IOW, both your theory and mine invariably lead to the conclusion that Puckett did not receive a fair trial. Right?

I don’t see how anyone could put odds on whether the true killer is in the database.

Seeing as your last two comments consist of nothing more than cheap shots at me, I presume you’re now conceding my substantive points, particularly the one about the odds of the real killer ending up in the database being no better than 50-50? Cuz if you had any real counter-arguments to that, you’d likely have offered them up, dontcha think?

Yeah . . . like saying positively that Baker stabbed Sylvester in the heart.

Ya mighta missed it because I only bolded it and didn’t also blockquote it, italicize it, and put it in all caps, but this, my friend, is your own words, which I am going to keep repeating back to you because you’re pretending like you didn’t say it:

“Especially if theyr’e planning on stabbing their victim in the heart, as Baker did to Sylvester . . .”

Seems like stronger language than “most likely” . . . dontcha think?

That said, I do think it’s a damned near certainty that if either Baker or Puckett killed Sylvester, the other did not. Helen Nigodoff didn’t encounter two bearded men and then hear one (or both) of them yell “Go away! We’re having a menage à trois!” Therefore, unless you or anyone else conclusively show that Baker did not kill Sylvester, I don’t how on earth anyuone is supposed to conclusively show that Puckett did.

Further, even if one were to rule out the possibility that Baker is the killer (and I stress this is purely hypothetical, as you have yet to provide a lick of evidence that anyone should), that still doesn’t mean we can be all that confident that the real killer was in the database. That Baker himself wasn’t, despite having been convicted of a brutal forcible rape within blocks of Sylvester’s apartment and within weeks of her murder, begs the question of how many other sex predators were lurking about in 1972, who also didn’t make it into the database in question. Suppose that the real killer was neither Puckett nor Baker, but someone else who was convicted of raping and murdering another woman in 1973, sentenced to life without parole, and has been rotting in prison ever since. Would he have made it into the database? I suspect the answer is “maybe,” but well shy of an unequivocal “yes.”

So according to you, we know Puckett didn’t do kill Sylvester, because if we assume Baker did it instead, then he’s the only one who ever actually stabbed anyone in the heart. So we resolve the question of Puckett’s guilt by assuming Baker’s guilt, and then pointing out that Baker certainly seems more guilty if we assume him to be the guilty party.

Mmmm, that’s good logic!

You are not covering yourself in glory here, Xrlq.

They couldn’t test for DNA back then, but they could test for blood type. Diana Sylvester had Type O blood. So did whoever’s blood was on the ticket. What are the odds that two randomly selected blood samples from unrelated individuals would have matched randomly? About 19%, assuming Wikipedia’s ABO distribution chart is right, and that the the test employed by police could not distinguish O+ from O-. Otherwise, it’s more like 14% (if they were both O+) or less than 0.5% if they were both O-. Hardly a smoking gun, but it’s longer odds than this phony DNA stuff, which stood a 1 in 3 chance.

OK, maybe that’s not quite the right way to look at it. If we treat Sylvester’s blood type as a given, which we probably should, and further assume that cops employed a crude test on the blood that could only identify the blood’s general type and not its RH factor, there is now a 44% (37.4% + 6.6%) chance that the sample found on Baker’s parking ticket would match randomly. If the test did identify RH factor, and it was the expected positive, the odds of a random match were 37.4% Conclusive proof? No. Evidence almost as strong as the hocus-pocus DNA search? Certainly. And stronger still when you consider that the DNA database is culled from across the state, and landed on someone who, unlike Baker, could not even be placed in the neighborhood and wasn’t known to have been terrorizing women in the area around that time (though he would three times later, after an unexplained five-year hiatus).

Your evidence that Robert Baker used a knife?

Your evidence that Baker stabbed Sylvester in the heart?

I’ll be waiting right here.

Puckett had kidnapped his victims by holding a knife or ice pick to their necks, leaving scratches similar to those found on Sylvester’s neck — what Merin called “his signature.”

You sorta forgot to mention that.

You’re right, I did forget to mention that John Puckett and Robert Baker (the only suspect in Sylvester’s murder at the time, and from where I sit, her most likely real killer) both used knives. Whopee. Hardly any criminals ever use those things, let alone ever let them get anywhere near their victims’ necks. Especially if theyr’e planning on stabbing their victim in the heart, as Baker did to Sylvester but Puckett never even threatened to do to his subsequent victims Baker’s. Not terribly convincing evidence to me, but I guess that according to San Francisco’s answer to Mike Nifong, the fact that both assailants used knives and caused some scratches to the neck is a “signature.” O-kay.

BTW, before you predictably connipt over the fact that I just compared David Merin to Mike Nifong, re-read my prior comment about his closing statement. If you can offer a single, plausible explanation of how Merin could possibly have delivered “what are the odds” line (regarding a match to a “serial” rapist) in good faith, let’s hear it. If I don’t hear one in the next week or so, I will seriously consider filing a formal complaint against him for deliberately misleading the jury on this point. I’m not kidding; it sounds to me like he committed serious prosecutorial misconduct irrespective of Puckett’s guilt (or lack thereof).

