Quick verdict in ‘01 killing
A jury of eight women and four men took 90 minutes Tuesday afternoon to find a Spokane man guilty of first-degree murder in connection with the killing of a developmentally disabled woman in 2001.
The jury took the case at 3:40 p.m. and returned at 5:10 p.m. with the verdict of guilty against 26-year-old Raymond L. Nelson III. He was charged with slaying 41-year-old Diana Dee Wideman, who was found slashed, bludgeoned and raped in late March 2001 in her apartment at 123 N. Bernard St.
The five-day trial resulted in guilty verdicts on charges of premeditated first-degree murder and felony murder against Nelson, who wasn’t even on investigators’ radar until more than three years after Wideman was killed.
“I never, ever in my entire career have seen … a jury come back that fast,” Spokane police Sgt. Joe Peterson said. “It was brilliant police work by Detective (Minde) Connelly and a devastating prosecution job by (Larry) Steinmetz.”
Now-retired Spokane police detectives Richard Losh and George Benavidez processed the crime scene more than four years ago and found hand-rolled cigarette butts and ashes on top of blood, indicating someone had been inside the apartment after the killing. Losh interviewed 25-year-old Theodore Stewart, who had been living in Wideman’s apartment complex.
According to court records, Stewart admitted going inside Wideman’s apartment and using the dead woman’s tobacco to roll some cigarettes, which he smoked. Crime lab technicians later tested those butts for DNA and found matches to both Wideman and Stewart, according to the records. The semen samples tested negative for Stewart’s DNA.
The case remained unsolved until June 2004, when Washington State Patrol forensic scientist Lisa Turpen checked the semen DNA against the state database of convicted felons. That’s when the sample hit on Nelson, who had been convicted of a felony after the database was checked the previous year.
Once they had a match, Detectives Minde Connelly and Brian Hamond interviewed Nelson at the state prison on McNeil Island on June 14. Those conversations resulted in charges against both Nelson and Stewart, who has yet to go to trial on the same murder charges.
“The defendant admitted that he and Mr. Stewart placed gloves on before entering Ms. Wideman’s apartment in the middle of the night … because they had a purpose,” Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz said.
Steinmetz said Wideman had the mind of a child and needed a social worker to provide her care. She suffered three stab wounds to the head and six blunt-impact blows to the top of her head, and her larynx was crushed and her throat slashed.
Defense attorney Tom Krzyminski argued that Steinmetz and detectives had failed to find any physical evidence – other than the semen – showing that his client had even been in the apartment.
Medical Examiner Sally Aiken testified that the semen found inside Wideman could have been deposited up to 26 hours before her death, Krzyminski said.
“I would submit to you that there is a lot we don’t know,” he told the jury. “Where is the evidence of this forced violent rape? It doesn’t really make sense.”
Steinmetz said investigators had perfectly good evidence that Nelson was with Stewart at the time of the murder.
“What evidence puts these two together? The defendant’s own admission,” Steinmetz said with a raised voice as he pointed at Nelson.
Hamond and Connelly testified that Nelson was jovial during the June 2004 interview until they told him they had DNA evidence linking him to Wideman.
“He told the detectives that they both had gloves on and that Theodore Stewart had a backpack and a club,” Steinmetz said. “At that time, Mr. Nelson knew what was going to happen.”