Chris's Crime Forum

Susannah Chase Murder Trial Opening

More than a decade after University of Colorado student Susannah Chase was raped and killed, a man linked to her death through DNA is facing trial.
Diego Olmos Alcalde's trial begins Monday. He was charged with her death last year, after a national DNA database linked him to the crime.

The 23-year-old student from Stamford, Conn., was found severely beaten in an alley a block from her Boulder home Dec. 21, 1997. A baseball bat was found nearby.

Police didn't make an arrest in the Chase killing until last year, when a DNA sample taken from Alcalde while he was in a Wyoming prison led authorities to charge him.

Authorities in Wyoming, where Alcalde had served time in prison for a 2000 kidnapping conviction, had submitted a sample of his DNA to a national database. Authorities say the DNA matched a sample taken from the Chase case.

Alcalde faces charges of murder, rape and kidnapping charges. The trial is expected to last about four weeks.

Chase's mother, Julie Chase, came from her Connecticut home for the trial.

"I'm convinced this is who it is," Julie Chase said of Alcalde. "We're looking forward to having this over and behind us quickly."

She said she has "complete confidence" that prosecutors will prove to a jury that the 39-year-old Chilean native beat her daughter with a baseball bat, raped her and dumped her in an alley to die.

But the defendant's mother, Leticia Olmos Snyder of Aurora, a suburb of Denver, says her son has been wrongly accused by a police force desperate to close a cold case.

"I know he didn't do it," she said. "The police don't know what they're doing."

The trial could conclude one of Boulder's most notorious unsolved crimes.

Susannah Chase was walking home alone from a pizza parlor when she was attacked. Police say she was savagely beaten with a baseball bat, dying the next day in a hospital after 24 hours on life support. The same day she died, Chase was supposed to fly home to Connecticut for Christmas.

Police interviewed hundreds of people, including Chase's boyfriend. They took DNA samples from at least 50 men, hoping to match an unknown DNA profile recovered from Chase's body. But no matches were made and leads in the case eventually fizzled out.

A suspect wasn't identified for another 10 years, when a DNA collection in 2007 identified a possible culprit who'd served time in Wyoming.

Alcalde's DNA was taken while serving time for an attempted kidnapping of a woman in a Wyoming parking lot in 2000. Alcalde finished his Wyoming sentence but was arrested in Colorado in early 2008 and charged with Chase's killing.

Julie Chase said she wasn't sure her daughter's killing would ever be solved.

"I did not think we would ever see this day," she told the Daily Camera newspaper.



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Jury selection underway in Susannah Chase murder case
BOULDER, Colo. — Jury selection got underway Monday morning in the trial of Diego Olmos Alcalde, the man accused of beating to death 23-year-old Susannah Chase in Boulder nearly a dozen years ago.

Lawyers in the case are meeting behind closed doors for one-on-one interviews with prospective jurors and are expected to continue doing so throughout the day.

Jury Commissioner Pat Wittreich said the court began with a jury pool of 258 people and that lawyers would be questioning potential jurors at the rate of 10 an hour. She said individual interviews would likely continue into Tuesday.

Alcalde is on trial for the Dec. 21, 1997 rape and bludgeoning of Chase, a University of Colorado senior who was walking from the Pearl Street Mall to her home at 1802 Spruce St. when she was hit over the head with a baseball bat, raped and dumped in an alley near her home.

She died the next day.

Police were unable to name any suspects in the case for more than a decade. They arrested Alcalde in January 2008 after his DNA -- submitted to a nationwide criminal database -- matched genetic material found in Chase's body.

Alcalde insists he did not kill Chase.

The trial is expected to last about four weeks.

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Opening statements begin in Colo. slaying trial

A baseball bat found near where a University of Colorado senior was brutally beaten is connected to the man charged with the student's 1997 rape and murder, a prosecutor said Friday as opening arguments began in the once-cold case.

Diego Olmos Alcalde faces charges of first degree murder, sexual assault and kidnapping in the death of Susannah Chase of Stamford, Conn., who was attacked in an alley while walking home alone from a pizza parlor.

Authorities linked Olmos Alcalde, a native of Chile, to the crime last year using a DNA sample taken from him after a conviction in Wyoming for kidnapping.

