Experts: Homicides without a body are difficult to prove
STAMFORD — When it comes to deaths, whether by accident, suicide or homicide, experts say the common denominator is almost always a body.
But short of finding a body, like in the case of New Canaan mother of five Jennifer Dulos, who has been reported missing for over two weeks now,
police, former prosecutors and defense attorneys say trying to convict someone with murder without a victim presents a variety of problems they don’t face in the course of a usual death prosecution.
While rare, they do crop up, at least for a time before a body or bodies are found.
Take the case of Jeffrey and Jeanette Navin, the owners of R&J Refuse of Westport, who were reported missing in August 2015. Police talked to friends of the middle-aged couple who told them the two had no plans to leave and the friends said they were worried for the Navin’s safety.
Kyle Navin, their son, became a suspect after police were told he was a going to be written out of their will because he was a drug addict, he would not pay money back to his parents that he owed and the two were about to get out of the garbage business and leave him without a job. Then, as now, high-powered criminal attorney Eugene Riccio came to Kyle Navin’s defense just as he has done with Jennifer Dulos’ husband Fotis, who is facing charges of hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.
As authorities proceeded with the Navin case, they found text messages between he and his father, Jeffrey, that indicated before his disappearance his father suspected that his son may have killed his mother because he told his son that he didn’t want to be framed for her murder if she turned up dead.
In the weeks after, police found two pistols in Kyle’s home along with two bullet holes in the front passenger seat of his pickup truck — one of which had pierced the part of a seat belt that would go over the chest of the passenger. Police also obtained a receipt of Kyle’s showing that the day after his parents went missing, he used cash to purchase a germicidal bleach, hair and grease dissolving drain opener and contractor cleanup bags from Home Depot.
Yet, with that and other evidence gathered that made a pretty convincing circumstantial case against Navin, until about two months later when his parents’ bodies were discovered shot to death in a vacant Weston home, he was not charged with their murder. He later pleaded guilty to their murder and is serving two concurrent 55-year terms. Navin’s girlfriend Jennifer Valiante is serving an eight-year sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and hindering prosecution.
Citing his involvement in the Dulos case, Riccio declined comment for this article.
Yet, former Norwalk Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Hall says proceeding with a murder case without a body can still be done successfully with enough circumstantial evidence. While he said he had no knowledge
of the case besides what he has seen on TV or read online, he said in this case Dulos appears to be a devoted mother who disappeared, probably without emptying her bank account, and investigators are probably talking to people who told them that she was afraid of her soon-to-be ex-husband.
Now with blood traces found in Jennifer Dulos’ New Canaan home and Fotis Dulos and his girlfriend being charged with getting rid of cleaning supplies soaked with Jennifer Dulos’ blood in trash cans in in the Hartford area, police appear to be putting together a murder case against him, Hall said.
“This is all circumstantial evidence, and while her disappearance may be one circumstance, how do you keep explaining away five, six or seven of these circumstances?” he asked.
Yet, back in the mid-80s, Hall remembered the case of April Grisanti, from Norwalk, who went missing and her body was never found. Police eventually pulled together enough evidence to charge her boyfriend at the time, James “Purple” Aaron, with her kidnapping. Aaron, who died last year, eventually pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Hall, who says he strongly suspected Aaron’s guilt in Grisanti’s death, pointed out that Aaron’s first wife, Marry Frattalone-Aaron also disappeared several years earlier and while her body was found, he was never charged with her death.
Norwalk police Lt. Art Weisgerber said even after Grisanti’s mother had her declared legally dead some time before he took over the case in 2011, he could not find a prosecutor willing to go along with charging Aaron with her death.
Part of the problem, said Weisgerber, who heads up his police department’s Cold Case Unit, was Grisanti disappeared without a trace. And unlike today where cellphone, DNA and video evidence could help investigators crack the case, back in 1985 when Grisanti disappeared, none of that was available.
If Jennifer Dulos showed up at her kids’ New Canaan school and was caught on tape wearing a specific outfit that was later found soaked in her blood, that could go a long way to help investigators prove her death had a criminal cause, Weisgerber said.
“You have to keep working up your case. You continue to work the case as far as locating the body, but in the meantime you are doing your work to get your forensic evidence, too,” Weisgerber said.
Bridgeport attorney John Gulash said the “Missing Masseuse” case from 1988 brought to mind some of the pitfalls of proceeding with a murder prosecution without a body. In that case, masseuse Carla Almeida disappeared after showing up at Tevfik Sivri’s Trumbull home in April of that year.
Police and Henry Lee, then the chief criminologist at the Connecticut Crime Lab, went to Sivri’s home and, after finding some carpet that appeared to have been cleaned in the living room, cut it open and determined that the mat under the carpet had been soaked with blood. After putting together a circumstantial case against Sivri, a jury found him guilty of murder.
But Gulash, who represented Sivri at trial, said the state Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a technicality, mostly because the body had never been found. Gulash argued that without the body, the prosecution could not prove that Sivri had the intent to kill Almeida. But the court found the judge in the case should have allowed the jury to consider whether Sivri was guilty of lesser offenses such as manslaughter or negligent homicide.
“While the Supreme Court majority found there was sufficient cause to prosecute him, they agreed that lesser included offense instructions should have been given to the jury without knowing what instrument was used or how many injuries had been inflicted to the victim,” Gulash said.
Yet, between the time of the appeal and second trial, Almeida’s body was found with a gunshot wound to the head and Sivri was later convicted of her murder and is not scheduled for release until 2034.
“Interestingly, when you think of my 40something-year career handling a fairly large number of homicides, there is a very small number of cases that are missing body cases. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the body is found at the scene of the alleged event,” Gulash said. “Yes, the missing body cases, although few and far between, do create all kinds of investigative road blocks or impediments in in putting together that kind of case.”
Lee, now on the faculty at the University of New Haven, said he was confronted with the same problem in the famous wood chipper murder of Helle Crafts. Crafts had disappeared in 1986 in Newtown and Lee said there was little to go on except the report by a plow driver of a man towing a wood chipper through a snowstorm near Lake Zoar on the Housatonic River.
Divers combed the lake, Lee said, and found part of a chainsaw that had its serial number obliterated, but was later able to be traced to Crafts’ pilot husband, Richard Crafts.
Near the shoreline of the lake, authorities melted snow and found 56 bone chips, a tooth, part of a finger, part of a toe, a fingernail, more than 2,000 dyed hairs and the metal crown of a tooth. With the help of Helle Crafts’ hairdresser, dentist and other experts, the items were identified as part of Helle Crafts’ body, Lee said.
“You have to find some body parts or some evidence that shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim has died. Then, once you find someone died, you have to prove that that person did not die of natural causes or suicide,” Lee said.
Circumstances like the murder of Crafts are not common.
John Fahey, the supervisory assistant state’s attorney who runs the state Cold Case Unit, said homicide cases without a victim are rare indeed. He said of the 1,100 or so cases that have accrued in his cold case files over the past 30 years, he could not name one without a body.
“We have the burden of proving the elements of any murder case and those including death and the intent to cause a death and there is always a difficulty with proving that without a body,” Fahey said.