DEE J. HALL | Wisconsin State Journal | dhall@madison.com | 608-252-6132 | @DeeJHall madison.com | Posted: Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:00 am

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne approved a new round of DNA testing in a 1994 murder case the Wisconsin Innocence Project says could prove Penny Brummers innocence.

The project seeks to test victim Sarah Gonsteads clothes, swabs from her body, fingernail scrapings, a tissue found near the body and a Taco Bell cup. Ozanne said his office will make the evidence available for testing at Brummers expense.

Gonstead, 21, of Madison was found April 9, 1994, near Mineral Point Road west of Pine Bluff three weeks after she disappeared. She was last seen the night of March 14, 1994, when she went bar-hopping with Brummer, then 25. Brummer testified she dropped Gonstead off around 11 p.m. behind a bar on East Washington Avenue and last saw her standing near a group of people in a nearby Taco Bell parking lot.

According to the motion filed in Dane County Circuit Court, the clothes and underwear worn by Gonstead contain never-before-tested blood stains that do not appear to have come from the .22-caliber bullet wound to the head that killed her.

The case against Brummer was circumstantial. Prosecutors argued that after a night of drinking, Brummer, of Spring Green, killed Gonstead because of jealousy or because Gonstead had been advising Brummers ex-girlfriend to start dating men again.

Suspicion grew when a .22-caliber revolver that belonged to Brummers father couldnt be found during a search of the family home, and after Brummer and Gonstead were identified as having been at a bar that night near where the young womans body was found. Brummer earlier denied the two had been at the bar but later conceded to police she may have blacked out from a night of heavy drinking.

The defense maintains Gonstead met her killer after Brummer dropped her off. At trial, Brummers side produced a witness who said he saw a man two nights after Gonstead disappeared with a bright pink object on the side of Mineral Point Road close to where Gonsteads body clad in a purple and pink jacket was later found.

The state produced no physical evidence, confession or eyewitnesses to the murder, Innocence Project attorney John Pray argued in the motion. Evidence that a persons DNA is on multiple pieces of evidence and this DNA not belonging to Brummer would strongly suggest that someone other than Brummer was the perpetrator of this crime.

Ozanne said state law requires him to turn over evidence for DNA testing at the defendants expense in cases in which the results could be relevant to a claim of innocence.

Excerpt from:
DNA tests approved in Gonstead murder case