During a pretrial hearing Monday for Jesse Matthew, the man charged with murdering a University of Virginia student, evidence came to light that countered one of the defense's main arguments.
Former Louisa County detective Buck Garner and 13 other witnesses testified at a motions hearing in Albemarle County, Va. for the murder case of Hannah Graham. Garner testified his police dog picked up Graham's scent on Matthew's car door and in the 34-year-old's apartment, according to WTOP.
A police bloodhound handler, Garner also testified his dog found Graham's scent at an industrial park nearby, The Washington Post reported. The former detective also said his dog's reaction to the scent indicated there were secretions of adrenaline and fear.
The defense has maintained Graham was not in Matthew's apartment and that police wrongfully obtained search warrants based on skewed and omitted information, Reuters reported. Judge Cheryl Higgins ruled the police did not misrepresent evidence to obtain a warrant and stated the few inconsistencies were simply a result of the rush "to find Hannah Graham alive."
Matthew's credit card receipts from the night in Sept. 2014 Graham was last seen alive, in addition to witness testimony, placed him in the same bar as the UVA sophomore, WTOP reported. About a month after she disappeared, her remains turned up on an abandoned piece of property in Albemarle County.
After police brought Matthew into custody on an arrest warrant for Graham's abduction, he was indicted for the 2009 murder of Morgan Harrington, a student at Virginia Tech who went missing as well. He was also convicted of the abduction, sexual assault, and attempted murder of a woman in Fairfax in 2005, for which he was sentenced to three life terms.