That sample matched semen found in Chase, authorities have said. On Friday, prosecutor Ryan Brackley cited further DNA evidence, telling jurors that Olmos Alcalde's girlfriend in 1997 owned a similar baseball bat used in the slaying.

While investigators didn't find Olmos Alcalde's DNA on the bat, they did discover traces that belonged to the then-girlfriend, Brackley said.

"That connects him to that bat," Brackley told jurors. "It connects the defendant to the beginning of the crime scene."

Defense attorney Steven K. Jacobson said in his opening statement that the DNA profile of another man was also found on the bat handle, evidence he said investigators have ignored. He showed jurors a projection slide that displayed numbers corresponding to the unknown male DNA profile alongside the silhouette of a man.

"That man, the real killer, is there," he said, pointing at the screen. "If this courtroom had windows, he could be walking by right now."

Jacobson also suggested that the semen discovered in Chase didn't come from a rape.

"Miss Chase had consensual sex, a day, if not days prior to when she was senselessly attacked," he said.

Olmos Alcalde, 39, has insisted he didn't know Chase, or was even in Boulder when the 23-year-old was attacked a block from her home on Dec. 21, 1997. She died the next day in a hospital — the same day she was supposed to fly home to Connecticut for Christmas.

Olmos Alcalde was not among the suspects just after the slaying, when police interviewed hundreds of people, including Chase's boyfriend, and took DNA samples from at least 50 men. But no matches were made and leads in the case eventually fizzled out.

DNA was first collected from Olmos Alcalde in 2001 after the Wyoming kidnapping conviction.

After years of appeals, a new trial in that case and a long wait caused by a backlog of thousands of samples in Wyoming's state lab, Olmos Alcalde's DNA profile was uploaded into a national DNA database in January 2008. He was arrested within days.

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Arguments Start In Susannah Chase Murder Trial

Family members of slain University of Colorado student
Susannah Chase wiped away tears as prosecutors outlined their case against Diego Olmos Alclade on Friday morning.

"The investigation focuses on the scene, DNA and eventually leads directly to the defendant," prosecutor Ryan Brackley said in his opening statement as he pointed at Alcalde.

Brackley told the jury key witnesses will include Alcalde's sister. She is expected to testify that not long after the murder her brother told her he seriously hurt a man with a baseball bat, but then said he was joking.

Prosecutors said Alcalde's DNA was much later traced to the bat that was used to kill the 23-year-old Chase.

Also expected to testify is Alcalde's former girlfriend. Prosectors said she will say that she smelled bleach in Alclade's car and he told her he had hit someone with a bat in a bar fight who died.

In 2008 she contacted police after seeing a news story about the Chase murder. Alcalde was then contacted by police a DNA swab was obtained. The defendant was later arrested when Boulder police said the DNA from semen found on the victim matched Alclade's.

Defense attorney Steve Jacobson wasted no time in his opening statement in attacking the DNA evidence. Showing the DNA profile on a screen Jacobson said, "the real killer is not here."

Alcalde faces a life sentence if convicted. The death penalty is not being sought in this case.
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Chase's boyfriend says her death 'destroyed' him

"""awww this is so sad...

BOULDER, Colo. — Susannah Chase's boyfriend told a jury Monday that her 1997 death "destroyed" him and made him never want to set foot in Boulder again.

Andy Heimerl, who now lives in Milwaukee, said he was a suspect in the case for too long and his memories of Boulder are forever tainted by the brutal death of the 23-year-old woman he dated on-and-off for three years while a student at the University of Colorado.

Testifying at the murder trial of Diego Olmos Alcalde, 39, who was arrested more than 10 years after the slaying because his DNA matched semen recovered from Chase's body, Heimerl spent a couple of hours describing his relationship with Chase and the events surrounding her death.

Attacked as she walked home alone after the couple got into a fight while celebrating Heimerl's graduation from CU, Chase was beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead in an alley near her house.

Prosecutor Ryan Brackley asked the witness how he felt being back in town.

"Don't like it," Heimerl replied curtly.

"Why not?" Brackley asked.

"Because of everything that happened," Heimerl said.

"Had you ever planned on coming back to Boulder?" Brackley said.

"Never," Heimerl responded.

In clipped sentences, Heimerl told the jury that Chase essentially became a part of his family, who had come out to Boulder to see him graduate and was staying at Hotel Boulderado.

