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Attention Freelance Writers:
Click for Copyright Class Action Settlement Info
Sunday, Sep 11, 2005
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Posted on Sun, Sep. 11, 2005
 
 R E L A T E D   L I N K S 
 •  See a copy of the fiber evidence chart

Fibers provide mute evidence in Harms case




Mercury News

Using a mist of big words, the investigators in the Jeanine Harms case explained last week how they peered into trash bins, pawed through a vacuum bag and examined hundreds of the kind of tiny fibers that stand as accusers in the absence of a body.

But for all the vaunted science, you got only glimpses of the humanity at the core of a hearing to determine whether Maurice Xavier Nasmeh, a 40-year-old San Jose architect, should be tried for her murder.

You've probably heard the basics: The 42-year-old Los Gatos woman disappeared after going to a Campbell bar on the night of July 27, 2001. She met a couple of men that night. After a long investigation, police arrested one of them, Nasmeh, on the basis of fibers found in the back of his Jeep. The fibers were similar to those from a Persian rug in Harms' home and a latch hook rug she had been working on.

The cops got lucky. Two years ago, they released a picture of a 62-by-92-inch Persian rug missing from Harms' home, which they theorized had been used to dispose of her body.

Unbelievably, a San Jose woman, Charlotte Massey, recognized it in the newspaper as one she fished from a dumpster near Hillsdale and Camden avenues two years before. The Persian rug contained both its natural woolen fibers and deposited acrylic fibers. Friends said Harms liked to sit on the rug while she did her latch hook work.

`CSI' stuff

All that makes it Santa Clara County's premiere ``CSI''-style case. Prosecutor Dale Sanderson unveiled a 3-by-7-foot spreadsheet summarizing the fiber evidence.

Yet Jeanine Harms remains elusive in these hearings. A few clues came from a neighbor, Earl Boucher, who met her with his wife the night before she disappeared. She loved dogs. She was social. She liked a drink called the lemon drop. And her refrigerator was nearly empty, save for yogurt.

Maurice Nasmeh is equally elusive. A stocky man with a close-shaved head, bald on top, he sits at the defense table, writing furiously, occasionally exchanging words with lead defense attorney Dan Jensen.

The key figure is probably Mark Moriyama, a 19-year veteran of the county's crime lab, who estimated that he spent at least 2,000 hours -- a full year -- examining fibers.

Latch hook clue

In November 2002, Moriyama came up with an important clue: He traced acrylic fibers found in the back of Nasmeh's Jeep Cherokee to a chemical company, Solutia, which made them for latch hook rugs.

Moriyama wrote an e-mail to Los Gatos police, saying they should be on the lookout for a latch hook rug. But it wasn't until May 2003, after another reminder, that Harms' latch hook rug was delivered to the crime lab. (The Los Gatos police have not come off unscathed in testimony.)

Not surprisingly, the defense has shown deep interest in the other man Harms saw that night. And defense attorney William Welch scored a point late Friday when he got Moriyama to admit he had been taken off regular case work after doing poorly on a proficiency test early this year.

This is a case that will be determined on the science -- on whether the Jeep contained the acrylic fibers from Harms' latch hook rug, or whether the Persian rug saved from the dumpster contained a gray nylon fiber from the Jeep.

But humanity lingers behind science like the unfitted pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. What's maddening is that we might think we know what happened. The why baffles us as much as the disappearance of her body.

mercurynews.com

See a copy of the fiber evidence chart.


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