DNA Links Man to 2 Attacks, Jury Told

Genetic evidence links a Costa Mesa carpet installer to the 1994 rape and bludgeoning murder of a Laguna Hills woman and another rape of a woman who lived in his neighborhood, a prosecutor told an Orange County jury Monday.

But the defense attorney for handyman Eric Wayne Bennett said the evidence is sparse and that he should not be convicted on the basis of probability.

“We’re talking about probabilities,” Deputy Public Defender Bernadette Cemore said as Bennett’s trial got underway Monday. “Probabilities that if you put a bunch of people into a big Bingo shaker, that the next person who popped out would have a similar profile” to the assailant.

Bennett, 25, faces a possible death sentence if convicted on charges of murder, rape and robbery.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood said investigators used DNA testing to link Bennett to both attacks. Kirkwood described the case to jurors as one of “escalating sexual violence,” with strong scientific evidence identifying Bennett.

“You will hear that the odds of a random [DNA] match is much greater than 1 in a million,” she told the jury.

Bennett is accused of raping a neighbor at knifepoint on Sept. 27, 1994, five days after he moved to the same Costa Mesa neighborhood with his wife and two sons, Kirkwood said. He moved there after installing carpet at a home next door to the victim, she said.

The same day of that rape, Bennett installed vinyl flooring for 50-year-old Marie Evans Powell of Laguna Hills, Kirkwood said.

Prosecutors and police allege that Bennett--familiar with the layout--returned to Powell’s condominium in the 22400 block of Caminito Tecate on Oct. 13, and bludgeoned, raped and robbed her.

Powell, who worked as a secretary in Newport Beach, was lying on her bed watching television when she was attacked and killed.

She struggled to fight off the intruder, who slammed her in the head with a glass decanter, placed a wet towel over her face in an attempt to suffocate her, and dropped a television on her head before robbing her, Kirkwood said.

“It’s apparent from the evidence that she desperately wanted to live,” the prosecutor said. “It’s equally apparent from the evidence that he does not want to let her live.”

The defense attorney contended there are holes in the prosecution’s case.

The rape victim gave authorities a description of her assailant that does not match Bennett, his fingerprints were not found at either crime scene, there were no eyewitnesses, and the murder weapon used in the slaying was not found in his possession, Cemore said.

The case will turn, she said, on how convinced jurors are by the science of DNA matching.

Cemore said that Bennett was cooperating fully with investigators before his arrest.

Bennett started working as an installer for a Costa Mesa company in August 1994, Kirkwood said. After the Powell slaying, he did not return to work, and shortly after giving a blood sample to sheriff’s investigators, he went to live with his parents in Fallbrook, Kirkwood said.

Monday, his parents, wife, sister and small niece gathered in court to support Bennett. Family members of the victims sat clustered on the other side of the room.

Bennett’s family has described him as a “mellow” man with no previous criminal record who would never commit such crimes.