Chapter 19
The public’s interest in the Biela trial had remained extremely high since his arrest. When the trial finally began, the courtroom was packed with reporters and cameramen from newspapers and television stations around the region. Preparations were made for the press to make their reports from inside the courtroom by posting updates online, and from outside the courthouse with live on-camera reports at the close of proceedings each day. Delays had pushed the start date of the trial to May 10; on that date, jury selection finally began, and the community’s intense interest in the trial had only increased as time passed. By the official starting date, the Biela trial was the featured story on every newscast, in every newspaper, and on countless Internet sites.
Biela’s attorneys had asked the judge to screen all potential jurors with a seven-page list of questions to be certain that they had no preconceived opinions about Biela’s guilt or innocence. The defense also requested that the jurors be questioned individually in the judge’s chambers so that they could speak freely about their own personal feelings on the death penalty.
Judge Robert Perry denied the defense’s requests, saying that the use of a jury questionnaire might, in fact, result in Biela’s ability to get a fair trial being jeopardized.
“The notice to jurors sent before trial, telling them that they would be involved in this highly publicized case, would encourage discussion with others, and possible independent research about the case,” Perry ruled. “The risk that these potential jurors would be ‘infected’ with the opinions of family and friends is high.”
Perry also said that he agreed with Biela’s lawyers that almost all those people residing in the Reno area were very aware of Brianna’s murder and rape.
“The court believes that it is pure fantasy to imagine that it is probable that any juror in any location in the state of Nevada will not have heard of this case, particularly by the time the case comes to trial in any venue,” he said. “The reality of the modern jury selection requires the focus to be on finding jurors who will set aside ‘preconceived notions’ and the opinions of others, and render verdicts based on the evidence presented at trial.”
Judge Perry therefore denied the defense’s request for individual questioning of each potential juror. The court would rely on the jurors it chose to deliver a fair, unbiased verdict.
Deputy District Attorney Elliott Sattler told the media that the judge’s order “speaks for itself.” The DDA said that he believed the court would be able to seat a fair and impartial jury in Reno, adding that it was important to conduct any trial in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. The people in any community in which a crime occurred, he said, should have the ability to have that trial in their community.
When jury selection was completed and the official jurors and alternates who would hear the cases against James Biela were seated, the panel was made up of five women and seven men. They were described by one reporter as a typical group of middle-class, middle-aged people, ready to hear the testimony of the large number of witnesses who were scheduled to present evidence. As the trial began, Brianna Denison’s family sat on the prosecution’s side of the courtroom, and Biela’s family sat on the other side, behind him and his defense attorneys.
Spectators in the room during the trial proceedings claimed that they could always hear a steady, clicking buzz from all the laptop keyboards being used by the large number of reporters covering the trial. The members of the press were constantly updating the reports they were sending back to their news agencies or adding to their Internet reports as the prosecution began its presentation. The courtroom was packed to its maximum capacity with spectators, but thanks to the many reporters posting to the Internet, thousands more people were able to follow the trial, live and in its entirety. The interest in the case was not confined to Reno; every day that court was in session, people from all over the nation and around the world logged on to the wide range of Internet coverage to keep up with each development as the trial progressed.
In his opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Chris Hicks told the jurors that when the DNA and other forensic evidence in the case was presented, there would be no doubt in their minds that James Biela was guilty as charged. Hicks claimed that Biela had initially begun his crimes as a serial rapist, but he had soon “graduated” to murderer.
Jay Slocum, one of Biela’s public defenders, said that the jurors should look at the evidence in what he called the “cold light of reason,” because he claimed that the DNA evidence against Biela was not conclusive. He said that even though law enforcement and the prosecution was alleging that Biela was the sole assailant in all of the three cases brought against him, each of the cases had enough differences to cast doubt on his responsibility for all three. Each case, Slocum said, had “very distinct facts” and could very well have been the work of three different perpetrators.
When the time came to begin testimony about the two rape cases, DDA Hicks called the alleged victim from the October 2007 incident to the witness stand. The assault had taken place in a University of Nevada, Reno, parking garage. The woman in that case, Amanda Collins, testified that she was taking a class that met on Monday evenings between seven and ten o’clock. On these nights, she would park in the university’s Whalen Parking Complex, which was located near the education building.
Amanda was on campus to take a midterm in that class. After the exam, she walked back to her car in the parking garage. As she got near to her car, Amanda was attacked from behind by an unknown male. He grabbed her, putting one hand on her back and the other hand up and over her breast. She was pulled to the ground and pushed down between vehicles in the parking garage. The man straddled her and put a gun to her head.
