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From: Jasper
Date: 10/25/00
Time: 10:12:16 AM
Maggie,
I went over Dr. Lee's testimony, did a search for "something wrong" and backtracked the wet transfer stains he was talking about to a DOJ photo. This is where I got the impression that the wet transfer stains in question occurred in the last phase of the LAPD testing procedure before they were sent to Cellmark and DOJ. These were Andrea Mazola's three cloth swatches in one paper bindle that were supposedly taken out of a paper bindle (whose bindle?). HER bindle come out of her initialed coin envelope, put in a test tube to dry at 6:00 PM on the 13th (as you said) and left to dry overnight. The swatches were then, supposedly, put on a new paper bindle (by Dennis Fung?) and put….where? Back in Andrea Mazola's coin envelope?
Something is definitely wrong here, but I'm not sure it means the samples were switched before Yamauchi got them or took them over to Parker Center on the 14th. I have to go back through Fung's testimony and find out when and where the DOJ photos were taken. Maybe I can find it in Sims' testimony. I don't know. Looks like a lot of work.
Right now I'm back to the three possibilities I started with: 1) There was no switch and the samples looked funny because they were degraded and because they went into one cone envelope and came out of another one with wet transfer stains that shouldn't have been there. Explanation: sloppy lab work, lies to cover up the failure to carryout proper lab procedures. 2) The samples were switched before Fung gave them to Yamauchi. The missing lens tells me that it's possible but I don't know enough about Piper Tech and the people who worked there to make an intelligent guess as to who could have done it, when or how. 3) The samples were switched at Parker Center. This is the weakest link in the chain of custody. All of the samples were available to anyone who could get past a door with an ordinary lock. All of the samples were labeled with the photo ID numbers that were assigned on the murder scene. The testing procedure made the time, place and accessibility of the samples 100% predictable.
I'm going to try to find out when the photo was taken and go from there. --Jasper