Blood found inside Davey Butorac’s prized Chevy Cavalier Z24 was the topic at the Aldergrove man’s second-degree murder trial in Supreme Court in New Westminster.
Butorac is being re-tried for the murder of Sheryl Korroll, 50, of Langley, after an earlier conviction was tossed out by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
RCMP Sgt. Daryl Krumbhols had been on the stand for two days taking the jury through how he examined Butorac’s Cavalier Z24 back in October 2007.
Korroll’s body was found dumped at a concrete plant in Langley City on July 7, 2007.
Korroll was a prostitute working and living in Langley City. She lived with her elderly parents at the time of her death.
Surveillance footage at the concrete plant was seized by police. It showed the suspect vehicle to be a light-coloured Cavalier with a sunroof, roof rack and tire treads showed it had BF Goodrich tires.
Homicide investigators narrowed the possibility of that kind of make, model, year of car with those requirements of roof rack and sunroof down to seven in B.C. All seven were examined by Krumbhols.
Butorac’s was the last Cavalier to be examined.
“For a 15-year-old vehicle the interior was very clean. There were no foreign materials or garbage. Just one bottle of hand sanitizer,” he said.
Out of the seven Cavaliers Krumbhols examined, only Butorac’s was missing the grey carpeting and tire cover board in the trunk.
“Underneath the tire in the wells of the metal appeared a liquid,” he noted.
Krumbhols testified that he found blood droplets on the roof of the trunk, blood stains in the metal wells underneath the spare tire and blood on the passenger side cloth handle of the car.
This blood was discovered using a blood re-agent which causes a chemical reaction and will glow blue where blood is indicated. He also used another blood re-agent called Hemastick testing.
Butorac is using the same lawyer Richard Fowler, whom he retained for his original trial, and who successfully argued his appeal.
Butorac was living with his father in their Aldergrove townhome at the time of his arrest. He was unemployed.
Pathologist Dr. Craig Litwin, who did the autopsy on Korroll, concluded that it was blunt force trauma to the head that caused her death.
Litwin testified on Monday that Korroll had a fractured skull and her brain had bleeding and swelling. There were five blunt force impacts to her head. But none of those head injuries allowed the doctor to conclude what object or surface was used.
Korroll also had major bruising on her face, neck and torso. Although she didn’t have many teeth, one of them was knocked out during the time of her death, he noted. She also had bitten her tongue at that time.
She also had signs of asphyxiation but no marks like fingers or rope were found around her neck. There were no injuries to her anus or vagina, Litwin testified.
There were indication her small, 113-pound body was dragged about 30 metres from where it was originally dumped at the concrete plant. She also had tire marks on her wrist, indicating that part of her body had been driven over by the suspect vehicle.
Her organs were fine except she had sclerosis of the liver. Her toxicology report said she had crack cocaine and heroin in her body at the time of death, but not a lethal amount. She had been a heavy drug user for 20 years, said Crown counsel Wendy Dawson.
Butorac’s defence lawyer asked if it was possible she could have been hit by a car and if the head injuries were sustained from that. He also asked if he thought it was plausible she fell onto the back of her head.
Litwin said typically a skull won’t fracture when someone falls from a standing position. He added that her injuries weren’t consistent with being hit by a car.
Fowler also asked him about signs of strangulation. Commonly the voice box is damaged, and Korroll’s was not.
A DNA expert is expected to testify about the blood found in Butorac’s car which matched Korroll’s.
The trial is expected to wrap up by next week.