On the evening of Dec. 20, 1997, Heimerl said, he and his family had dinner with Chase at Antica Roma on the Pearl Street Mall and then went back to the hotel for drinks.

Heimerl, Chase and his twin brother, Nick, partied together on University Hill and at the West End Tavern, he testified. They ended the night at Abo's Pizza, located at the time on 10th and Pearl streets, by which point they were all "pretty drunk."

"We got into a fight," Heimerl said of himself and Chase, although he couldn't recall why.

He said Chase left Abo's by herself at about 1:40 a.m. Dec. 21, and headed for her 1802 Spruce St. house. He said he left for the Boulderado with his brother soon after.

Heimerl told the jury he called Chase several times and left her messages before finally going to her house that afternoon, where he was met by police and put into the back of a squad car. He testified that he and his brother were interrogated and asked to give their clothes to investigators, along with cheek swabs for DNA testing.

Police ruled out both brothers as suspects shortly afterward.

Alcalde's lawyer, Steven Jacobson, questioned Heimerl as to how close an eye he kept on Chase as they partied in the days leading up to the attack. Jacobson told the jury during opening statements that Chase wasn't raped but had consensual sex with someone other than her boyfriend shortly before her death.

"Ms. Chase had a life of her own. Correct?" Jacobson asked.

"Correct," replied Heimerl.

Jacobson asked the witness how much he and his girlfriend had been drinking and how well he remembered the events of that night.

"Was there any discussion that evening about her seeing other men?" Jacobson asked at one point, before moving to another line of questioning when the prosecution objected.

Chase's older brother, Doug Chase, gave the day's most emotional testimony when he told the jury about the family's wrenching decision to take his sister off life support the day after she was attacked.

The commercial real estate developer from New Jersey said he booked a quick flight from the East Coast after getting a frantic early-morning call from his mother about his sister.

He testified that personnel at Boulder Community Hospital told the family that his sister's prognosis wasn't good and that there was "no likelihood of her functioning as a regular human being again."

On Dec. 22, 1997, Doug Chase said they decided to let her go.

"We went to her room, got around her bed and said a prayer," he said, choking up. "And then we took her off life support."

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Update: 12:16 p.m.

Prosecutors called Doug Jones, the bar manager at the West End Tavern the night Susannah Chase, her boyfriend Andy Heimerl and Heimerl's brother, Nick, came in for drinks.

He said they were at the Boulder eatery shortly after midnight on Dec. 21, 1997.

"They were memorable -- they were certainly having a good time," Jones said.

He said Chase was "noticeably intoxicated" but not slurring her words or stumbling. He said he never considered cutting her off.

Nick Heimerl, however, was drunk enough that he did cut him off, Jones testified.

Jones described the trio as having a good time and Chase as being "sweet."

Graham Shannon Mulready said the Heimerls and Chase came into Abo's Pizza, then located at 10th and Pearl streets, around 1:20 a.m.

Mulready, an employee at Abo's, told the jury they ordered beer and pizza and retreated to the pool room in back.

He said they didn't appear drunk initially.

"She seemed happy to me," Mulready said of Chase.

But he said that changed when the three customers were in the pool room. He said they appeared to be arguing and Chase came out of the back and went straight to the bathroom in a state of visible distress.

"She seemed to be crying," Mulready said.

He said while Chase was in the bathroom, he noticed the Heimerl brothers talking about leaving Abo's until one of them said "But she's our ride."

Then one of the Heimerl brothers fell drunkenly into a booth and nearly tipped over his beer, Mulready said.

Mulready testified that he became concerned about the amount of time that Chase was in the bathroom, which he estimated was about 10 minutes. When she finally emerged, he said, she still seemed upset.

One of Chase's roommates testified earlier in the morning. She told the jury that she saw Chase a few times in the final days of her life and that she was "in good spirits."

Roseanna Beram-Babbage said she flew back east for the holidays on Dec. 20, 1997 and had to turn around and fly right back to Boulder when she received word that her roommate had been attacked and might not survive.

She said after seeing Chase at the hospital she went back to her home at 1802 Spruce St. and listened to voice mail messages on the house phone. Beram-Babbage said there was a padlock on the front door, placed there by police, but that she and a friend accessed the house from the back.

