Evidence from homicide case missing from storage facilities

Fingernail and hair samples from a 1994 homicide victim that a judge ruled can be DNA tested are apparently missing from the Carroll County sheriff's office.

If there was blood underneath the fingernails of Stephen Goff, it could reveal the murderer's DNA, according to court filings.

But investigators from Arkansas Investigations of Little Rock were unable to find the glass microscope slides containing samples of hair and fingernails from the case in any of the sheriff office's four storage facilities in Berryville.

"It is my opinion that items of evidence relating to Goff have been lost and not accounted for, intentionally or otherwise," according to the Oct. 9 report from private investigator Michael J. West.

Belynda Goff was convicted in 1996 in the bludgeoning death of her husband, Stephen Goff, and sentenced to life in prison. Belynda Goff refused a plea bargain and has always maintained her innocence, even after her appeals were denied. Some DNA evidence was cited in Belynda Goff's arrest and trial.

In December 2013, Karen Thompson, a lawyer with a New York-based nonprofit called the Innocence Project, filed a request on Belynda Goff's behalf to conduct DNA tests on previously untested evidence found on and near Stephen Goff's body. If tests find a DNA profile that doesn't match Belynda or Stephen Goff, it would undermine Belynda Goff 's conviction, Thompson said.

Carroll County Circuit Judge Gerald Kent Crow granted permission for DNA testing June 3.

Thompson filed the petition under 2001's Act 1780, which grants convicted defendants the right to request forensic DNA testing on evidence not previously tested after the direct appeals process has been exhausted.

The slides that are missing were in the possession of the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock until Carroll County Deputy Greg Lester went there Dec. 12, 2000, to retrieve them, according to the report from Arkansas Investigations. Lester signed a letter at the state Crime Lab indicating he had picked up the slides, but there's no documentation that they were delivered to the sheriff's office, according to the report.

Sheriff Bob Grudek said all evidence from the crime scene was provided to the Innocence Project in June. Grudek, who has been sheriff since 2007, noted that the case preceded his time in office.

On Sept. 30, Thompson filed a motion in Carroll County Circuit Court to compel a search for the missing evidence, and Crow granted it the same day.

Thompson included a list of the items received in June, which included a hammer, glasses, clothing, bedding, towels, dumbbells and hair samples. But the fingernail samples and a long hair found on Stephen Goff's body weren't there.

"Although some of the hairs have been tested, additional hairs gathered from Stephen Goff's hand or shirt, and a profile collected from his fingernails would remain deeply powerful evidence of Ms. Goff's innocence," Thompson wrote in the motion. "This is particularly true if the biological materials obtained from the fingernails are found to be blood. There is no innocent explanation for blood found underneath the fingernails except that it came from the perpetrator, especially if that blood matches to a profile from one or more of the hairs."

Thompson said Monday that DNA testing on other items from the crime scene will continue.

"Other items were found that can be submitted for testing, although we still hope to uncover the fingernails for the reasons noted in our motion for an evidence search," Thompson said in an email.

The only item from the case that Arkansas Investigations found in the sheriff's office's storage facilities was a piece of wooden door trim from the crime scene.

The report noted the "disorganized and unmethodical systems used to capture details about the evidence."

"It appeared most items were simply thrown to the back of the shed and stacked in a random manner," investigators wrote regarding one storage building.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, more than 300 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 18 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project's website, innocenceproject.org.

NW News on 11/11/2014

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