DNA testing could net new trial for man convicted of double murder

A man convicted of murder in a 1991 double homicide in El Paso County has asked for a new trial based on DNA evidence turned up by the same scientists who cleared a Fort Collins man wrongly imprisoned for almost a decade.
Timothy J. Kennedy, 52, is serving two life sentences without parole at the Limon Correctional Facility.
He was convicted in 1997 of shooting 15-year-old Jennifer Carpenter and her 37-year-old companion Steve Staskiewicz inside a west-side trailer the two shared.
The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the convictions in 2000.
Kennedy claims his attorney Kenneth Dresner blew the case. But he also claims he has new evidence, namely DNA on the victim's clothes and on other items in the trailer that doesn't match Kennedy's, according to his court-appointed attorneys John Dicke and Kathleen Carlson. That DNA evidence was uncovered by Richard and Selma Eikelenboom of Holland. The forensic scientists uncovered exonerating DNA evidence in the Tim Masters murder case. The Fort Collins man was released this year after being imprisoned for more than nine years.
"He (Richard Eikelenboom) is on the cutting edge of skin cell DNA work," Dicke said.
The motion will be heard before 4th Judicial District Judge Thomas Kane starting Tuesday.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Robyn Cafasso said prosecutors will oppose the motion.
"We believe the evidence supports the convictions and sentences," she said.
The hearing could last all week.
"Our burden is very difficult to overturn a criminal conviction," Dicke said. "Masters had to go through living hell to get his overturned."
Kennedy has maintained his innocence since he was arrested by El Paso County sheriff's detective Mark Finley in Arvada in 1995.
Finley, who no longer works for the Sheriff's Office, couldn't be reached for comment.
Staskiewicz and Carpenter had lived together for about a year after the teenager's mother granted Staskiewicz custody. Carpenter had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a couple just four months before the killings, and speculation at the time was that the two were gunned down because they planned to testify at the rape trial a month later.
Ample evidence showed that Charles Stroud and Rebecca Corkins tried to intimidate Carpenter into not testifying, Dicke said.
Stroud is serving a 50-year prison sentence for kidnapping and raping Carpenter. Corkins was released from prison after a 10-year prison sentence imposed on her in 1991.
Dan Zook, who has been appointed by newly elected District Attorney Dan May to serve as his assistant, tried the case in 1997.
"This was a horrendous crime," he said.
Zook said the judge "bent over backwards" to allow Kennedy to present evidence of alternate suspects.
"He had at his disposal a very experienced defense investigator and one of the most experienced defense attorneys available," Zook said. "In spite of that, we overwhelmingly established his guilt."
But Dicke said Kennedy's attorney Dresner did a "horrible" job.
To get a conviction overturned "You've got to really have horrible police work, horrible defense work and some DNA evidence to show that you didn't do it," Dicke said.
Dresner, who no longer lives in the state, could not be reached for comment.
Some of the most damaging evidence against Kennedy was the fact that bullets used to kill the couple matched bullets found in Kennedy's apartment - and that his gun fired them, Zook said.
But Dicke claims Kennedy lent Stroud and Corkins - his friends - a gun for protection against people trying to hurt them and that gun was used to kill the couple.
"They were scared for their lives. Over the course of a week, he gave them three guns. One of those guns was used as the murder weapon and all of a sudden (he's) charged with first-degree murder. That's the tragedy of it," Dicke said. "This is the Tim Masters case in almost every respect."