WILKES-BARRE — A state police forensics expert took the stand in Jessica Alinsky’s murder trial Wednesday morning and testified the level of manipulation he saw at the crime scene was “unlike anything I’ve seen before or since.”
Alinsky, 32, a Shenandoah native, is accused of murdering boyfriend Matthew Ryan Gailie, 34, a corrections officer at State Correctional Institution/Frackville. Prosecutors say she shot Gailie in the face then made it look like he killed himself because of financial troubles, leaving a bloody bank statement next to his body.
During the second day of Alinsky’s murder trial Wednesday, Trooper John Corrigan testified he arrived at the couple’s home early on the morning of Sept. 3, 2011, to investigate a report of a possible suicide and found Alinsky outside on a porch with state police crying hysterically.
The scene inside, however, didn’t read like a suicide — blood stains showed Gailie’s body had been moved several times, that a pistol had been placed in his hands and that someone had tried to clean things up, he said.
“Nothing is consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” said Corrigan, who alleged Alinsky waited about 15 minutes after shooting Gailie before calling 911. “Jessica Alinsky deliberately manipulated physical evidence in an attempt to make it appear as if a financially related suicide had taken place.”
As Corrigan leveled those accusations, Alinsky shook her head.
Gailie died of a single gunshot wound to the face, just below his left nostril, but it was clear he had not died where he was found lying on the floor, the trooper said.
Blood had been smeared all over Gailie’s body as well as the 9mm pistol in his left hand — although Gailie was right-handed, he said. The weapon was in the wrong position for Gailie to have fired it, and there was a towel between his hand and the firearm, Corrigan said.
The position of the gun was “nothing even remotely close” to anything he had seen before in a death investigation, he said.
“Because of the amount of blood that was smeared all around, the gun had to have been placed there,” he said.
A torn bank statement from 2008 was also next to the body — with a bloody handprint on the back. The trooper testified that the hand that left the print had been so soaked with blood it could not be compared to Alinsky’s but that she was the likely donor because Gailie had been immediately incapacitated by the shot.
A huge amount of blood had leaked into the nearby couch, showing that Gailie’s body had been there for some time before it was moved, he said.
“It kind of tells me there was a very delayed response if she was trying to render aid to the victim,” Corrigan said.
Blood that had dripped on Gailie’s leg appeared to be “defying gravity” based on the final resting place, making it appear as though Gailie had first fallen on the couch before being rolled to the floor, causing blood to spray onto the floor under the kitchen table, Corrigan said. The body was then moved a second time to his final position, Corrigan said.
After the shooting, someone threw stuffed animals and blankets onto the couch, partially covering the blood stains, and causing a 9mm shell casing to get covered by the folds of a blanket, he said.
When authorities removed the body, they also found a substantial amount of blood on the floor beneath him.
“From one gunshot wound to the head, there’s a lot of blood transference in this area, unlike anything I’ve seen before or since,” Corrigan said.
It appeared someone had tried to clean up the blood on the body, causing the smearing, and police found an extensive amount of blood on the door, floor and bathtub of a first-floor bathroom, he said.
The bloody footprints of a woman walking to the bathtub appeared when police applied a special dye to the bathroom, showing that Alinsky had tried to clean up Gailie or herself after the shooting, he said.
“There was a lot of blood being manipulated and diluted in the bathroom area,” Corrigan said.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Demetrius Fannick sought to back up his contention during opening statements that Gailie, who he alleged had in fact been having financial troubles, had provoked a fight the night of the shooting.
Fannick pulled out a series of photos Corrigan took that the prosecution didn’t show the jury, including a shot of a bank statement police found in Gailie’s car showing his checking account had been overdrawn by $400, giving him until the next month to repay the money.
Fannick also produced pictures showing candles and other items that had been knocked over in the house. A wall in an upstairs bedroom had been smashed in near a light switch, Fannick noted, adding that none of those images depicted blood.
The only other witness to testify Wednesday was Elana Somple, a forensic expert with RJ Lee Group in Monroeville, who said testing showed gunshot residue on the back of Alinsky’s tank top. While both she and Gailie had components of gunshot residue on their hands, neither person tested positive for gunshot residue, she said.
“Whose hands had more components on them?” Assistant District Attorney Daniel Zola asked.
“Looks like the Alinsky samples had 15 particles that we looked at and the Gailie samples had two,” Somple said.
She noted that the absence of gunshot residue doesn’t mean a person didn’t fire a gun — the residue can be removed by handwashing or even casual contact such as putting one’s hands in pockets.
During cross-examination, Fannick noted that out of potentially hundreds of thousands of gunshot residue particles emitted with each bullet fired, analysts failed to find even one on Alinsky’s hands. Somple agreed that gunshot residue on a person’s clothing could simply mean the person was in close contact with someone who fired a gun.
Prosecutors are set to call their next witness at 9 a.m. today.