Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — DNA and video surveillance evidence strongly suggest a Pittsburgh man killed his neighbors, who were both sisters of an Iowa state lawmaker, a prosecutor said Monday as the double-murder trial began.
But a defense attorney contended the suspect, Allen Wade, 45, is the victim of a “sloppy investigation” and a rush to judgment.
The Wolfe sisters were found dead Feb. 7, 2014, after they didn’t show up for work. Sarah, 38, was a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, and Susan, 44, a teacher’s aide at a private school. Their sister, Mary Wolfe, is a Democratic state representative in Iowa.
Both were shot in the head and Susan was also undressed and badly beaten, said Deputy Allegheny County District Attorney Bill Petulla in his opening statement.
“She reached out to her attacker that night and she got his DNA under her fingernail,” Petulla said.
The DNA evidence in the case will be challenged by public defender Lisa Middleman, who noted the Allegheny County crime lab couldn’t conclusively identify much of it as Wade’s.
Instead, investigators had DNA evidence re-examined by Cybergenetics using a computer program to parse results from samples in which more than one person’s DNA is found. That company concluded DNA under Susan Wolfe’s fingernail was most likely Wade’s while Sarah Wolfe’s DNA was found on a sock investigators contend Wade tossed in a garbage can.
But that conclusion — and many others investigators make — is based on a series of surveillance videos from a neighborhood where a man can be seen using their bank cards at an ATM shortly before 1 a.m. the morning after they died.
The $600 withdrawn using Sarah Wolfe’s card “ultimately is the value of two lives,” Petulla said.
But Middleman contends whoever killed the women wasn’t intent on robbing them since the attacker left behind jewelry, a TV and a laptop computer, among other items.
And the public defender contends most of the surveillance videos don’t clearly show Wade, including one she insists shows a white man. Wade is black.
The victims are white. Middleman suggested that race and the victims’ connection to the lawmaker prompted the district attorney’s office to rush to judgment.
“These are ‘good’ victims, these are people that matter,” Middleman told the jury, which includes four black members, three of them women. “The prosecution was so determined to make the evidence fit Allen Wade that they missed or ignored many pieces of evidence.”
But Petulla suggested there were too many coincidences for the killer not to be Wade, who could face the death penalty if convicted.
The ATM video shows someone dressed in a red hooded sweat shirt and gray sweat pants using the sisters’ cards. The person’s face is covered by a T-shirt, but other video shows a man in similar clothes behind a car repair shop, discarding sweat pants like some later found to contain Wade’s DNA. A business card from a caseworker Sarah Wolfe knew was also found nearby.
Minutes later, other video shows a man who looks like Wade buying cigarettes at a convenience store. His face can be seen and he’s wearing different clothes, except for white shoes, one of which had a dangling strap similar to that worn by the person in the red hooded shirt, which is why police believe both images are Wade.
Finally, the man at the convenience store was seen throwing something into a trash container where police later found a pen from Iowa Prison Industries. The company does business only in Iowa, Petulla said.
The trial is expected to take three weeks.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press