The jury in the Philip Chism trial heard today from the state’s forensic scientist who found Colleen Ritzer’s body and cataloged the evidence of her death.
The scientist said she couldn’t learn much from the Danvers High School bathroom where Chism allegedly attacked Ritzer, because it had already been cleaned.
The Spanish-speaking manager of the cleaning crew testified that the bathroom looked like a “slaughterhouse.” The manager tried to tell a school custodian, but the custodian misunderstood, so the cleaning crew hosed the bathroom down.
WGBH News legal analyst Daniel Medwed, of Northeastern University, says those details are remarkable, but may not matter.
"No law enforcement said, 'clean this up,'" he said. "It was just that the cleanup crew thought they should do this. So it really is a tragic error that poses a problem for the prosecution, but not a huge problem, I think, because the defense has already admitted guilt."
The cleaning staff even sent someone down to the woods to clean up blood that had been spotted there. But the forensic scientist still found plenty of bloody items later that night, along with a note next to Ritzer’s body reading “I hate you all."
