Margaret Courson's hair was found in the back seat of her accused killer's truck, and fibers from the truck's carpet were found in her pubic hair and the jeans and coat she was wearing the night she was killed, an FBI expert testified yesterday.
The hair and fibers presented to an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury were perhaps the most damaging evidence yet in the three-day trial of Alvin Winslow Gross, 21, of the 4800 block of Atwell Road, Shady Side.
Mr. Gross, who is being tried before Judge Bruce C. Williams, is charged with kidnapping, rape and murder in the death of Ms. Courson, a 26-year old Annapolis woman he allegedly picked up at the City Dock shortly after downtown bars closed Dec. 19, 1993.
The victim's body was found about three hours later in a cornfield in Tracy's Landing, about 20 miles south of Annapolis, by a passer-by. She had been shot four times and was naked from the waist up. Yesterday, Special Agent Robert Fram, a hair and fiber expert for the FBI in Washington, said vacuum sweepings from the rear seat of Mr. Gross' truck contained hair that matched samples of the victim's pubic hair, as well as some of the light brown hair from her head.
Fibers from the carpet in Mr. Gross' truck also were found on Ms. Courson's socks, blouse and boots, which were found along a rural road in Deale about six miles from the body, as well in her pubic hair and on her jeans and coat, he said.
Under cross examination, Agent Fram conceded that the hair and fibers cannot be matched with the scientific exactness that a fingerprint might be traced to a suspect. But he said that fiber analysis has reached a point where experts are able to reliably link a hair or fiber to its source.
"It's very rare to find two people whose hairs I can't distinguish," he said.
His testimony came just before assistant state's attorney Cynthia M. Ferris closed her case against Mr. Gross, a laborer and former student at the Anne Arundel Community College.
In other testimony, Ernest Lowman, a county police fingerprint technician, told jurors that pages from an address book that were taken from Mr. Gross' truck after his arrest had Ms. Courson's fingerprints on them.
Charlotte Word, a DNA expert from Cellmark Diagnostics, a forensic laboratory in Germantown, also testified that Mr. Gross "could not be ruled out" as the donor of the sperm taken from Ms. Courson's body.
At the close of the state's case, Judge Bruce C. Williams denied a defense motion to drop the rape and kidnapping charges against Mr. Gross.
Timothy D. Murnane, one of Mr. Gross' lawyers, had argued that the state had failed to provide sufficient evidence on the rape and kidnapping counts to even put those charges before the jury.