Beram-Babbage testified that she heard three or four messages from Chase's boyfriend, Andy Heimerl. Heimerl, she said, was wondering where Chase was and was asking her to call him.

Defense attorney Steven Jacobson asked the witness if she erased the messages Heimerl had left. She said she had. He asked her why she had entered a home that was clearly locked down by police. She said she didn't really think about it at the time.

Jacobson asked Beram-Babbage whether Chase was taking Lorazepam, otherwise known as Valium, recreationally. She said she didn't know. Jacobson, referring to a transcript, said she had told police years earlier that she wouldn't be surprised if Chase had taken Lorazepam for fun.

The morning ended with Boulder police officer Karl Veitch taking the stand. He pointed out blood stains in dozens of photographs he took of the crime scene. The trial will resume this afternoon.

Update: 9:18 a.m.

Neighbor hears someone crying out: 'Mommy, Mommy'

Courtney Pineau, a woman who lived next to the alley where Susannah Chase was found, took the stand Tuesday morning.

She said her dog was unusually alert in the early morning hours of Dec. 21, 1997 and was looking out the window with interest.

At some point, Pineau said she heard someone calling out in the night -- "Mommy, Mommy."

"I was thinking why does that person keep calling for her mother?" Pineau said.

But she said because of the constant noise and activity of that alley, she didn't think much of it.

Prosecutor Amy Okubo asked Pineau if she heard a car door slam around 2:30 that morning. Pineau said yes.

Pineau testified that police knocked on her door and woke her up sometime after 3 a.m. to ask her questions.

Roseanna Beram-Babbage, one of Chase's roommates at 1802 Spruce St., is now on the stand.

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Defense in Chase murder case hints at consensual sex

BOULDER, Colo. -- The defense for the man accused in the slaying of Susannah Chase more than 10 years ago hinted Thursday at consensual sex between the Greenwich High School graduate and the defendant.

A legal argument over the condition of the sperm found in Chase's body -- which goes to the heart of the defense's case -- erupted in court Thursday morning.

The implication of the dispute, according to the defense, is that Diego Olmos Alcalde, 39, had consensual sex with Chase days or weeks before she was attacked on Dec. 21, 1997, and that the evidence supporting that possibility should be made known to the jury.

They argue that a lab technician at Boulder Community Hospital analyzing slides from Chase's sex assault exam found non-motile sperm -- sperm that does not swim robustly or at all. They said sperm remains motile for only a limited amount of time, indicating the possibility that Chase had sex well before the attack.

Prosecutors say that sperm found in Chase matched DNA submitted by Alcalde while he was serving a prison sentence for an unrelated crime.

The defense didn't outright state that their client had had sex with Chase, but their argument before the judge strongly indicated that the age of the sperm found in the 23-year-old University of Colorado student was critical to their case.

Prosecutors say the information about the state or freshness of the sperm found in Chase comes from a Boulder police detective, who heard it from the lab tech.

And because records of who that lab tech was have long been destroyed, the prosecution contends that any statement about the motility of the recovered sperm would be hearsay and thus inadmissible in court. There is no written record of the conversation between the detective and the lab tech either, lawyers said in court.

Boulder District Judge James Klein agreed with prosecutors and said he won't allow any questions regarding the lab technician's statement to police into the trial.

"We don't know who that is and I'm supposed to let that in?" Klein said to the defense attorneys, as the dispute heated up.

Olmos Alcalde lawyer Mary Claire Mulligan accused the prosecution of trying to "hide" evidence from the jury.

Lynn Kimball, a nurse who works as an expert in sexual assault exams, testified Thursday that she didn't see any obvious signs of sexual trauma when she examined Susannah Chase the morning of Dec. 21, 1997.

But she said the conditions for the exam weren't ideal and she had to work under abnormal time pressures and without certain pieces of equipment she normally used. She said the fact that there was no trauma evident to the naked eye didn't mean Chase hadn't been sexually assaulted.

"Not finding genital trauma does not in any way rule out sexual assault," Kimball said.

Earlier Thursday, a sex assault examination expert told the jury that sexual assault does not always cause female genital injury.

Anissa Jones, a registered nurse, said a woman's body may respond sexually to penile penetration even if the sex is not consensual.