Amanda could only see part of his face; he was wearing a hoodie, and the hood was over most of his face. She was raped at gunpoint, she said; the man raised her skirt, opened her legs, and inserted his penis into her. Then her attacker ejaculated on her skirt; then, she said, he moaned and said it felt good. Incredibly, he then complimented her on her skirt, telling her that it made her “look good.” After the rape, she said that the man got up and pulled up his pants, and told her to stay put until he was gone. Then he left, taking her thong panties with him.
Amanda drove straight to her sorority house, where she took a shower. Then she drove to her home in Spanish Springs, where she threw away the clothes she had been wearing. She was understandably traumatized by the attack and chose not to report it to the authorities at that time, saying that she didn’t “want her body to become a crime scene.” She initially didn’t tell anyone what had happened. She later told a roommate, Deborah Johnson, who contacted the police after news of Brianna’s disappearance had been published. Amanda agreed at that time to meet with police detectives, and she assisted the police sketch artist in drawing a picture of the suspect who had raped her. But when Biela was arrested for Brianna Denison’s murder, she recognized him and came forward and identified him to the authorities as the man who was her rapist. There was no DNA evidence available in that assault because, in addition to failing to report the rape immediately, Amanda had thrown away the clothes she had been wearing at that time. Her testimony was challenged by the defense, because prior to Biela’s arrest, she had told one of her friends that she couldn’t describe her attacker.
The woman presented as being Biela’s second rape victim had been interviewed extensively by Detective Jenkins about her kidnapping and subsequent rape, which took place on December 2007, two months following the assault on the first woman. At the time of her assault, Virgie Chin, the second victim, was a Chinese exchange student at UNR, studying marketing. She lived by herself in an upstairs apartment on North Virginia Street, which was across the street from the UNR campus.
In the wee hours of December 16, 2007, Virgie gave two of her friends a ride from her apartment, where they had been visiting, to their residences nearby. She got back to her apartment around three in the morning. She parked in her assigned parking spot, but at the door to her apartment, she realized that she had left her keys in the car. She went back to the car, found the keys, and got out of the car again. Before she could lock the doors, she was grabbed from behind by an unknown male. His left arm was wrapped tightly around her body, holding her arms down, while his right hand was covering her mouth and nose. It was almost impossible for her to breathe, and she couldn’t scream. She started to hit and kick at her car, and he picked her up off the ground and started walking backward, carrying her. He tripped and fell to the ground, landing hard on top of her. Virgie’s face hit the ground, and she lost her glasses. The man kept holding her tight with his hand over her mouth, and she lost consciousness and woke up, sitting in the man’s truck. She didn’t have her glasses, and her jacket hood was covering her eyes. The man told her, “Don’t do anything stupid,” and told her not to look at him.
Virgie had been hurt from the fall and didn’t think she could get away from him, so she tried to remember everything she saw in the truck. As the man began to drive, he asked Virgie what her name was. When she asked him for a tissue, he gave her one. She remembered that he had a deep American voice and didn’t have any particular type of accent.
The man drove for only a few minutes to an open area nearby, which had parking spaces. There he asked her to use her mouth and her hand to help him achieve an erection; then he made her perform oral sex on him. Then he kissed her vagina and put a finger deep inside her. He asked her if her breasts were real; then he touched her body and finally masturbated himself to a conclusion. Afterward, he got back into the driver’s seat and told Virgie to put her clothes back on, but he took her underwear. He drove her back to her apartment and told her not to tell anyone, or he warned, “I’ll be back.”
At the apartment, a neighbor helped Virgie find her keys, and she called the police, who took her to the hospital for a sexual-assault examination and some minor medical treatment. At the hospital, a registered nurse, Denise Engel, conducted the exam and confirmed that Virgie had been sexually assaulted. A Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) kit was prepared from the exam, containing samples and swabs in sealed envelopes from the examination. The completed kit was delivered to Suzanne Harmon, a criminalist with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Forensic Science Division, to be processed.
Dr. Lisa Smyth-Roam, a senior criminalist and DNA analyst in the Washoe County Crime Lab, handled the DNA testing that was done following Biela’s arrest, which revealed that a DNA profile from the kit matched a reference sample of James Biela’s DNA. Based on those results, Dr. Smyth-Roam concluded that neither Biela nor any of his male paternal relatives could be excluded from the results matching the ones developed from the swabs taken in Virgie Chin’s SART kit.
Virgie testified that while she was being held in the vehicle, she saw a child’s shoe in the floor of his truck. She also said her attacker had a shaved pubic area, which coincided with information Carleen Harmon had given describing Biela’s shaved and trimmed genital area. Virgie had been able to give other valuable identifying information to the authorities. She described her attacker as white, with brown hair, a medium build, a little bit of a belly, and arms that were darker than his chest and stomach areas from being in the sun.
When she was asked if her attacker’s physical build matched Biela’s, he was made to stand up in court so she could get a good look at him. She confirmed that he fit the description of the man she so well remembered.
