Smith-murder glass slides

The Smith-murder glass slides were a small, incomplete remnant of the investigation into the murders of Lyman and Charlene Smith, but they helped connect that case to other killings. Years after the investigation had stalled, testing the slides produced a DNA profile that excluded Lyman Smith and matched profiles associated with the Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz cases.

Origin and Preservation

The slides came from forensic evidence collected in the Smith case. Q-tip swabs taken as part of a rape kit were rubbed against glass so that investigators could look for sperm under a microscope. The slides held biological material, but the swabs themselves were not included in the package later sent for testing—a consequential absence, since a criminalist would ordinarily seek as much biological material as possible.

After the preliminary hearing against Joe Alsip ended for lack of evidence, investigators returned to square one. They disagreed over whether the killer had known the Smiths or whether the crime was random and sexually motivated. The file eventually moved from a shelf in the investigators’ bullpen to the evidence vault, where it remained for years.

Transfer and Laboratory Testing

Larry Pool told the Ventura Police Department that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had an unsolved serial case involving four homicide victims whose murders resembled the Smith case. He asked Ventura to send any remaining forensic evidence to the Orange County Crime Lab. When Mary Hong opened the package, she found only a couple of glass slides. The missing swabs limited what the laboratory could work with, but the slides still retained biological evidence.

On February 17, 1998, Pool received Hong’s report. She had developed a DNA profile from semen on the slides, and the results eliminated Lyman Smith as its source. The slides therefore did more than preserve a trace from the original investigation: they provided a testable profile that could be compared with evidence from other unsolved cases.

DNA Link and Consequences

The profile matched those from the Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz cases. A piece of evidence from a long-shelved Ventura investigation thus connected the Smith murders with a set of killings being examined elsewhere. The match gave the cases a forensic link where investigators had previously faced disagreement and uncertainty.

The result also met resistance from some of the Ventura investigators who had worked under the older assumptions of the case. Detective Russ Hayes later recalled his astonishment at the connection and said he did not believe it at first. The slides’ significance lies in that reversal: a sparse, imperfectly preserved package, containing only a couple of slides, carried evidence that challenged the original division between the Smith case and the other murders.