Hillsborough: Questions raised at murder trial

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Questions raised at murder trial

Prosecutors say the defendant killed a Northdale woman. The defense says nothing links him to the crime.

By TIM GRANT

TAMPA -- Footprints at the crime scene and a video of Ray Lamar Johnston withdrawing cash with a stolen ATM card link Johnston to the murder of Northdale dental assistant Leanne Coryell, prosecutors said Tuesday.

But Johnston's defense attorneys say evidence in the first-degree murder case is circumstantial and that there are no hairs, blood or DNA to connect Johnston with this crime.

"He had neither the motive nor opportunity to harm her," defense lawyer Kenneth Littman told jurors. "The state is going to ask you to convict someone of murder based on supposition."

In opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors said Johnston, 44, abducted Coryell from her Northdale apartment on Aug. 19, 1997, and drove her to a deserted area behind a church on Ragg Road where he robbed her, raped her, beat her on the buttocks with her own belt and strangled her.

"The last thing Leanne Coryell ever saw was the face of that man as she was strangled to death," prosecutor Karen Stanley said, pointing to Johnston.

Unless Johnston testifies, jurors won't hear about his long criminal record, which includes rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. He has been convicted on four separate occasions in three states.

At the start of Tuesday's trial, prosecutors called several of Coryell's former co-workers, who testified that she left work at orthodontist Gregory Dyer's office about 8:40 p.m. on the night she died and went shopping at the Publix at N Dale Mabry Highway and Bearss Avenue. She headed home to her apartment at the Landings at Cypress Meadow about 9:30 p.m.

Groceries and Publix shopping bags found scattered in the apartment parking lot suggest that the 30-year-old single mother was abducted as she unloaded her car, a black 1993 Infiniti. Her body was discovered about 2 miles away, behind St. Timothy's Catholic Church, by a man walking his dogs about 11 p.m.

Jurors were shown a video surveillance tape of Johnston using Coryell's card at NationsBank in Carrollwood within minutes of her body being discovered. Johnston has said he and Coryell were friends. He has said he loaned her money and earlier that night she gave him her card and code with permission to make the withdrawals.

In one of the trial's most tense moments, jurors also viewed a murky, slowed-down version of a surveillance tape that showed Coryell about two hours before she died, in the checkout line at Publix.

But that tape, like other testimony provided Tuesday, raised more questions than it answered.

Defense lawyers say there is an unidentified man in the video who appears to be watching Coryell. That same man, according to a state witness, had a heated argument with Coryell in the parking lot. The witness has said that the man Coryell argued with was not Johnston.

Another puzzling aspect of the murder involves what Coryell was wearing when she was killed. Co-workers said she left wearing khaki pants and a shirt bearing the office emblem. However, the man who discovered her body, John Edward Debnar, testified that Coryell was face-down in a shallow pond wearing a dress hiked above her waist.

"The first thing that caught my attention was the moonlight reflecting off her underpants -- floral underpants," Debnar testified. Debnar left the scene to call police.

When officers arrived about 20 minutes later, Coryell was unclothed. The clothes detectives found scattered on the ground included the clothes her co-workers last saw her wearing.

Defense lawyer Littman said law enforcement officers contributed to some of the confusion at the crime scene. He said the first officer who arrived left tire tracks which damaged evidence.

Littman concluded his opening statements by suggesting the state might be attempting to cover up evidence that could help validate Johnston's claims.

"When police searched (Coryell's) apartment one thing they took was an address book," Littman said. "The entire "J' section was removed. Why? Because his name is Johnston, and they don't want you to think for a moment he knew Leanne Coryell."

The trial continues today.

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