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Maintained & Compiled by Jon Stimac, OR State Police Clipped from The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, TX September 9, 2003

Fingerprints Thought Destroyed Turn Up

By Deanna Boyd

FORT WORTH, TX - Fingerprints lifted from the car of a woman found slain in Johnson County in 1996 and believed to have been inadvertently destroyed by Fort Worth police were found Tuesday, police officials said. Lt. Jesse Hernandez, a police spokesman, said the prints were found in a secured file cabinet in the records division. "When they looked for them originally, they just overlooked them," Hernandez said. "They were where they were supposed to be. Evidently, she just overlooked them." The discovery came just a week before jury selection is to begin in the capital murder trial of Daniel Shockley Miller, one of three suspects charged in the kidnapping and fatal shooting of Gina Dykman. The prints had previously been compared to those of the three suspects and did not match. Prosecutors had wanted to use them to rule out that any of the suspects' associates were involved in the slaying. "We're just really happy they're found," said Camille Sparks, who is prosecuting the case. "We're full speed ahead. We're very happy, and we're ready to go." Wes Ball, Miller's defense attorney, had previously planned to file a motion to dismiss the indictment because of the lost evidence. "If they did find them and if they were at one point lost, it doesn't say a whole lot about the efficiency of the property room or wherever they store this stuff," Ball said. "With all the stories about messed up crime labs, when the state announces it's seeking the death penalty, you've got to be extra concerned about things like this." Dykman's 1993 green Dodge Stealth was found abandoned in Fort Worth with the key in the ignition on July 23, 1996. She had last been seen alive two days before in Richland Hills by friends with whom she had been living. Because the car had not been reported stolen and Dykman's father did not report her missing until Aug. 9, 1996, police had the her car towed. The car was later processed for evidence after Dykman's father called an auto theft detective on Aug. 16, 1996, and told him the car belonged to his daughter, whom he had recently reported missing. On Aug. 21, a supplemental report said that the crime lab had processed the car for fingerprints but that "no evidence of value was found." That report did not mention that five fingerprints had been lifted from the car.

On Aug. 22, Dykman's body was found in a Johnson County cemetery. She had been shot twice and beaten. In May 2002, a Tarrant County grand jury indicted Miller, 33; Kirk Alan Cantrell, 34; and Beverly Cropp, 30, on capital murder charges in Dykman's slaying. The three remain in the Tarrant County Jail with bail set at $500,000 each. Investigators say the three kidnapped Dykman in Fort Worth because they mistakenly believed she was a police informant who was going to report their drug activity. Dykman is thought to have been killed in Johnson County, but Tarrant County is prosecuting the case because Dale Hanna, the Johnson County district attorney, deferred jurisdiction. Tarrant County prosecutors heard about the five prints after they began to gather information in the case. Hernandez had previously said that an incorrect criminal offense written on the fingerprint card and a lack of communication led to the inadvertent destruction of the fingerprints. He said the prints were disposed of in July 2002 because the statute of limitations had expired on the burglary of a vehicle offense written on the card. Sparks said she met with crime scene officer Brad Patterson on Tuesday morning and was told he would make another attempt to find the missing fingerprints. She said he called later in the morning to say that they had been found. Hernandez said that after locating the fingerprint card, police found that the correct criminal offense - capital murder - had been written on it. Hernandez said that when the records employee could not locate the print, she had just assumed it had been destroyed because the incorrect criminal offense had been written on the card, as it had been written incorrectly on a crime lab report. "These fingerprints were labeled properly," Hernandez said. "She just overlooked it. It was just human error. Those things happen."

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