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STEWART TRIAL
~ And the Sweeney Brothers And More ~
WHERE IS THE BLOOD?
The ultimate question, of course, is did Micah Stewart kill Cortney Fry? My answer has to be yes. For the simple reason, if not Stewart, then who and why?
But you have to prove it in a court of law. And the prosecution didn’t do that. And what concerns me the most about this case is - where is the blood?
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Hackman said in his closing that the prosecution had “a mountain of evidence.” No, they didn’t. They had a desk covered with brown evidence bags with nothing of note in them.
Both Lancaster County’s forensic coroner, Dr. Wayne Ross, and the Mercyhurst forensic anthropologist testified that Fry received several forceful blows to her face. One blow broke the bones on both sides of her nose, Ross testified.
Where is the blood?
An object pieced her skull. Where is the blood?
The police forensic unit searched Stewart’s apartment and didn’t find any blood. The only thing they found was a box of latex gloves. Apparently they took at least two rug samples that were not a DNA match with Fry. One policeman testified about a bucket of damp rags in a closet – implying Stewart had been cleaning – but apparently those rags weren’t taken and tested or if they were – nothing came of it.
How did Stewart get her body into what was described as a “small” Dodge Aries K car? Hackman, in his closing, said the car was packed with Fry’s things as she was planning to leave Stewart and move to her mother’s house. How did Stewart fit the body in with all of her belongings already in the car?
Why didn’t they find blood in the car? The only, let me repeat, the only blood they found in their entire investigation was on the tip of two latex glove fingertips found between the cushions of the drivers seat of Stewart’s car.
In his closing, Hackman said the blood on the gloves came when Stewart was cleaning his car. I don’t think so. Again, I’m not an expert, but if Stewart was cleaning the car and there was enough blood to get it on the glove fingertips, then why didn’t the police find any blood in the car?
Where is the blood?
******
Zebulun Sweeney, a 2005 Columbia High School graduate who since moved to York, is wanted on charges of attempt to commit criminal homicide and aggravated assault.
…The Sweeney brothers testified against Micah Stewart earlier this year in a Lancaster courtroom. They claimed Stewart -- who was convicted last week of first-degree murder for killing girlfriend Cortney Fry -- shot at them last year in an alley behind his Columbia home.
“York man wanted for assault - Allegedly dropped flowerpot on police officer's head,” today’s Intell, Page B-l, (as of 9:30 a.m. this article has not been posted on line.)
The trial mentioned above ended in a mistrial and will be retried.
******
These two emails in. The first under the subject “Detective Geesey”:
Let the Fry family ALONE! You have no right to your opinions on Courtney's remains. Quit playing on the anguish the people involved with this case feel. It is none of your business. The trial is over! You have no right to question experts. You have no right to question the prosecution. In fact, you have no right to question the defense. You have no right to question the integrity of the witnesses or even to place judgments of any kind towards anyone. People who live in glass houses should not case stones.
The absolute only reason I check your daily "reporting" is to monitor your hatred of certain people I hold in high regard. I know you want to know who I am. All you need to know is that I'm sure I have the approval of a certain detective, as well as many, many people I come in contact with. Good luck in attaining that goal for yourself.
And this, from my favorite poster:
Beingreal is just a few rows away from you today; white shirt,
med. length hair.
She has a laptop.
She knows your face and is watching you in amusement every
single day.
Can you guess where she is? How many times she has watched
you today?
Every day of the trial, in fact?
I can.
I know. :))))))
I know, Becky Holzinger.
And the pathetic home-made tag you wear matches the look on
your face: devoid of intelligence.
Hi Becky.
Do you see her?
Do you?
She sees you.
Funny, I didn’t see her. My response to these two emails will come tomorrow along with the two Millersville professors – the plant and the bug expert!
DID STEWART DO IT?
Please check back later today…
*** BREAKING NEWS ***
I WON’T FORGET!
"Sousa admitted she had trouble keeping her composure when Fry’s friends testified. She sympathized with them when they described the last time they had seen their friend alive. She sympathized with Stewart’s half-brother who was compelled to testify against him."
”Experience ‘that I won’t forget’”, Bernard Harris, today’s New Era (click here).
There are two problems here, Bernard Harris; it was not Stewart’s “half-brother” and you didn’t spend one minute in the courtroom. Please check back tomorrow. These papers are an absolute and total disgrace.
~ Spirits and Nonsense ~
RED HERRINGS
I was sitting in the courtroom during the morning break. Brett Lovelace, the Intell reporter, and I were the only members of the gallery in the courtroom. Lovelance was talking to County Detective Arnold. Arnold said he interviewed Christina Arnold thirteen times. Thirteen times.
