Four CT kidnapping charges from 1980s case cracked open by new DNA technology head to jury
Prosecutors and defense attorneys rested their cases in the trial of Michael Sharpe, a 71-year-old former Connecticut charter school CEO charged with kidnapping four women in the 1980s, cases that went unsolved for decades.
After about five days of hearing testimony and evidence, a jury is expected to start deliberating Wednesday in Hartford Superior Court.
For nearly four decades, four women were left to wonder who the man was that allegedly broke into their homes and allegedly attacked hem in the dark of the night. They wondered if they’d ever know.
But in 2020, new DNA technology made a match to semen their alleged attacker had left on two bedsheets, a towel and a washcloth.
Last month, the women took the stand to face the man accused of attacking them one by one — identified only as Jane Doe 1, 2, 3 and 4 — and recounted the alleged assaults.
State prosecutors also called several forensic analysts, cold case detectives, law enforcement officers and DNA experts to the stand after hearing from the victims, building a case that they say proves, without a doubt, that Sharpe was the man they’ve been looking for since 1984.
Though the statute of limitations on alleged assault passed long ago, investigators allege that Sharpe blindfolded each of the women and threatened them with a gun, which constitutes kidnapping under the definition of Connecticut law.
Sharpe faces eight counts of kidnapping, with prosecutors arguing that because the women felt they could not leave without risking their lives — they were, by law, kidnapped.
On Tuesday, six jurors and two alternate jurors heard closing arguments from state prosecutor Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Robin Krawczyk and one of Sharpe’s defense attorneys, Dana Sanetti.
In her closing argument, Krawczyk walked the jury through the testimony from the victims.
It started on June 3, 1984. A 25-year-old woman told jurors she woke up in her home in Bloomfield to see a man in her bedroom who had come through the sliding glass door. He allegedly told her he’d shot someone, threatened to shoot her and assaulted her. She testified that she waited what she felt like forever, until the sun rose the next morning, to get help.
On June 26, 1984, a 30-year-old woman testified, she also awoke to a strange man in her bedroom. She testified that she was blindfolded, restrained and assaulted. The man, who allegedly came in through the sliding door and jumped on top of her, looked through her valuables and guided her downstairs to get her purse to rob her. She testified that he berated her for only having $4 in cash while her husband was out of town on a work trip.
Less than a week later, a 24-year-old woman in Windsor testified, she awoke to a masked man holding a gun to her head. She’d gone to sleep after watching the Mets game, eating chicken wings and working on her resume. She testified that he entered her apartment through a sliding door. She told jurors he blindfolded and assaulted her then stole her rent money, ate her leftovers and left behind a cash tip for her when he left.
On July 24, 1984, a 24-year-old woman testified, she was in bed with her toddler daughter in Rocky Hill when a masked man pointing a gun at her face woke her up after coming through her sliding door. She alleged that the man blindfolded her and guided her through her home to put her daughter to bed after she begged to bring her daughter to another room. Then he assaulted her, too, she testified. Before he left, she alleged that he kissed her on the mouth and thanked her for being a good sport.
Krawczyk then led the jury through the forensic map of the case. She explained how detectives used the decades-old DNA to first test DNA samples retrieved from two other men and, later, a third man.
Finally, DNA collected from belts in the trash at Sharpe’s Marlborough home made a break in the once-cold case.
Krawczyk also pointed out the similarities in the events. Each told the jury, some through tears, that a man they didn’t know entered their apartment or condominium through their sliding glass door. He allegedly told them that he had just killed someone and needed to hide out with them or needed money to escape. They either saw a gun or felt it against their skin.
All four women described the time after their attack in which he stayed in their homes, rummaging through their belongings, turning on faucets and going through refrigerators.
Krawczyk also told the jury the legal concept of kidnapping, defined by Connecticut law as “restraining someone with the intent to prevent their liberation.”
Victims testified this week that because Sharpe allegedly threatened to kill them, held a gun to some of their heads and blindfolded them so they could not see, they felt like they could not leave, call out for help or call 911 without risking being killed.
