Hair Strand Is Focus of Hearing : Man Accused of Slaying Student, Baby Sitter, Child

A single strand of hair found in a Toyota pickup truck registered to murder suspect David Allen Lucas could have belonged to slain University of San Diego student Anne Catherine Swanke, a sheriff’s criminologist testified Friday.

Charles Harold Merritt Jr. said in a pretrial hearing for Lucas that he also found a bloodstain on the sheepskin seat cover near the center console on the passenger’s side of Lucas’ truck.

Lucas, 29, a self-employed carpet cleaner from Spring Valley, is charged with three counts of murder in the Nov. 20 slaying of Swanke, abducted after her car broke down in La Mesa, and the Oct. 23 killings of Lakeside baby sitter Rhonda Cheryl Strang, 24, and 3-year-old Amber Fisher.

He also is accused of the rape and attempted murder of Jody Santiago, 30, of Seattle, who was abducted June 9 in El Cajon. Santiago’s throat was slashed, but she survived.

During the first day of testimony open to the media, Merritt told Municipal Judge Wayne L. Peterson that “hair from two people can be alike” and, therefore, hair samples are better exclusionary evidence than proof.

Merritt said he determined that a 12-inch multicolored hair found in the truck did not belong to Lucas or to his wife, Shannon.

“My opinion was that the hair was similar and had similar characteristics to the head hair strands of Mrs. Swanke. But I could not make the conclusion that there was a common origin,” Merritt said.

Nonetheless, he added, “in the unknown hair and Swanke’s, the colors varied from light to dark, there was an absence of width and (similar) length . . . It was consistent with Swanke’s.”

Defense attorney G. Anthony Gilham, who did not have time to cross-examine Merritt, said afterward that he was not worried about the hair.

“It could have come from a third of the female population. There was another girl living in the house (with Lucas). And they only found one hair. That truck was a mess,” Gilham said.

Prosecuting attorney Daniel Williams called the former sales manager of a car dealership and a Department of Motor Vehicles official with their records to show that Lucas owned a 1984 Toyota pickup at the time of the Swanke slaying and a black 1983 Datsun 280Z at the time of the abduction of Santiago.

Williams said he would call Santiago on Monday and that she would testify that she was abducted in a dark car “like a Datsun 280Z.”

Santiago has picked Lucas’ photograph out of a photo lineup but has not seen him in person since he was accused of the slayings. Gilham asked that his client be removed from the courtroom when Santiago testifies.

Lucas, wearing a charcoal gray pullover shirt and gray pants, kept his eyes on his attorney during most of hearing.

Sheriff’s detective Robert Fullmer described the grizzly scene of the Strang and Fisher slayings. Both were found in the living room of Strang’s home with their throats slashed, and Fullmer testified that Strang showed signs of having been choked or suffocated before she died.

The judge denied a request by the defense attorney to have all of Fullmer’s testimony stricken because Fullmer did not keep his field notes from the scene after he filed his report on the investigation.

Gilham complained that the Sheriff’s Department has delayed in getting him copies of laboratory reports and said the Sheriff’s Department did little to preserve evidence at the scene of the Strang-Fisher slayings.

“If they’ve got fingerprints, where are they? They can’t be ours, or they would have told us,” he said after the day of testimony.