THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509130138
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
I am writing this letter because I continue to see Joseph O'Dell given the publicity he so dearly desires. His victim was my sister, and I have something to say, too.
Question: Why didn't O'Dell take the stand before the case went to the jury? Although he was advised and cautioned probably 100 times or more against it, he acted as his own attorney during the trial and he talked, and he talked, and he talked. When it was time to take the stand, he stopped talking. Why?
Question: Which state and federal courts have issued findings that the blood did not come from my sister? I thought I had attended every hearing involving blood testing, including the time O'Dell was brought back to Virginia Beach from Death Row with his out-of-state legal team. The judge ruled then that his own DNA testing did not exclude him. It would be interesting, now, to know which court has since ruled in his favor regarding blood-test results. Back to the last Virginia Beach ruling: Why did O'Dell have only three of 21 or so existing samples tested for DNA? This should make one wonder what the others would have shown.
Speaking of bloodstains, why is it always the shirt, the shirt, the shirt? The clothes O'Dell was wearing when he killed my sister had been stolen from a locked car. They belonged to a preacher. The shirt had one small bloodstain that did not match all the others. Only recently has O'Dell mentioned the jacket he was wearing. When he did, he was careful to say that``the blood on the jacket could not be linked to the victim.'' The jacket was covered with blood, proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be that of my sister. Being late at night in February, it would not be unreasonable to think that the jacket would be worn, zipped up, over the shirt.
And what about the pants? They were in court, too, and were saturated with blood; blood proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be that of my sister. I saw those pants because I was there in court, and they had the most blood of any of his clothing. Yet after O'Dell had the DNA testing done, the pants never are mentioned. Why?
And what about the blood found in O'Dell's car? The blood that ran down the back of the passenger seat of his car as he savagely beat my sister in the head with a pistol? The blood that ran so heavily that it pooled on the floor of his car behind the passenger seat? Blood proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be that of my sister.
That damp, foggy night in February did more than provide ideal conditions for blood preservation. It also marked an anniversary for O'Dell: Ten years before, O'Dell had abducted a Florida woman at gunpoint, forced her into his car and beat her in the head with his pistol. With the police hot on his trail, the Florida woman escaped. She lived to tell about it. O'Dell was sentenced to 99 years plus 15 years. He was on parole, evven though he had 14 prior felony convictions, when he raped, sod-o-mized and strangled my sister.
Regarding O'Dell's claim that sperm found in the victim ``did not match me,'' he fails to make an all-important statement: Absolutely nothing in the testing excludes him as the rapist and sodomite.
I want it to be remembered that there was a victim in this case. Her name was Helen Capps Schartner. She is not here to point her finger at O'Dell. No, they won't ``bury the wrong one,'' as Lori Urs fears, when they bury Joseph O'Dell. They buried the wrong one when they buried my beloved sister.
Robert M. Capps
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by CNB