Jane Doe 3 told the jury that, during the attack, she was terrified.
“I was scared out of my mind,” she said. She testified she was screaming, and he told her to stop. She said he guided her downstairs and gave her a mug of water to help her “calm down” but threatened to kill her if she saw him through the blindfold.
He allegedly threatened to kill her more than once, she testified. At one point, she said she lied to him and said she had a boyfriend coming over.
“He said he would blow his [expletive] head off,” she testified.
“I had no means of being able to escape. I was afraid he was going to kill me,” she testified. “He had threatened to kill me multiple times.”
“Because he was holding them in their apartments at gunpoint, they weren’t free to leave and they feared for their lives,” Krawczyk told the jury. “They were being held captive by threat of force.”
Prosecutors argued, as they did in cross-examination of multiple forensic witnesses, that the match between Sharpe’s DNA and DNA found at the crime scenes was nothing more than an unproven hypothesis.
Analysts testified that the likelihood that the DNA found was not Sharpe were infinitesimally small, but it couldn’t be definitively proven as absolute fact as his without testing the entire population of the world.
The evidence, experts said, was statistically sound and generally accepted as fact by the scientific community and the courts. After the state finished presenting its evidence on Friday, Sharpe’s defense team moved for an acquittal, citing the “estimate” or “hypothesis” of the DNA match as one of their reasons.
Judge Frank M. D’Addabbo Jr. denied the acquittal, saying that the science behind the DNA was generally accepted as fact in court. During closing arguments, Sanetti told the jury that the DNA evidence simply wasn’t enough to convict her client.
She described inconsistencies in some of the victim’s testimonies, including about where scars may have been located on their attacker’s body.
Before the DNA match was made in 2020, the women had never met each other. Investigators had tried for years to find a link between the victims, as they suspected a single criminal committed the four assaults because of similar descriptions of speech, demeanor and proximity to Interstate 91 and Route 9.
The women, who sat in on some of the trial after their testimonies were finished, were not allowed to listen to each other take the stand.
In his rebuttal, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney John F. Fahey asked the jury to question whether each juror would summarize a television show the exact same way, let alone the details of an attack.
“Imagine the most traumatic event of your life,” he instructed them, reminding them the women’s minds were probably “swirling” the night of their alleged assaults.
Still, he said, the motive of operations in each attack were strikingly similar.
Addressing some differences in the accounts of the attacks, Fahey said it was natural that the women’s memories may be hazy, but their overall claims were consistent.
“And that he had a gun and threatened to use it over and over and over again,” Fahey said. The prosecutor also told the jury that over time, the attacker’s behavior escalated, so each account of his attacks would not be the same.
Fahey also reminded the jury about the validity of the DNA evidence. Unlike testimony from victims or witnesses, he said, the science of DNA “is objective, it is not subjective.”
The DNA evidence “isn’t skewed by memory, time or bias,” but “is purely objective, scientific and accepted,” he told jurors.
“The defense wants the jury to believe that some random other person committed this crime,” Fahey said.
He pointed to testimony from forensic analyst Patricia Loso, who said there was less than a 1 in 7 billion chance that the DNA collected from the crime scenes belonged to different people, but that it likely belonged to one person. One person later identified as Sharpe, according to court and police records.
“If that is not beyond a reasonable doubt, I’m not sure what is ladies and gentlemen,” he said.
Fahey also recognized that at the time of the crimes, DNA testing and profiling were not at the forefront of solving crimes. Sharpe, said Fahey, would not have known not to leave his DNA behind.
But he did, said Fahey.
“And on that evidence, you should find him guilty of every crime he is charged [with] here.”
On Tuesday, D’Addabbo finished giving the jury their charge, explaining to each juror exactly what they are tasked with when deliberating and reaching their verdict.
Sharpe is free on a promise to appear. If convicted, he faces up to 100 years in prison.