I asked him about the whole fear of the back bedroom thing. He responded, “Spirits.” I gave him a doubtful look. He nodded yes and again said, “Spirits.”
Christina Arnold testified via videotape in the courtroom. Her testimony was taken this August because she is in the National Guard.
She testified she knew Micah Stewart through his brother, Lionel, and called him on July 23, 2006 asking him to come and pick her up from Delaware where she was staying with a friend. Stewart agreed.
He spent several days in Delaware “hanging out” with Christina and her friends and had a sexual relationship with her friend Michelle, she testified.
They returned on July 27th to Stewart’s apartment. They were only there a few minutes when Arnold testified that Stewart’s sister, Alicia, came to pick him up and take him to be interviewed by the police at his mother’s home.
Arnold said she called Angelica Rivera, Stewart’s father’s girlfriend, and Rivera told her to come to their house because the police were going to search the apartment. Micah apparently spoke to Angelica, because he called Arnold a few minutes later and asked her to scrub out the tub with the baking soda in the bathroom and empty all of the ashtrays down the toilet before she left.
RED HERRING NUMBER 1
Several days later, after the police had searched Stewart’s apartment, Arnold testified she came across a piece of “reddish yarn” just lying in the hallway. “Did you think it might be blood?” Assistant District Attorney Christopher Hackman asked. “I thought it might be,” she responded.
She testified that she showed it to Stewart and he took it into the bathroom, burned it with a lighter and flushed it down the toilet.
On cross examination, Stewart’s defense attorney Roger Renteria, asked her how long the piece of yarn was. “One or two inches,” she responded. “Did you ever see any other yarn in the apartment?” Renteria asked. “Not that I can remember,” she testified.
RED HERRING NUMBER 2
Arnold testified that she and Stewart never slept in the back bedroom. She said that’s where Stewart and Fry slept on a waterbed. She testified that Stewart was “scared of the bedroom” and “thought people were trying to break in through the windows.”
“Did you give a statement to Detective Arnold about the back bedroom?” Hackman asked on re-examination. “Did you tell him ‘the bedroom freaked him out?’” Hackman asked. “Did you tell him he [Stewart] used you as a human shield to go into the bedroom at night?” “I guess so,” Arnold responded.
Later, under cross examination by Renteria, she testified that the two windows in the back bedroom were at some point nailed shut.
RED HERRING NUMBER 3
“Did you ever have a conversation with Micah Stewart about killing someone in general?” Hackman asked. “Yes,” she said. She testified the conversation took place at Stewart’s father’s house.
“He said he wanted me to catch my first body. He said when you’re killing somebody you should lay down trash bags and shoot them in the back of the head.”
“When did you have this conversation about ‘catching your first body?’” Renteria asked on cross examination. “I think it was in August,” she testified.
RED HERRING NUMBER 4
“Was it your choice to leave him or was it mutual or what?” Hackman asked on re-examination. “I think it was more him than me,” she responded.
PLEASE CHECK BACK ON MONDAY
~ And Investigate Totaro ~
DON’T DO IT,
DETECTIVE GEESEY!
"Prosecutors plan to release the skeletal remains of murder victim Cortney Fry to her family for burial.
….County Detective Joseph P. Geesey and Assistant District Attorney Christopher A. Hackman decided not to display the bones during the trial to prevent them from being kept as evidence during any appeals.
'The Fry family felt very strongly about being able to bury the remains as part of finding closure,' Geesey said. 'We respected their wishes and decided early on in the case that only photographs would be used at trial.'"
“Cortney on her way home,” today’s Intell, click here.
I understand the Fry’s family’s wishes, but this should absolutely not happen and the District Attorneys office knows it. I don’t believe the Fry family will be happy when her remains are exhumed for the appeal.
As I have noted previously, it was only three weeks ago that Dr. Ray from Penn State Harrisburg came to Lancaster and inserted the screwdriver found in Stewart’s car into the hole in the skull. He testified he came back another day when the photographs used in court were taken. He never testified that he tried putting any other screwdrivers or tools into the hole to see if they “fit.”
I don’t know when Stewart’s defense attorney, Roger Renteria, was notified of this “evidence” or the fact that they had the pictures. But it could only have been two or three weeks prior to the actual trial.
Did Renteria have an opportunity to physically view the skull and try inserting screwdrivers or other tools he could have purchased at Home Depot or any hardware store to see if they “fit?” Was he advised they were going to use a poster with four pictures of the screwdriver in the hole?
The pictures of the screwdriver in the skull have been reported as the deciding issue for the jury in terms of their decision between first and third degree murder.
The case is being appealed. That has been reported by WGAL and the Lancaster Newspapers. There is absolutely no reason to return the remains, or at least certainly the skull, until that process has concluded.
Otherwise, there will just be more pain for the Fry family.
