ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: Associated Press
When Ricky DeWayne Rogers walked out of the Norfolk City Jail almost nine years ago, he thought the murder and rape charges that put him there were behind him. But new DNA evidence has sent Rogers back to court.
In his opening statement Wednesday, prosecutor Jon Zug said a new DNA test points to Rogers, 40, as the murderer of 28-year-old Grace Elizabeth Payne, who was found raped and stabbed to death in her apartment Oct. 21, 1987.
The trial is expected to last through today or Monday.
The new technology in the DNA test requires smaller amounts of blood, saliva or semen than older tests, and it found similarities between DNA in semen taken from the victim and Rogers' DNA, Zug said. That type of DNA is found in 1 out of 26,000 blacks.
But defense attorney Thomas Reed told the jury that the prosecution's evidence cannot place Rogers at the scene. Although the DNA and hair samples have characteristics in common with Rogers' DNA and arm hairs, Reed said, the tests cannot determine that the DNA and hair actually belong to Rogers.
Less than two weeks after the murder, police arrested Rogers, a part-time employee in a business run by Payne's fianc, Jay M. O'Connor.
O'Connor identified Rogers as the man photographed by a bank camera withdrawing $300 with Payne's Visa card from a bank teller machine about 24 hours after the murder.
But the DNA tests were inconclusive, as were FBI analyses of the hair samples, fingerprints on the two knives left in the woman's body and on the tape wrapped around her mouth and nose.
Prosecutors did have witnesses, however. And prosecutors pressed forward, seeking the death penalty. Then they lost the witnesses. One was killed during a domestic dispute before he could testify. The other, on trial for arson, recanted, claiming police offered him a deal to testify.
Prosecutors declined to pursue the case, leaving open the possibility of a retrial, and Rogers was released.
He remained in the Norfolk area and started a family. For the past five years, he worked for a construction company. He was indicted in February on charges of murder, rape, robbery, credit card theft and credit card forgery.
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