Jones said this would be even more likely if the woman is incapacitated and cannot resist the perpetrator.

As a result, physical injury to the female genitals may not manifest as a result of non-consensual sex.

Jones did not examine Chase, but was called to the stand by the prosecution as an expert witness.

Her testimony delved into detailed discussion about sexual intercourse and female genitalia.

Mulligan, Olmos Alcalde's lawyer, cited a study in which 70 percent of sexual assault victims who had sustained non-genital injuries also had genital injuries.

The subject of sexual assault is key in the Chase case because prosecutors say Chase was raped after she was attacked while the defense insists she wasn't raped.

The nurse who examined Chase as she was brought into Boulder Community Hospital's emergency room the morning of Dec. 21, 1997, said she began to suspect that Chase may have been sexually assaulted once her pants were removed.

Patricia Landon told the jury Chase's underpants were askew, with one side yanked up high on her hip and the other rolled and bunched up in her crotch. She said Chase's jeans had been pulled all the way up and snapped shut.

Landon testified that it was hard to determine Chase's gender when she was first rolled into the hospital because she had so much blood around her face. She described Chase's hair as frozen in blood and vomit.

She was also cold to the touch, Landon said.

Landon was then cross-examined by Mulligan, Olmos Alcalde's lawyer, who asked her if she had described the state of Chase's underpants in a different way years ago than she had in court this morning.

Mulligan said Landon didn't describe the underpants as being pulled up and askew at the time Chase was brought into the hospital.

Landon said a police report describing her characterization of what the underpants looked like was a summation of what she said, not her own report. She said she didn't see a distinction in the two descriptions.

Mulligan also questioned Landon's motive in the case, citing a conversation the nurse had with prosecutors a month ago where she said she was "very invested" in the case and wanted to testify.

Landon acknowledged the conversation but said she never told the district attorney's office that she wanted to see someone punished for Chase's death.

Also testifying Thursday were Boulder Police Detective David Spraggs, Denver Police Officer Rick Guzman and Boulder Police Cmdr. Curtis Johnson.

The trial will resume Friday morning.
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Defense hammers CBI agent on DNA
BOULDER, Colo. — The defense in the Susannah Chase murder case chided a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Friday for failing to submit a sample of unknown male DNA found on the suspected murder weapon to a nationwide criminal database.

The male DNA was found, along with a more prominent female genetic profile, on the handle of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat police believe was used to beat Chase, CBI biological science unit agent Ron Arndt testified.

He told the jury he ruled out the defendant, Diego Olmos Alcalde, as the source of the male DNA on the bat.

That prompted Steven Jacobson, Alcalde’s attorney, to ask Arndt during cross-examination why he didn’t do anything more with the mystery profile — like tell Boulder police about it or put it in his DNA analysis report from 2002.

“Nothing happened about anyone analyzing that male on the bat and putting him in the database?” Jacobson queried, pointing out to the jury that it was only submitted to the database after he visited the CBI earlier this year to inquire about it.

“It could have happened in 2005, but it did not,” Arndt said, referring to the agency’s decision to not further process the sample.

Chase, 23, was badly beaten at the corner of 18th and Spruce streets as she neared her Boulder home on foot, police say. They say she was dragged to a car, raped and dumped in an alley about a block away. She died the next day.

Alcalde, 39, was arrested in January 2008 after investigators said they matched his DNA, which had been submitted to the national criminal database, to genetic material recovered from Chase’s body.

But through his questioning of Arndt, Jacobson attempted to drive home the point that investigators failed to follow every lead in trying to find the killer.

The lawyer asked Arndt if solid DNA profiles are retrievable from cigarette butts, of which there were many throughout the Chase crime scene. Many of the butts were never collected by police.

Arndt said 90 percent of the time, DNA profiles can be successfully recovered from smoked cigarettes.

Retired fingerprint expert Vaughn Ballard, who worked for the CBI and Denver police in his career, also took the stand Friday and told the jury that he found no usable fingerprints on the baseball bat.

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Jury hears Chase murder suspect deny he was in Boulder
2008 videotaped interview of Alcalde played in court

BOULDER, Colo. — The jury in Diego Olmos Alcalde’s trial heard from the defendant for the first — and possibly only — time Monday, as his trial on charges of raping and murdering Susannah Chase entered its third week.