"The commissioners’ citations were the only punitive actions recommended by a grand jury that spent the past year investigating both the sale of the county nursing home in 2005 and the hiring of Gary Heinke, the county’s former chief human services officer, according to District Attorney Donald Totaro.
Both investigations are now concluded, Totaro said."
“Commissioners guilty of violating state law,” today’s Intell, click here.
Is this a joke? A grand jury investigated for a year and this is it? The grand jury was supposed to be investigating racketeering, drugs and unsolved murders. That’s what Totaro put in his application for the empanelling of a grand jury. How much has this cost the public?
Investigate Totaro now. There will be much more on this at a later date.
Tomorrow – the witness who throws out three absurd red herrings in the Stewart trial, the convention center and “Lost Angels.”
READER’S COMMENTS
[Before today’s article, I thought I would post some emails I have received. Thank you for writing. My responses are in bold]
I agree with you about the bias reporting that the local news puts on the Micah Stewart case. I'm glad that someone is in there giving an unbiased opinion of the proceedings. Brent Lovelace is the worse of the worst. He once did an interview with Micah's mother and twisted everything she said and left anything out that put a less that glowing light on Cortney Fry.
The story that Cortney's mother Holly suggested to Cortney to date within her race is a joke I myself had it from Cortney's own lips (I use to take her to school at Park City) that her mother gave her an ultimatum to stop seeing Micah and that if she did not she had to leave. Then when Cortney told her she would not stop seeing Micah her mother Holly threw her out. When Holly found out Cortney was staying at Micah's home Holly and Holly's boyfriend at the time brought Cortney's belongings to Micah's and threw her belongings all over the sidewalk in the pouring down rain. Also Cortney's sister Sammy had to sneak off to Park City to visit with Cortney. When Sammy got caught making calls to Cortney, Holly threatened to get a babysitter for Sammy.
As for Cortney's friends, they are big time party girls and not just smoking a little marijuana.
I have heard the story about throwing the clothes from others as well. I agree about her friends. They found cocaine in Cortney’s system the day she gave birth to her daughter. These friends said they “hung out” with Cortney at least every other day but testified they knew nothing at all about cocaine.
LNP is breaking all journalistic code the way they "steal" from each other. They should be quoting "Intelligencer" or "Lancaster New Era" instead of pretending they wrote it.
I know that one of the papers got sued because they quoted the other without attribution and therefore got drug into the suit!
It is disgraceful. The New Era reporter would only be in the courtroom for an hour and fifteen minutes every day. Then they would use the Intell article word for word including quotes as if they were there. It is absolutely unethical. All the information readers got came from one Intell reporter who often has a problem with the facts.
I am going to write a piece about what the Lancaster Newspapers never reported in this trial – and what they reported incorrectly.
Is your hatred for Det. Geesey so strong that you think Stewart is not guilty? Hackman did a fine job. Apparently you don't know much about jury trials. That of course is quite apparent with what you wrote about Hackman. Maybe you should write about something you know something about.
Interesting. I think I mentioned Detective Geesey once so far and all I said was he sat next to Hackman every day at the prosecution table. I will come to Geesey’s testimony shortly. Again, I stand by everything I said about Hackman. This man wants to be a judge? Are you kidding me? We’ll see how his antics and lying stand up under appeal.
Actually, Phillips head screwdrivers DO come in standard sizes: 0, 1, 2, and 3. A #2 is what most people are used to seeing. #0 is tiny, #1 is small, #3 is rather large. Generally speaking, most Phillips head screwdrivers have a shaft that is about the same size as the largest dimension of the head; this is the most economical use of the metal.
Straight blade screwdrivers are a completely different issue. Some, but not all, are sized by the fraction of an inch width of the tip. The shaft can be either round or square. The wild card is the flare at the base of the tip, which is created when the metal is hammered or forged to create the tip. As a result, the flare is usually - but not always - much wider than the shaft (I've purchased straight-blade screwdrivers specifically without a flare, to get into tight places). The size or even presence of a flare above the tip of the screwdriver can vary greatly, depending on the manufacturer and/or the quality of the screwdriver.
Generally speaking, a straight-blade screwdriver makes an elongated hole (which is why most people use a Phillips to poke holes in drywall, to insert an anchor etc.). Only a specialty screwdriver, or one manufactured to very high quality standards, would make anything approximating a round hole.
Thank you for responding to my question. I don’t doubt that they could find several thousand screwdrivers and other items in Lancaster County that would fit very nicely into the hole. There will be much more on this coming later.
No one needs a wackjob who obsesses about 'beingreal' and incest attending a real trial. What would you report? That you saw beingreal in the jury? Or in the front row? Or behind the bench? Or that someone in the courtroom was getting it on with their dad?
Reese knows a joke when he sees one.
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