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Expert: Killer cleaned bloody sceneBy Emanuella Grinberg  Donald Moringiello faces life in prison if convicted of slaying his wife and dumping her body. RELATED
(COURT TV) -- Small droplets of blood were found in the home of a Florida retiree who stands accused of killing his wife, but even the lead forensic investigator in the case has admitted he could not pinpoint when or how they got there. Forensic expert Harry Balke participated in an August 2002 search of the home of second-degree murder defendant Donald Moringiello. "Did you find anything consistent with Mrs. Moringiello being shot in the home?" defense attorney Joseph Viacava asked. "This was a cleaned-up scene, so it was difficult to make that assumption," Balke said. Lee County prosecutors contend that the retired aerospace engineer shot his wife, Hattie "Fern" Bergeler, four times in the chest in their home before tethering her body to cinderblocks and dumping her in the bay behind their upscale Fort Myers home. Balke offered similar testimony one year ago, when Moringiello first stood trial in August 2004 for his wife's death. The proceedings ended in a mistrial after jurors deadlocked 5-to-1 in favor of acquittal. In statements to the media following the mistrial, the jury foreperson cited the lack of evidence tying the murder to the home particularly evidence of blood found in the home. Balke testified Wednesday that he used Luminol -- a chemical agent that detects the presence of blood -- to reveal five droplets of blood in the couple's sunroom, near a sliding door that led to the backyard. "Here we have a good, strong reaction along the tile," he said, while jurors watched a videotape of the testing. "You can see the grout lines in the tiles." Smeared blood patternBalke also pointed out another small droplet on the coffee table in the middle of the sunroom, but said it was unrelated to the pattern on the floor. He also detected the presence of blood in the form of droplets in the couple's master bedroom and in their washing machine. But Moringiello's lawyers seized upon the scarcity of blood evidence, as they did in the previous trial, which they say makes it impossible for the shooting to have occurred in the Moringiello home. Balke said, however, that there was a distinctive smear pattern associated with the droplets in the sunroom, which he said indicated a clean-up effort on the killer's part. He said the clean-up would have occurred soon after the bloodshed. "If it were dry, it would not have wiped up and smeared," he said. During the same search, detectives trolling the waters behind the home found a magazine with a live round about 75 feet from the seawall. A few hours later, an investigator literally stumbled upon the murder weapon, which was later found to be registered in Moringiello's name. Kenneth Fulton, a member of Lee County Sheriff's Department's marine unit, told jurors that as he was exiting the water, he tripped on the murder weapon. "You wish they were all this easy?" asked defense lawyer Wilbur Smith, also a former mayor of Fort Myers. Paint chipsBergeler's body was found on July 18, 2002, floating face-down in the bay behind the home she shared with her husband of 12 years. Her body was weighed down by three cinderblocks attached by rope to her neck and legs. Balke said he found cinderblocks in the backyard path that seemed identical to those that were found attached to the victim. A forensic paint analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement corroborated his testimony. Laura Taylor told jurors that she compared the color, pigment and texture of paint chips detected on the set of blocks found on the victim with those that Balke collected from the home. "I found that the pigment characteristics in two different types of acrylic latex paints were consistent with the pigment characteristics of the paint found on the concrete blocks recovered at the residence," she said. Smith suggested the type of paint made it possible for the blocks found on the victim to be from anywhere. "Has acrylic paint become much more popular in the last 20 years?" Smith asked the witness. "Yes," Taylor answered. "But I wouldn't say they're the same." The defense will attempt to implicate the defendant's son, Doug Moringiello, who died from a heroin overdose in 2003, although their efforts will be limited. Outside the jury's presence Wednesday, Judge Jack Schoonover denied a request to let Doug Moringiello's toxicology reports into testimony. Schoonover said he would conduct more hearings outside the jury's presence to determine specifically what the defense can say about Doug Moringiello, who did not get along with his father's wife, according to other witnesses. 
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