OTTUMWA — Prosecutors worked Wednesday to build their case that Kelsie Thomas was responsible for the 2018 death of her daughter, Cloe Chandler.
A jury of seven men and seven women is hearing the case at the Wapello County Courthouse. Thursday began with an expert in DNA from the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation. That testimony focused on the absence of DNA from other people on Cloe and most areas of her clothing.
While the defense is not required to present an alternate theory of events to jurors — the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the case — the testimony was designed to undermine potential claims an unidentified suspect could be involved in Cloe’s death. That was particularly true when the prosecution spent several minutes talking about DNA samples taken from under the girl’s fingernails.
If a person is in a struggle and fights back, there is the potential for scratches to deposit skin cells under the fingernails. Absence of such cells suggests there was no such struggle.
Jurors also got a look at where Cloe was found through a video investigators took the day after her death. Investigator Michael Sieren of the Ottumwa Police Department told the court he and other officers returned to Thomas’ home to both examine the scene and review events with her.
Sieren said such reviews are standard in a death investigation and do not necessarily indicate suspicions. But in this case police had been contacted by someone with concerns about Cloe’s death.
Police returned to Thomas’ account of how she found her daughter several times during the video played for jurors. Thomas said she found Cloe hanging in a closet in her bedroom.
“I picked her up and I moved her over here and laid her on her bed,” Thomas said.
Police came back time and again to the exact sequence of events, how Thomas described the position of her daughter and her actions. “I grabbed her,” was Thomas’ response each time she was asked how she picked up her daughter’s body.
The state medical examiner’s office declared the case a homicide in July 2018, finding Cloe died by strangulation. The defense fought to exclude testimony from Dr. Michele Catellier about the cause of Cloe’s death prior to the trial.
They were partially successful in the bid. Judge Lucy Gamon ruled just before the trial began that Catellier could testify that Cloe’s death was not accidental, but could not tell jurors it was a homicide.
Thomas faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder.
Source: Ottumwa Courier
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