PSU Magazine Spring 2002

hen Christian Longo goes to trial later this year for the murder of his wife, MaryJane, and their three small children, the biggest challenge will be trying to fig– ure out what really happened last December on the Oregon coast. For that, the defense attorney will tum to Dr. Ray Grimsbo. Grim bo '72 is a forensic scientist, a man who predicts the past. The court has appointed him to help with the Longo defense, and right now Grimsbo's not talking about the case. His job will be to piece together a pic– ture of the events with whatever phys– ical evidence investigators can tum up. Grimsbo, who majored in both biology and psychology at PSU, says he wanted to be a forensic scientist ever since he learned what it was. He went on to earn a doctorate in forensic science, and if you add up the time he spent as a police officer in the state crime lab, and the time he's owned his own lab, Intermountain Forensics, he's been at it over a quarter century. "You see all kinds of cases in foren– sics," he says, having worked on evidence in some of the highest profile murder cases in the Northwest. But he has also been asked to provide exper– tise in cases around the country and internationally. "We had a case a couple of years ago out in Indiana. It was a case where everything you touch turns to gold," herrecalls. • '·[] t started out as a disappearance, but police suspected foul play. Only problem was they had no witnes es, no body, and a cleaned up crime scene. Until the missing man's car turned up four months later, stripped of its license plates, there was nothing to go on at all. Examination of the car found large bloodstains in the car's hatchback area. Police talked to the man's best friend, Jonathan Whitesides, the last person to see him alive, but White– sides denied knowing what happened to his friend, Eric Humbert, or how blood got all over the car. After he failed a polygraph test, Whites ides changed his story. Hum- 18 PSU MAGAZINE SPRING 2002 bert died accidentally, he said, and he had panicked and dumped the body in the Ohio River. The body wa never recovered. There wasn't much evidence found in the car besides the blood in the back, but there was a bit of blood sit– ting on the engine with a green fiber stuck in the middle and what appeared to be a small piece of human tis ue clinging to the distributor cap. Rod Englert, a nationally known all, but what there was all fell into place," says Grimsbo. "Even though the body was never found, Whiteside was convicted of murder and sen– tenced to 50 years." It is the opportunity to explore beyond the obvious that intrigues Grimsbo the most about forensic work. In a murder there is often an attempt to disguise the facts, but rarely are the facts as convoluted as they were in the "happy faced killer" case. In this case Notforthe ' . . . -· makes a career out of the By Merlin Douglass grisly details. crime scene investigator from Port– land, was asked to look at the blood spatter evidence. He thought the pat– tern was probably the result of a gun– shot. Then he recommended the police call in Grimsbo. "Grimsbo and I go back 25 years, to when I was a homicide detective," Englert says. "Whenever there's a DNA question, I always ask him." Back at his Portland lab, Grimsbo demonstrated that the tissue found on the engine was brain tissue. Then, using DNA tests, he proved the tissue belonged to Humbert and that he'd been shot in the head while bending over the engine of his car. Now the only mystery was why there was so little blood in the engine. Grimsbo says that's when the light went on for him. "The green fiber," he says. "He had to be wearing a cap. That's why there was a green fiber stuck in the blood and another one attached to part of a bullet extracted from just below the windshield wiper." "There was very little evidence at Grimsbo helped confirm the true killer's confession, which eventually lead to the release of two innocent pe'ople from prison. . '·[p n 1990 Taunja Bennett, 23, was found strangled on a bluff in the Columbia Gorge. Police had no clues, but they did have a statement from Laverne Pavlinac, who told them her boyfriend, John Sosnoviski, had com– mitted the murder. They didn't believe her at first, but over time she con– vinced them. She did such a good job that she was convicted of manslaugh– ter, and Sosnoviski pleaded guilty to murder. "They didn't have any real evi– dence in that case at all except for Laverne trying to stick her boyfriend with it," says Grimsbo, who worked the case for Sosnoviski's defense attor– ney. "The real killer wrote a letter in 1994 to Phil Stanford, an Oregonian columnist at the time. The letter was signed with a little happy face." A year later, in 1995, Keith