LITTLE ROCK — Paint on a crowbar found in Benton developer Aaron Jones’ toolbox, carpet from the back of his sport utility vehicle and records from a burglar-alarm system provided clues about the fire that gutted Jones’ 5,700-square-foot Little Rock home on May 30, 2008, investigators told jurors Thursday.
Jones, 34, maintains that the fire was set by intruders who bound him with duct tape. But during the third day of Jones’ trial in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, prosecutors used bits of evidence to build their case that Jones set the fire himself to collect insurance money.
Jones’ attorney, Tim Dudley of Little Rock, said other evidence undercuts prosecutors’ claims. For instance, he pointed to two pieces of hair found on pieces of duct tape in the burned home. A state Crime Laboratory analyst said the hairs do not match Jones’ hair.
Testimony is to continue today with assistant U.S. attorneys Julie Peters and Dan Stripling presenting the prosecution’s case.
After the fire, Jones told investigators that it appeared that intruders forced their way in through a set of French doors at the back of the house. Investigators sent those doors, which appeared to have been pried open, to the state Crime Laboratory for analysis, along with a crowbar found in a toolbox in Jones’ garage.
Crime Lab criminalist Chantelle Taylor testified that she found tiny bits of black and green paint on the end of the crowbar that were “microscopically and analytically similar” to the paint on the doors. Also on the crowbar were bits of brass that, like the brass knobs on the doors, contained small amounts of copper and zinc, making them “elementally similar,” she said.
During questioning by Dudley, Taylor acknowledged that she couldn’t say for certain that the paint on the crowbar actually came from the doors.
“It had to have come from a similar type of paint - those doors or other doors,” Taylor said.
Dudley, suggesting that the crowbar had been used during a project involving a microwave oven, asked whether the paint could have come from the house’s trim. Taylor said she didn’t analyze paint on the trim and didn’t know whether it was similar to the paint on the crowbar.
Taylor also testified about the hair on two pieces of duct tape found in the kitchen. One was an 18-inch strand of light colored, Caucasian hair found on a piece of tape in a trash compactor. Taylor testified that it’s safe to say that the hair didn’t belong to Jones, who is partially bald and has short, sandy-blond hair along the sides of his head.
Another hair, which is reddish-brown and a quarter-inch long, was found on a charred piece of duct tape on the kitchen counter. Taylor said she found that hair, which was singed, to be “dissimilar” to Jones’ hair.
Prosecutors have said the duct tape in the trash compactor was found to contain Jones’ DNA and is significant because Jones told authorities that he didn’t have any duct tape in the house. Dudley said during his opening statement that the hair on the tape “proves somebody else was in the house that night.”
Capt. Sandra Wesson, an investigator with the Little Rock fire marshal’s office, said investigators also found two 5-gallon fuel containers holding some type of “accelerant” inside the house. One container was sticking out of a second-floor closet, and the other was buried in the rubble in the master bedroom, where Jones said he had been sleeping when the intruders woke him.
On the carpet inside Jones’ GMC Yukon Denali, Wesson said, investigators found an impression that appeared to have been left by such a container. Little Rock police detective Edward Hopper testified that the inside of the vehicle smelled “like gasoline.” Dudley has said Jones used the Denali to deliver some diesel fuel to his wife when her Mercedes ran out of gas.
Wesson also testified that the home’s alarm system had been disabled by someone who unhooked two wires, including one that connected the system to a telephone line. She said Jones told her that the system had been disabled by a lightning strike in December 2007.
Examining the alarm-system records, Wesson found that it had indeed been disabled by a lightning strike on Dec. 9, 2007. On April 4, 2008, however, the records show that the system successfully sent a signal to the alarm monitoring company.
“To me, that says the alarm system was working,” Wesson said.
Information for this article was contributed by Linda Satter of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/24/2010