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LOGAN, Utah (AP) -- A trial has started for a man who was linked to the 1984 slaying of a service station attendant through DNA found in blood on a dollar bill.
Glenn Howard Griffin, 51, is charged with capital murder in the death of Bradley Newell Perry. Perry was working the graveyard shift at a convenience store in Brigham City when he was bludgeoned and stabbed to death on May 26, 1984.
Opening statements in the trial, which was moved to Logan because of pretrial publicity, were presented on Wednesday. Proceedings are scheduled to run several weeks.
Griffin was arrested in 2005. Police say DNA testing linked Griffin to blood found on a dollar bill, which they say he gave as change to two men while pretending to be an attendant at a gas pump just after the killing.
State prosecutor Brad Smith said something didn't seem right to the two men who were driving from Logan. "For one, the pumps were self-service and they expected to get out and pump their own gas," Smith said.
He said the men thought the transaction was odd, and they later noticed wet blood on a dollar bill they had received.
In 2005, technicians from the state crime lab removed a portion of the bill and analyzed the DNA material within it, matching it with that of Griffin.
Defense attorney Dee Smith said one of the two men sketched two images of the attendant that ran in newspapers in Brigham City, Ogden and Logan. "No one ever said, 'Hey, that looks like Glenn Griffin,"' Dee Smith told the jury.
Dee Smith also said the sketch did not portray the attendant wearing glasses, but he said Griffin has worn glasses since childhood.
Dee Smith said that of the fingerprints found on several items at the scene, none matched Griffin.
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Information from: Standard-Examiner and The Herald Journal
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
