Convicted Maine killer seeks DNA tests on clothes

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) The lawyer for a Maine man serving two life sentences for the 1999 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and the toddler she was baby-sitting told Maines highest court Wednesday that DNA tests could show somebody else might have committed the killings.

Richard Hartley asked Maine Supreme Judicial Court justices to overturn a lower court ruling denying his request for DNA testing on clothes worn by another man, David Vantol, who claimed responsibility for the killings but later recanted.

Hartley said the tests could show the victims DNA or blood on the clothes, which would benefit his client, 49-year-old Jeffrey Cookson, and cast a new light on his case. Cookson was convicted of killing 20-year-old Mindy Gould and 21-month-old Treven Cunningham in Dexter.

If the DNA tests produced the victims DNA, Mr. Vantols DNA but not Mr. Cooksons DNA, thats an issue I imagine a fact-finder would be curious about and that would raise some eyebrows, he said.

But Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber said Cookson hadnt met the burden of the law in proving the clothes hadnt been contaminated or altered in the two years they were supposedly buried in the ground. He maintained that Cookson was rightly convicted of the crimes.

The jury found the truth 12 years ago, that Jeffrey Cookson executed these two people, he said.

Cookson was convicted in 2001 of shooting Gould and the young boy in the back of the head while they were lying face down in the bedroom.

Just minutes after the verdict, Vantol confessed to the murders. A short time later, he led police to a gun used in the killings.

Two days later, he gave investigators a trash bag with clothing items, a wig and a hat that he said he had worn during the killings and then buried, two years earlier.

He later changed his story and told investigators Cookson persuaded him to confess to the murders. Cookson in 2004 and 2008 sought to have DNA tests performed on the clothing.

See the original post here:
Convicted Maine killer seeks DNA tests on clothes