Police lifted Margaret Courson's fingerprints from a notebook in the sport utility truck owned by the 21-year-old Shady Side man charged in her death, according to testimony in Anne Arundel Circuit Court yesterday.
The victim's fingerprint was perhaps the most damaging evidence provided yesterday in the second day of testimony in the trial of Alvin Winslow Gross, 21, of the 4800 block of Atwell Road, Shady Side.
Mr. Gross is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree rape, kidnapping and handgun violations in the Dec. 9, 1993, death of Ms. Courson, a waitress and laborer who lived in a rooming house in the 100 block of Prince George St.
He is being tried before Judge Bruce C. Williams.
Ms. Courson, 26, was last seen about 3 a.m. at City Dock in Annapolis on the day of her death. Her partially clothed body was found about three hours later near a cornfield along the 300 block of Leitch Road in Deale.
She had been raped and shot twice in the neck and twice in the chest.
Eric Love, a county police evidence technician, testified yesterday that Ms. Courson's fingerprints were lifted from a notebook in a rear storage area of Mr. Gross' 1991 Isuzu Amigo sport utility truck.
Joseph Kopera, a state police firearms expert, testified yesterday that the handgun Mr. Gross asked a friend to hold for him after the slaying was the same type of weapon that fired the four fatal bullets.
The friend who agreed to hold the gun, Troy King, 21, of Fairhaven has testified that Mr. Gross told him in early January that he had killed Ms. Courson.
The case is expected to go to the jury of eight men and four women next week.