Amber Willard
PASADENA -- None of the 20 items Glendale Police sent for DNA testing
matched the man a defense attorney has named as the real killer in a
double-murder case, officials said in court Monday.
Michael Demirdjian, a 16-year-old La Crescenta boy accused in the
beating deaths of two boys in July, is being tried for the slayings, but
his attorney has said another man did it.
Charles T. Mathews has said his client witnessed the killings of
Blaine Talmo Jr. and Christopher McCulloch but that Adam Walker killed
the boys. Walker, 19, was arrested during the investigation in July, two
days after the boys' bodies were found at Valley View Elementary School.
Walker was later released without charges in the case.
"The 20 DNA samples I tested did not come from any of those people,"
forensic analyst Thomas Fedor said of Walker and a handful of other teens
who attorneys have connected to an alleged drug deal gone bad. The deal
may have contributed to the deaths, attorneys for both sides have
alleged.
DNA tests performed on the mouth of a wine bottle found at the school
playground did have positive returns for Demirdjian and McCulloch, Fedor
said.
However, Mathews questioned Fedor because he did not take the samples
from the items -- the samples on cotton swabs, cloth and shoe rubber were
sent to him in the mail from police officials.
"You don't really know it was taken from the mouth of the bottle,"
Mathews said of the positive tests.
DNA samples from blood smeared on a hallway door in Demirdjian's home
matched McCulloch's, Fedor said.
Mathews has said Demirdjian witnessed the beating deaths and knelt to
check on the boys after they had been beaten, getting their blood on his
hands and shoes.
Mathews is tentatively scheduled to start calling defense witnesses
Friday and has said Demirdjian will testify.