Prosecutors played a videotaped interview between Alcalde and a couple of Boulder police detectives that was recorded two days after the 39-year-old Chilean native was arrested in Aurora on Jan. 26, 2008.

If Alcalde chooses not to testify on his own behalf, it may the only time jurors hear his voice. Prosecutors plan to rest their case Wednesday.

On the videotape, recorded at Boulder police headquarters, detectives Chuck Heidel and Jane Harmer inform the defendant that he doesn’t have to speak without first consulting a lawyer.

Alcalde, seen with a tattoo on his right arm and wearing a gray T-shirt and glasses, agrees to talk.

“I don’t have nothing to hide,” he says in accented English, as a meal from McDonald’s lies spread out in front of him.

Heidel asks him if he is willing to talk about the Chase homicide.

“I have no idea about that,” says Alcalde, looking visibly agitated at times.

The detective shows him a picture of Chase and asks him if he recognizes her.

“No,” Alcalde says, noting the last time he had been to Boulder was when he was a teenager.

He tells the detectives he wouldn’t have come to Boulder in 1997 because at the time he had just undergone knee surgery.

Heidel then confronts Alcalde with the news that investigators had found his sperm inside Chase.

“How would it be that?” Alcalde asks.

“What it means is that you sexually assaulted this girl,” the detective replies.

“I did? You’re telling me that?” Alcalde says, as he becomes increasingly frustrated. “Why you guys trying to put this on me? You guys are trying to put stuff on me.”

Alcalde’s attorneys made it increasingly clear Monday that they believe their client had consensual sex with Chase in the days before she was attacked and left to die in a Boulder alley on Dec. 21, 1997, but that he had nothing to do with her death.

While Alcalde can be seen on tape denying that he was in Boulder in the days leading up to Chase’s death, his lawyers haven’t said if the alleged tryst between Chase and Alcalde took place in Boulder or somewhere else.

Steven Jacobson, one of Alcalde’s two attorneys, pushed the consensual-sex theory Monday while cross-examining Colorado Bureau of Investigation lab agent Yvonne Woods.

The lawyer noted that none of Alcalde’s DNA was found under Chase’s fingernails.

“If someone had consensual sex and then showered, whatever DNA they had on them could be gone, right?” he asked.

“That’s possible,” Woods replied.

The defense didn’t challenge findings from Woods, who — using colored, oversized placards placed side by side — showed the jury how Alcalde’s DNA matched semen found in Chase.

The agent testified that she compared 13 locations along a strand of Alcalde’s DNA to the sperm found.

“There were no differences between those two profiles,” Woods said, pointing at rows of identical numbers. “They match at every location.”

She said the chance of someone other than Alcalde being the source of the sperm — aside from an identical twin — was 1 in 8.2 quadrillion. A quadrillion is equal to 10 to the 15th power.

Woods also told the jury that she didn’t believe that the seminal fluid found inside Chase had been there for more than 48 hours.

Jacobson put his energies into challenging the forensic analysis the CBI did on the baseball bat in the case, which was found at the southwest corner of Spruce and 18th streets with Chase’s blood on it.

The defense contends that a sample of unknown male DNA on the bat handle could be the killer’s but that the CBI never entered it into a criminal database to see if it matches someone. CBI found no trace of Alcalde’s DNA on the bat.

Jacobson criticized Woods for not entering the male DNA profile on the bat into a criminal database until earlier this year, when he paid the agency a visit to ask about it.

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Defense claims sloppy investigation in Colo. death

BOULDER, Colo.—Prosecutors are countering defense allegations of sloppy police work in the 1997 slaying of a University of Colorado student from Connecticut.
Diego Olmos Alcalde (dee-A'-go OLE'-mos ahl-CAHL-dey) is charged with first degree murder, sexual assault and kidnapping in the death of 23-year-old Susannah Chase of Stamford.

On Tuesday, prosecutors asked Boulder police detective Chuck Heidel (HY'-dahl) whether issues raised by the defense change Alcalde's connection to the baseball bat used to kill Chase.

Heidel said they do not.

Defense attorney Mary Claire Mulligan criticized police for not testing cigarette butts found at the scene and for initially failing to identify alternate suspects through DNA found on the bat.

She also said police failed to secure the scene where police found the bat or Chase's apartment.
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