that significant? because that indicates that his hand had to be so far down the dresser that the wrist or the arm had to be perhaps along the floor. why was that important in relation to the position of cheryl miller s body? that would put him in a position of being on top of cheryl miller, either at a time when they are attempting or having sexual relations, or at the time that he s strangling her. either one of these things could have taken place, but because of the position of the fingerprints, it gets your attention. finally after presenting what the state said was strong, physical evidence proving ferris was the killer, prosecutors called to the stand the one woman whose testimony was crucial to the case. the people call terri igaz. terri igaz is gabriel ferris former wife. she s the woman ferris was honeymooning with on the night of the murder. the couple split within months of that honeymoon and she took the stand not to defend her now ex-husband but as an
see if we can replicate roughly the position of the body in relation to the dresser. the prosecution next used a dummy to demonstrate for the jury evidence that it said would conclusively link ferris to the murder. what do those circles represent? it represents the area with the latent fingerprints identified on mr. ferris were located. remember, two of ferris fingerprints were found on a dresser in the victim s room, but the state argued that it was the position of those prints, just inches from the victim s head, that was key. the prosecutor used a police officer to show the jury that the prints could only have been left by a man who was committing murder. the fingers were pointing up. in the fashion in which the lieutenant roughly has his hands positioned? yes.
because another man present during the conversation contradicted her. if mr. ferris would have told you that he had murdered cheryl miller, do you think you d have remembered that? yes. he never told me that. the defense was set to wrap up its case, asking the jury a simple question did it make sense that gabriel ferris would on the first night of his honeymoon make love to his new wife and then sneak out of his house, drive 65 miles to visit a former girlfriend? a woman he was now accused of killing? and further, did he have time that night to commit the crime? after all, ferris wife said she heard him returning to the house around sun-up at 6:00 a.m. and the medical examiner said the murder occurred at virtually the same time, between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. it was time now for the defense to question the credibility of the witness at the center of the prosecution s case. ferris ex-wife. the woman who was on her honeymoon trip at the time of the murder, terri igaz took the stand
without parole. in order to do that, they had to convict him of what is called felony murder, a murder committed in the course of a felony, in this case, rape. the question for prosecutors without semen, how could they prove that a rape even occurred? if you have a rape case, wouldn t you have a semen sample that you could use to tie the rapist to the rape? if the rapist doesn t ejaculate, you have no semen sample. in this case, our supposition was that mr. ferris was choking cheryl miller to get her to participate in this act, and he killed her. and in that instance, he may very well have lost the desire to complete the act. you can t tell us what he was thinking, can you? no, i cannot tell you. the defense had one last chance to respond. blasting the prosecution experts. first, the medical examiner who disputed findings by the