Police: DNA shows suspect in victim's apartment

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - A crime scene investigator testifying Tuesday in the trial of a woman accused of beating and strangling her pregnant friend and cutting the baby from the womb said that of three items in the victim's apartment tested for DNA, one showed the suspect had been there.

Karen McDermott of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory said in Julie Corey's Worcester Superior Court murder trial that crime lab officials ordered testing for two bottles of Smirnoff Ice found in Darlene Haynes' apartment and a bloody blanket found in the apartment's third floor.

Corey's DNA was found on one of the Smirnoff Ice bottles and Haynes' on the other, she said.

McDermott said the investigation found no evidence of Haynes' blood in Corey's Worcester apartment.

Corey, 39, is accused of killing the 23-year-old Haynes, who was eight-months pregnant, cutting a 9-inch incision in her abdomen, removing the baby girl and trying to pass the infant off as her own.

Corey and her boyfriend, Alex Dion, arrived at a shelter in Plymouth, N.H., on July 29, 2009, two days after Haynes' body was found in a bedroom closet in her apartment. She died from multiple blunt head trauma with skull fractures, asphyxiation by an electrical cord and the abdominal incision.

Richard W. Staub, the former laboratory director at Cellmark Forensics, testified that an analysis of DNA profiles showed Haynes was the baby's mother and her ex-boyfriend, Roberto C. Rodriguez, was the father.

Cox Media Group