Unlike Amanda Collins, Virgie Chin had reported the assault. According to testimony, the DNA obtained from her rape kit matched Biela’s DNA. His defense attorneys had attacked the DNA-TESTING method used to make the match, earlier having claimed, to no avail, that it was inaccurate and should not be allowed. Now, however, it served as a positive link that undeniably tied Biela to that assault.
Chapter 20
A video that had been made at Mel’s Diner was presented during the trial as evidence. It had been made when Brianna Denison and her friends went there to eat on the night she was abducted, a few hours before she settled down on K.T. Hunter’s couch and began texting her boyfriend, Cameron Wilson Done. The video was shown in court, and those in the courtroom leaned forward, watching and listening intently to get a look at that one last image of Brianna, alive and well. Deputy District Attorney Elliott Sattler asked K.T. Hunter, who was on the witness stand, to confirm for the record that the petite, lovely girl shown yawning on the video was Brianna.
“To the best of your knowledge, was that the last time Ms. Denison was photographed alive?” Sattler asked.
“Yes,” K.T. answered.
It was a very emotional time for many of the spectators, and it grew much more so as other witnesses took the stand. Several of Brianna’s friends, the people she had spent time with at the rap concert and at the diner, were called to testify. They all said that nothing unusual had happened that evening, and that none of them had seen James Biela at any of the parties and events they had attended that night.
Jessica Deal said that she had returned to the house before Brianna and K.T. because she had to work the next day, and had already gone to sleep and did not hear the other two girls when they came in later. She and K.T. began making breakfast when they got up the next morning, and initially they were not alarmed when they saw that Brianna was not on the couch, thinking she had gone upstairs to the other bedroom. Then, Jessica said, they noticed Brianna’s phone was on the counter.
“It was vibrating,” Jessica said. “Probably a text message.”
The girls noticed the spot on the pillow, but thought it could have been made by K.T.’s dog. Jessica then drove K.T. to pick up her car, and went to work.
The other students testified that they’d had an enjoyable time that night, spending time with Brianna, and Ian McMenemy said that he and another friend had given Brianna and K.T. a ride home and watched until they saw the two girls go into the house. Biela’s attorney Maizie Pusich asked him if Brianna had been upset with someone that night and sending text messages. Ian told her that Brianna had been on the phone with her boyfriend.
Some of the people in the courtroom cried while they listened to the testimony of Bridgette Denison telling about the last night that she had seen her daughter alive.
When Bridgette took the stand to testify about what happened when she first learned of her daughter’s disappearance, she told the jury how things had been at their home on the final night of Brianna’s life. Brianna had made plans, Bridgette said, to go out with K.T. Hunter that night and would be spending the night with her friend after their evening out. Brianna had gotten together a bag, filled with some clothes and other items, her mother said, and had left for K.T.’s house to get ready to go out to a rap concert.
“January 19, at eight forty-five
P.M.
, was that the last time you saw your daughter?” Deputy District Attorney Elliott Sattler asked Bridgette.
“Yes,” she said.
“What would Brianna wear when she went to bed?” Sattler asked.
Bridgette told him that Brianna hated being cold, so she usually would wear sweatpants, a sweatshirt, socks, and would sleep under “a couple of down comforters.”
The next morning, Bridgette testified, K.T. called her, worried and upset, telling how Brianna was not asleep on the couch. When K.T. had gone to bed, that was where Brianna had been, staying up and texting her boyfriend. K.T. had searched the house and Brianna wasn’t anywhere to be found. A moment later, Bridgette said, K.T. had called back, crying and hysterical.
“She said she had looked further at everything in her apartment. She said there was blood on the pillow that Brianna was sleeping on,” Bridgette testified.
Bridgette immediately headed for the apartment. “I told her to call 911, and I went to her house.”
When Bridgette got to the apartment, one of the first things she found was that all of the things Brianna had left home with, on the evening before, were still there: her shoes, her cell phone, all of her clothes, and personal items.
“I saw the blood on her pillow,” Bridgette said. She followed the police around, inside and outside the apartment, helping them in any way that she could while they searched for any trace of Brianna. She gave them a DNA sample for exclusionary purposes, she said.
Bridgette told Detective David Jenkins, who arrived to investigate the disappearance, that Brianna was a very petite girl and was sensitive to the cold. She told him that she couldn’t believe that her daughter would go outside at that time of the winter dressed in only a T-shirt and sweatpants. After she and Jenkins went through Brianna’s clothing, they decided that the only items missing were the pieces of clothing she wore to bed: a thin, sleeveless camisole top, with
Bindi
printed on the back, and a pair of worn pink sweatpants.
There was nothing else missing: Brianna’s purse had been left behind, containing her wallet, credit cards, driver’s license, lotion, sunglasses, and lip balm. The bag of clothing and cosmetics was still there. She had disappeared without taking her phone, shoes, or coat.
