Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The Case of Preston Hughes III: The Searchers Part 5 and Last

This post will be quick, at least by my standards. I want to end this mini series within a series and I want to get on to the next post, which I consider pretty cool. So times a wasting. No need to buckle up. We'll live dangerously.

In addition the other items already discussed, the police recovered a maroon pullover shirt and a plastic bag containing (ahem) a green leafy substance. Here's the pic. Click to enlarge.


The most disturbing news here is that Preston smokes, or at least he did back then.

I understand that the green leafy substance (henceforth GLF) belonged to Preston. I am attempting to confirm that, but our interaction is necessarily slow and awkward. I am also attempting also to learn from whom and from whence such GLF was obtained.

Regarding the plastic bag, they did not (as far as can be determined from the police reports) attempt to lift fingerprints from it. Officer Hale did not even try by himself to lift them, as he personally tired to lift prints from the beer can. Neither the plastic bag nor the beer can were sent to the lab for printing. Only the glasses were sent to the lab for printing.

The maroon pullover shirt constitutes the third shirt that the police took from Preston's apartment. The two others were almost identical blue work shirts. That simple fact adds to the weight of evidence that no blood was visible on the shirts. It's unlikely Preston wore two work shirts plus a the pullover maroon shirt when he allegedly stabbed Shandra and Marcell. It's very likely he would have ended up with lots of blood on one of the shirts, possibly two, but no way three.

If blood was visible on any one, or even two, of the shirts, the police could have taken that one shirt or those two shirts. One might argue the police were just being thorough, but they were not. They didn't take any of the shirts from Preston's closet.

They tested all three shirts with a Luminol like substance to identify possible areas where they might find blood. They did that because they could not see any blood. They could not see any blood, I suggest, because none existed.

The End

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

If I understand what I have read so far, it appears the HPD forensics team successfully onvinced a jury that the singular use of a Luminol-type test *proved* that blood was present on several of PHIII's personal items. Is it true that no TMJ or similar test was performed to confirm the presence of blood? How did they get away with this? Was PHIII's defence *that* bad?

tsj said...

Yes

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