The fourth day of the Ralph Corey trial ended without a verdict in the 12-year-old sexual assault case.  

Corey, a 53-year-old former truck driver from Arizona, is on trial for a second time in Franklin County District Court in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case. Corey is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Walmart Supercenter cashier on the night of Feb. 19, 2000, as she prepared to leave the employee parking lot on the north side of the building at 2101 S. Princeton St., Ottawa.

The fourth day of the Ralph Corey trial ended without a verdict in the 12-year-old sexual assault case.  

Corey, a 53-year-old former truck driver from Arizona, is on trial for a second time in Franklin County District Court in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case. Corey is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Walmart Supercenter cashier on the night of Feb. 19, 2000, as she prepared to leave the employee parking lot on the north side of the building at 2101 S. Princeton St., Ottawa.

He faces two counts of aggravated sexual assault, one count of aggravated kidnapping, one count of attempted rape and one count of making a criminal threat in connection with the 2000 incident. All five counts are felonies.

After deliberating for 4 hours and 25 minutes Friday afternoon, the jury of eight women and four men recessed for the weekend. The jury is expected to resume deliberations 9:30 a.m. Monday

The sexual assault case had gone cold until DNA collected at the crime scene was matched with Corey’s DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System [CODIS] of solved and unsolved cases Nov. 8, 2010, as Corey was about to be released from an Arizona penitentiary on counterfeiting charges.

That discovery culminated with Ottawa police detective Rick Geist, who retired in fall 2011 after 30 years with the Ottawa Police Department, taking a trip to Arizona to interview Corey and bring back a sample of his DNA for analysis by KBI scientists.

Corey was arrested June 17, 2011, by Ottawa police officers on a Franklin County warrant and transferred to the Franklin County Adult Detention Center, 305 S. Main St., Ottawa. He remains in jail on $500,000 bond.

During his closing arguments Friday, Stephen A. Hunting, Franklin County attorney, showed jurors two composites made from descriptions provided by the victim and Tammy Smith, a then-15-year-old Walmart cashier who said the man had approached her car. He then placed a photo of Corey taken in 2002 next to the two composites, which were generated two days after the attack on Sept. 21 ­— the same day fuel records show Corey was filling up his tractor-trailer south of Dallas in Hewitt, Texas.

“It’s up to you to look at these and decide if this is Ralph Corey,” Hunting said as he pointed at the composites and photo.

The prosecutor reminded jurors the fuel records showed Corey had fueled up his truck in Waterloo, Iowa, the day before the attack on Feb. 18. Pointing at a map that showed I-35 cutting across the Midwest from the northeast to the southwest, Hunting pointed out that Ottawa was between Waterloo and Hewitt, Corey’s fueling stops near I-35 on Feb. 18 and Feb. 21.

Hunting also pointed out that during Corey’s testimony, he admitted to having customers in Kansas City, where he would make stops.

The prosecutor also reminded jurors Corey’s DNA could not be excluded from the DNA found on the swab of the victim’s stomach taken shortly after the attack.

Hunting told jurors cuttings from a stocking cap the victim was forced to wear and from the lining of two welding gloves found on the floor in the back of the victim’s four-door, tan Nissan Maxima produced two partial DNA profiles and one full DNA profile that all pointed to Ralph Corey.

“All three matched a known DNA sample obtained from Mr. Corey,” Hunting said.

He restated the statistical probability of the DNA — a partial profile from the stocking cap — matching another Caucasian man, which Kansas Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist Larry Antle had read during the trial Thursday: 1 in 12 trillion.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there are not even that many people on the planet,” Hunting said.

He said the odds of the partial profile generated from the left glove belonging to another white male were 1 in 7 billion.

Then he read the odds for the full DNA profile matching Corey’s known sample found on the right glove: 1 in 62 trillion.

“That’s a staggering, staggering number,” Hunting said.

John A. Boyd, Corey’s defense attorney, attempted to discredit those eyewitness accounts during his closing arguments. He focused on Smith’s testimony from the trial in which she identified Corey as the attacker. He pointed out to the jury that Smith had seen a photo of Corey on TV with the headline “Cold Case Solved” after Corey was arrested. Boyd also reminded jurors Smith had told two detectives she had seen the attacker in her rearview mirror for a few seconds from two different distances — 12 feet and 30 feet — in 2000. But during her testimony at the trial, Smith said the attacker had been so close to her driver’s window that she could “almost reach out and touch him.”

He also pointed out that Dean Stetler, a DNA expert witness and former chief of various genetic and biology departments at the University of Kansas, testified earlier Friday morning that he found the KBI’s lab work to be sloppy in this case and therefore unreliable.

Boyd told the jury the police did the best they could in this case, but they made a couple of missteps in their investigation that possibly could have cleared his client. He said police didn’t use an alternative light source to look for traces of seminal fluid in the victim’s car.

“That would have been very, very strong DNA evidence,” he told the jury, adding that semen is not easily transferable from place to place.

Boyd said a shift crew at McDonald’s told police a man matching the attacker’s description had purchased a milk shake about the time the attacker would have fled the victim’s car in the nearby Country Mart parking lot.

And Boyd said police and the Franklin County Attorney’s office had failed to ask the KBI to forward an apparent pubic hair found on the victim’s clothing to a Federal Bureau of Investigation forensics lab for analysis. The KBI does not have the technology to perform the test.

Corey testified earlier that day that when he heard during testimony that police and the county attorney’s office did not ask for the hair to be analyzed that he felt like “I was the only one” police were looking at as a suspect.

The defense attorney also reminded the jury that all the KBI scientists and his expert witness Stetler testified that the presence of an individual’s DNA on clothing cuttings 1 centimeter-by-1 centimeter in size does not place that person at the crime scene. It simply means, Boyd said, that the individual might have come in contact with those items.

Boyd told the jury they heard Corey’s testimony that he went through numerous pairs of gloves and stocking caps. Corey estimated he probably owned 50 to 75 pairs of gloves in his 20 years as an over-the-road trucker. The defendant testified it was not uncommon for truckers to leave gloves behind at fuel stops, inspection stations, unloading freight, switching trailers and other places in the normal course of their job.

An attacker could have very easily stolen those items from Corey and left them at the scene to throw off police, Boyd said.

Hunting, who had the final few minutes of the closing arguments before the case went to the jury, said the FBI does not take just any request for analysis, and the FBI lab would not handle certain requests, like analyzing a hair, if more discriminating DNA evidence existed — such as in this case.

Hunting said the defense tried to portray the police as zeroing in on Corey as the only suspect, when that just wasn’t the case. Police had more than 20 leads in the case initially, Hunting said, but those leads just didn’t pan out.

“As for this phantom person that planted the gloves in the car, the defendant must be the unluckiest man on Earth,” Hunting said of the notion someone stole Corey’s hat and gloves and left them at the crime scene. “Don’t stand next to him if it’s raining, you might get hit by lightning.”

Hunting asked the jury to consider all the evidence carefully.

“When you consider the evidence as a whole, it all points to one man,” Hunting said as he pointed at Corey sitting at the defendant’s table. “Ralph Corey.”

Corey is on trial for a second time in connection with the sexual assault cold case after a mistrial was declared in July when Judge Eric W. Godderz learned one of the jurors had used a smartphone to look up information about the case during deliberations. Corey was convicted in a June jury trial on all five counts, until the mistrial was declared.

Doug Carder is senior writer for The Herald. Email him at dcarder@ottawaherald.com