Prade, with support from Innocence Network, will make case that bite-mark analysis could exonerate him in ex-wife's killing. But prosecutors say mountain of evidence still proves guilt
By Ed Meyer
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
LONDON, OHIO: He still has the bearing of a police commander and the charismatic voice of a seasoned public speaker, despite spending the past 11 years in a state penitentiary.
It is only when Douglas Prade begins talking about the woman who has believed in him for all those years — his sister, Caralynn Prade, a legal secretary from Pearland, Texas — that his voice begins to crack and tears fill his eyes.
''She has done everything for me in this case . . . everything . . . and it's just amazing,'' he said, barely able to get out the words during an interview at Madison Correctional Institution.
Douglas Evans Prade, now 63, said his sister has never wavered in her belief that he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of his ex-wife, Dr. Margo Prade, on the morning before Thanksgiving in 1997.
Next month, the case will be running on a more powerful level than brother-sister emotions.
It is scheduled for oral arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court on Prade's claim that the newest DNA testing methods used in the analysis of bite-mark evidence might reveal the killer's identity.
Prosecutors tied Prade to the bite mark in his 1998 trial primarily with the testimony of Dr. Thomas Marshall, a retired Akron dentist. Using photographs of the bite mark and comparing those to dental impressions of Prade's teeth, Marshall testified that the bite mark was Prade's.
He told the jury: ''Every mark lined up with every'' one of Prade's lower-front teeth.
Marshall's testimony, however, had nothing to do with the science of testing the bite mark for the killer's DNA.
The high court — with the exception
stressed Prade's convictions on six counts of wiretapping and the number of shots fired by the killer inside the van.
The Prades were divorced in April 1997 after 18 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters together.
Prosecutors at the trial hammered away at the theory that Prade was electronically stalking his ex-wife and killed her because he had lost control over her.
''I think that's what the jury went on, clearly,'' Kovach said.
She called it a classic murder case involving domestic violence.
''He was very possessive of her, and he had to know, through the wiretapping that he was doing, that she had a new relationship and she was about to announce her engagement to a lawyer in Columbus that she was seeing,'' Kovach said.
''I think in Prade's mind, their relationship hadn't ended. Usually, when there are multiple shots like this, it's an indication of anger, resentment, frustration, lack of control — all of the signs of a stalker or a person involved in domestic violence exerting dominance . . . over the victim.''
Former Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Mike Carroll, now in retirement, was co-counsel in Prade's trial. ''We got the right man, and we didn't screw it up,'' he said.
''The evidence is so compelling, and it's not based on DNA. When you look at the wiretapping he did . . . and all the things he told people about how much he hated her, that's pretty good evidence in total. The verdict came back in two or three hours after a lengthy trial, so there wasn't much issue with the jurors.''
Evidence piles up
Attorneys from both sides at Prade's trial called 52 witnesses in 12 days of testimony and offered 243 pieces of evidence in a case ''based almost solely on circumstantial evidence that was so compelling, jurors needed only four hours to return a guilty verdict,'' the Beacon Journal's 1998 story stated.
Caralynn Prade, however, said she sat through the entire trial and cannot understand why Summit County has so strongly resisted new DNA testing for all these years.
''Why not let somebody test the DNA? Why not? There has to be DNA in a bite mark,'' she said.
She also disputed the prosecution theory that her brother lost control when he realized he was about to lose his ex-wife and their two daughters to another man.
''I undoubtedly, without a smidgen of doubt, believe in Douglas' innocence. He would not have been capable of hurting his daughters' mother,'' she said.
Prade's two daughters, now in their 20s — one is a nurse in St. Louis, the other an aspiring singer in Los Angeles — exchange letters with him frequently, he said.
They were the focus of his last words in his prison interview before corrections officials led him back to his compound.
Prade said he has challenged the system for new DNA testing for so long ''because I need to get this baggage out of their lives.''
''I don't want my kids to go through the rest of their lives thinking I killed their mother,'' he said.
''And Margo, she deserves better. She deserves justice, because they screwed it up.''
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