National Football League

Prosecution attempts to link Hernandez to missing murder weapon

Published Feb. 25, 2015 10:47 a.m. ET

foxsports

Investigators never found the gun that killed Odin Lloyd, but on Wednesday a state police firearms examiner told jurors at Aaron Hernandez’s murder trial that it was a .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol.

The whereabouts of the gun used in the murder is one of the unanswered questions in the high-profile case, but Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Stephen Walsh testified that unique markings found on both bullets recovered from Lloyd’s body and the ground beneath it and on six shell casings could have been made only by a Glock.

And though defense attorneys would challenge Walsh’s findings, he spent two hours walking jurors through the technical details of gun operation and marks left on shell casings by a pistol’s firing pin mechanism. For example, a firing leaves a dent in the bottom of a shell casing when a bullet is fired. The opening through which that mechanism travels, known as the firing pin aperture, leaves its own impression.

The firing pin impression left on each of the five shell casings found near Lloyd’s body — and a sixth casing recovered from a car rented to Hernandez — was elliptical. And the firing pin aperture on each was rectangular.

Assistant district attorney Patrick Bomberg asked Walsh what was significant about that.

“Those are consistent with having been fired from a Glock,” Walsh testified.

Glock, an Austrian company, is unique in the way it manufactures firing pins. Most guns use a round firing pin. The company also uses a unique system to shape the inside of a gun’s barrel — a process known as rifling that includes high and low points designed to spin a bullet as it’s fired to help it fly accurately. Most guns use what is known as standard rifling: a series of rotating grooves cut down the inside of the barrel. Glocks use what is known as polygonal rifling, which is created by shaping the barrel rather than cutting it.

Bullets recovered from Lloyd’s body and from the ground beneath where he died were consistent with having been fired from a Glock, Walsh testified.

Bomberg asked Walsh whether he was aware of any other commercial manufacturer of .45-caliber handguns that use an elliptical firing pin, a rectangular firing pin aperture and the type of polygonal rifling found on the bullets that killed Lloyd.

“No, I’m not aware of any,” Walsh said.

Hernandez, a former New England Patriots star tight end, faces one count of murder and two firearms charges in the slaying of Lloyd, who was gunned down in a secluded field used to store dirt, asphalt and gravel. Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-professional football player, was dating Shaneah Jenkins, sister of Hernandez's fiancée.

Prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez summoned two associates from his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, to his Massachusetts home late the night of June 16, 2013, and simultaneously made plans to meet with Lloyd. Hernandez then allegedly drove the other two men, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace Jr., to the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, picked up Lloyd and returned to North Attleboro.

According to court documents, Hernandez allegedly drove into the field at 3:23 a.m. on June 17, 2013. There, Lloyd was shot multiple times a few minutes later, according to prosecutors.

Although prosecutors have not said who they believe fired the fatal shots, they have asserted that Hernandez "orchestrated" the killing. Ortiz and Wallace also have been indicted on murder charges but will be tried separately. The prosecution does not plan to call either as witnesses in the trial.

When defense attorney James Sultan got the chance to cross-examine Walsh, he took aim at the assertion that the bullets could be linked to the Glock. The reason: The rifling on Glock’s guns do not leave behind marks, called striations, that are as unique as those created by more conventional designs.

The FBI, he said, even considers that bullets fired from guns with polygonal rifling to be “not measurable” and “not subject to individual comparison.”

“I disagree,” Walsh said.

Sultan pressed on, pointing out that Glock made changes to guns at the behest of the Miami-Dade Police Department to make their bullets easier to compare. But that work was done only on 9mm weapons, not on .45-calibers.

Sultan suggested that because Walsh had looked at the shell casings first and determined that they were from a Glock that he made a leap when he examined the four bullets and concluded they were from the same gun.

And he suggested that Walsh’s report of his examination failed to acknowledge in his report that the bullets fired by Glocks typically don’t leave easily identifiable marks on them.

That led to a long back and forth.

“There’s nothing in your report that makes reference to how unusual it is to see striations on a bullet fired through a polygonal rifling system, is there?” Sultan asked.

“Correct,” Walsh answered.

“Did that seem important to you, sir?” Sultan asked.

“Not necessarily,” Walsh said.

“Didn’t seem important enough to include it in your report?” Sultan asked.

“No,” Walsh said.

“Were you trying to hide that information, sir?” Sultan asked.

“No,” Walsh said.

A moment later, Bomberg rose to ask a new round of questions.

“I suppose if you were trying to hide it, you wouldn’t have taken photographs, right?” Bomberg asked, his voice rising.

“I wasn’t trying to hide it,” Walsh said.

“Right,” Bomberg continued. “You put them on the microscope right next to each other and then photographed them at the very time when you were making the observations, and you turned it over to everybody who wanted it, right?”

“Correct,” Walsh said.

Prosecutors allege that Lloyd was killed with a Glock Model 21, a large, dark semiautomatic pistol capable of holding a magazine with up to 13 bullets.

The ballistics testimony came after two days in which jurors heard from two housekeepers for Hernandez who described seeing guns in Hernandez’s home in the weeks before Lloyd’s death. They each described seeing a large handgun — one said it was black, one said it was black or dark gray.

Jurors also heard from a third housekeeper who saw Hernandez’s fiancée carry a large black trash bag out of their home and to a car the day after Lloyd’s death. Prosecutors allege that Jenkins hid a box in that trash bag that included the murder weapon, and jurors saw video from the former NFL star’s home surveillance system that showed three different angles of her carrying the bag.

The video backed the assertion of prosecutors that the bag was big enough and heavy enough to have carried a box with a gun in it.

Jenkins, who has been granted immunity and is expected to be called by prosecutors to testify, was in court Wednesday for the first time in more than a week, sitting in the front row behind Hernandez next to a ballistics expert hired by the defense.

Hernandez has separately been indicted on multiple murder and assault charges in a July 16, 2012, shooting in South Boston that left two men dead and another wounded.

In the Boston killings, prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez became enraged after a man bumped him on a nightclub dance floor, spilling his drink, and failed to apologize. They alleged that Hernandez later followed the man and his friends as they drove away from the club, then pulled up next to their car at a stoplight and opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver, killing Daniel De Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, and wounding another man.

That trial originally was scheduled to begin May 28, but the judge there indicated recently he would push it back given the anticipated length of the trial in the Lloyd case. No new trial date has been set.