DNA tests didn't implicate Brice Rhodes in boys' murders, analyst says

The defense scored points Friday with prosecution witnesses as the commonwealth rested its case in the triple murder trial of Brice Rhodes.

Steven Barrett, an analyst in the Kentucky State Police Central Lab, testified that only two of 18 items taken from the apartment in which brothers Larry Ordway and Maurice Gordon were killed - and from a Mazda sedan from which their bodies were dumped - had Rhodes’ DNA on them. Those were the steering wheel and gear shifter of the car.

Barrett said that was not surprising given it was Rhodes’ car.

He also testified that footprints and tire tracks found at the scene did not match with Rhodes or his vehicle.

In the longest testimony of the day, Detective Aaron Tinelli, who was lead detective in the 2016 murders, recalled how the two boys – “children,” he called them – went unidentified for several days until a vice principal at their school recognized police sketches of them aired by local TV stations.

Tinelli recalled how their bodies were burned so badly they could not be fingerprinted.

Tinelli was forced to acknowledge on cross examination by the defense that prosecution witness Anjuan Carter did not implicate Rhodes in the murders until after Tinelli told Carter – falsely – that Rhodes had dropped him as committing the crime. Tinelli said police lying to suspects is a common “investigative technique” to get them to talk.

Tinelli spent most of his time on the stand trying to account for the missing back seat of Rhodes’ Mazda sedan, which police say the defendants removed to hide evidence.

Tinelli was forced to admit detectives never found the seat, even though he testified under oath before a grand jury and at a preliminary hearing that it had been located. He said at the time he believed it had been found burned in a dumpster.

If convicted, Rhodes faces a maximum sentence of life without parole. The prosecution did not call him to testify, although jurors Friday watched a short video of him telling detectives he knew the victims and had dated their mother but didn’t know where they could be found. In fact, the commonwealth alleges, he had already killed them and dumped their bodies behind an abandoned house.

More: Brice Rhodes called for vote on whether brothers should live or die, witnesses say

Rhodes is also charged with murdering a third victim, Christopher Jones, to collect a bounty. Prosecutor Elizabeth Jones Brown told the jury that was a case of mistaken identity and Rhodes killed the wrong man.

She has told the jury that Rhodes had Ordway and Gordon stabbed and beaten to death because they were telling people about Jones’ murder.

Anjuan Carter and Jacorey Taylor pleaded guilty to helping Rhodes kill the brothers; they received lesser sentences in exchange for their testimomy against him. In an opening statement, Rhodes’ co-counsel, Wesley Boyarski, said Carter was the killer.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Brice Rhodes DNA, footprints not found at murder scene, analyst says