Because every rapist tells victims or passers by that they are “making love.”

The two are not remotely comparable. Most rapists probably don’t tell their victims that they are “making love,” but judging by Puckett’s subsequent apology to one and job offer to another, it appeared that he did because in his sick fantasy world, that is exactly what was happening. There is no evidence that Baker (or, in your fantasy world, Puckett) said any such thing to Sylvester. The phrase only came up at all because the housekeeper had confronted him in the act and he had to say something to get her to go away. What do you think any other rapist/murderer would have told her under the circumstances? “Go away, I’m busy raping and killing someone?!”

There are only two defense to rape: “I didn’t do it” and “we made love.” When caught in the act, “I didn’t do it” is not available as a defense. Ergo, Baker blurted out the only semi-plausible defense he had, and the Nifong of Frisco calls it an M.O. Lame.

And manages to gain entry without breaking in.

You’re right that some rapists leave evidence of forced entry while others do not, but since when is mere lack of evidence of forced entry considered significant evidence of an M.O.?! Posing as a cop three times to commandeer three vehicles before raping one’s victims? Now that’s what I call an M.O. Varying from that a bit by attacking the first victim in her apartment instead? Less likely to be an M.O., but still plausible if other evidence of the cop routine could be corroborated, e.g., a fake police badge had been found at the scene, or the housekeeper had testified that rather instead of yelling “Go away, we’re making love!” as should be expected of any rapist, Baker/Puckett had instead blurted out something more unusual like “Go away, I’m making an arrest!”

Of course, if any such evidence had existed, the case probably wouldn’t have stayed cold for three decades. Certainly not if Puckett was the perp, as his investigation for the 1977 rapes would have likely led the cops to re-open the 1972 case back then.

And deposits sperm with DNA found only once in every 1.1 million people in the population.

I realize that this statement was intended to be sarcastic, but in fact, aside from the detail that not every rapist ejaculates, it’s literally true. If any rapist deposits sperm at the scene of the crime, and the evidence is preserved in a condition to allow the 5.5 DNA indicators to be compared, that DNA will partially match to 1 in every 1.1 million people in the population, and will therefore run a 1 in 3 chance of randomly matching to someone in the database who has no connection to the crime. One more piece of prosecutorial “evidence” that is in fact nothing more than a tautology.

And turns out to be the only hit in a database full of rapists and murderers and other criminals from the same state.

So what? You didn’t say when they started collecting samples for that database. DNA testing wasn’t available in 1972, the last time Baker was charged with a crime, and he died six years later (when AFAIK the database as we knew it still did not exist), so it should come as little surprise that Baker never made it into the database. Given that Baker is the only known individual with any real evidence connecting him to the crime, and the only one anyone thought of as a potential suspect back then, I’d say the odds are at least 50-50, if not higher still, that Diana Sylvester’s killer is not in the database, and that any resulting match must necessarily be false. I presume you disagree vehemently with that conclusion, but have yet to hear a credible reason why I should.

Yeah, it ALLLLL comes down to a rapist saying his rape was making love, while we all know every other rapist in the world would have had the decency to honestly describe his rape as a “rape.” That’s SUCH an honest and full description of his MO and of the evidence against him!!

Full, no, honest, yes. It was meant to be an example of a generally flimsy theory, not a grand fisking of every single phony aspect of it, of which there were quite a few. It would be one thing if I had sifted through a mountain of credible theories and hand-picked the one solitary theory that wasn’t credible. I did not do that. Nearly all of the “evidence” you cited is every bit as flimsy in its own right, and one piece (the bit about leaving DNA matching 1 in 1.1 million figure of the population) is no evidence at all. This case stinks all around. As with Louis Farrakhan’s habit of making inflammatory statements and claiming to have been quoted “out of context,” it doesn’t look better when you put the original context back in. All it does is make for a longer, more confusing post.

You sorta forgot to mention that.

I can see Radley Balko leaving out that part and the ruse/no forced entry part and saying “evidence of his priors came in anyway under a rather strained theory of showing an M.O. (he and the killer had both falsely described rapes they committed as “making love,” while we all know every other rapist in the world would have had the decency to honestly describe his rape as a “rape”).”

Because every rapist tells victims or passers by that they are “making love.” And manages to gain entry without breaking in. And leaves scratches on their victim’s neck. And deposits sperm with DNA found only once in every 1.1 million people in the population. And turns out to be the only hit in a database full of rapists and murderers and other criminals from the same state.

Yeah, it ALLLLL comes down to a rapist saying his rape was making love, while we all know every other rapist in the world would have had the decency to honestly describe his rape as a “rape.” That’s SUCH an honest and full description of his MO and of the evidence against him!!