Detective David Jenkins testified that when he had first arrived at K.T. Hunter’s apartment that morning, his first order of business had been to try and determine whether Brianna had left voluntarily from the residence or if she perhaps had been kidnapped. After meeting with Bridgette Denison, he decided that the fact that Brianna’s cell phone had been left behind was a very strong indication that she had not left of her own free will.
“Mrs. Denison described her daughter as not being the type of person who was prone to unusual behavior,” Jenkins testified. “Mrs. Denison said she couldn’t fathom her daughter could go anywhere without her cell phone.”
“So she has no shoes, no coat, no telephone. No way to get around. Just gone,” said DDA Sattler.
“That’s correct,” Jenkins told him.
When K.T. Hunter took the stand, she told the jurors how she and Brianna had met some of their friends to go to the rap concert that evening of Brianna’s disappearance; then they had returned to the Sands Regency Casino and Hotel. Following that, they went to Mel’s Diner, where Brianna had French fries and a milk shake before they went back to the apartment for the night.
K.T. described how Brianna had gotten ready for bed by changing into a T-shirt and sweatpants; then she had taken the pillow, a teddy bear, and a couple of pink blankets, which K.T. brought for her to use to sleep on the couch. Brianna was texting her boyfriend, Cameron Wilson Done, when K.T. took her dog and went to her own room to go to bed. She told the jury that Brianna had told her earlier that night that she and Cameron, who was spending the winter break at his family’s home in Eugene, Oregon, had been arguing because he had not wanted her to go out to the concert.
“She said to me earlier that night, ‘I don’t know if me and my boyfriend are together anymore,’” K.T. said.
The next morning, K.T. woke up to find that Brianna was not on the couch. Her first thought was that Brianna might have gone upstairs to sleep in the bedroom of another roommate, who was not at home that weekend. K.T. went to check to see if Brianna was in that room, but the door was locked. When K.T. knocked, there was no answer. She grew more worried and went back downstairs.
“I saw that there was a red stain on the pillow,” she said, but she thought at first that it was something her dog had chewed on “and made a mess of.” On closer inspection, she realized that the stain looked like blood, she said.
At this point, Elliott Sattler handed K.T. an evidence bag and a pair of rubber gloves, asking her to put the gloves on and see if she recognized the contents of the bag. When K.T. pulled the cut-up pieces of a pair of pink thong underwear out of the bag, she said that they belonged to her. She said that until that time, there in the courtroom, she hadn’t realized that they were missing.
K.T. didn’t know that the pair of thongs she was holding in her hand were the same thongs that Sattler had said previously, at another hearing, were most likely the murder weapon that had been used to strangle her friend Brianna.
When Cameron Wilson Done took the witness stand and began to testify about the last time he spoke with his girlfriend, Brianna Denison, his grief made it difficult for him to tell the jury about their relationship. He was in tears, running his hands over his face, while he told how the two had argued back and forth in text messages. The last text probably came only minutes before Brianna was kidnapped from her friend’s home.
Brianna had gone to the rap concert with her friends that night against his wishes and he was upset at her for going out without him, he said. She had gone to Reno over the winter break, and Cameron had gone to his family’s home in Eugene. He had been irritated at her for making plans to go out for the evening with her friends. They had argued about it before she left home to go to K.T. Hunter’s apartment. Brianna tried to call him at 3:00
A.M.
, he said, but he didn’t take the call. When she got back to K.T.’s at 4:10
A.M.
, they resumed their argument via texting, with Brianna saying she had done nothing wrong by going out. Cameron, however, remained angry with her.
“I said I was fucking pissed off and I would talk to her later,” Cameron told the court.
She texted him, again, at 4:13
A.M.
, wanting to know what she had done wrong. At 4:17
A.M.
, he swore at her and texted, I’m over you right now.
Two minutes later, Brianna texted back and asked if she could call him.
“I said no, don’t call me,” he said, and at 4:23
A.M.
, she texted him for the last time and told him once again that she didn’t do anything wrong. She said that he was “messed up.”
Cameron cried while he told the jury that he had expected that Brianna would keep trying to get in touch with him so they could make things up, which was their usual pattern during arguments. He said that he had never heard from her again after that final text message.
Brianna was Cameron’s first girlfriend, he said, and they had met while they were both going to Santa Barbara City College. They remained in their relationship after he transferred to the University of Oregon. They had planned to live together whenever they were both finished with school, he told the court.
“It was a privilege to be able to date her,” he said, choking back tears. “She truly was the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever met.”
Cameron said that he had expected Brianna would call him in the morning after their texted argument, but she never texted any further that night or tried to call him again. Rather, when morning came, instead of hearing again from Brianna as Cameron Wilson Done had expected, the shocking phone call he got told him that she had vanished without a trace in the dead of night.