Note the ages of the victim and her loving son. Her life was ruined early
on.
Dr. Neal Haskell doesn't know what went wrong with the "maggot motel," but
the occupants were "DOA," he said.
Haskell, one of the founders of forensic entomology, was in York County to
testify Friday as an expert witness at the murder trial of William and
Frances Donohue.
The Airville couple, formerly from Maryland, is accused of neglecting the
medical and health needs of Bernadette Leiben, William's 87-year-old
mother.
Leiben died in the Donohues' home May 20, 2004.
Frances Donohue called 911 to re****t her mother had "passed peacefully."
That was not the scene prosecutor Tim Barker described in his opening
statement Tuesday in the York County Judicial Center.
He said Leiben died "a painful death that took days, possibly weeks."
Barker and the commonwealth say the Donohues ignored Leiben's needs,
allowing small bedsores to become open festering wounds and deep necrotic
patches of dead tissue that were feasted on by maggots.
Infection from those sores and the massive ulcerations that were the
result
of Leiben's being left to lie in her own waste finally killed the woman,
Barker said.
Barker called Haskell to determine, if he could tell, by the larva stage
of
the maggots, how long Leiben had been neglected.
Haskell last testified in York in December 2005 at the murder trial of
Damien Schlager, a married Lancaster man who killed his girlfriend and
dumped her body in the area of Funkhouser Quarry.
In a strange twist, Haskell initially was suggested for the Schlager trial
by deputy prosecutor Scott McCabe, who later left the district attorney's
office and now is working for the firm defending William Donohue.
On Friday, Haskell -- a professor at Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer,
Ind., and the author of "Entomology & Death: A Procedural Guide" --
instructed the Donohue jury on "The Life Cycle of the Blowfly."
Haskell's testimony -- which came after several hours of dry testimony on
bank records and which was expected to be
William- Donohue (York County Prison)gruesome -- was punctuated with
humor.
"A lot of people don't know that maggots are kid flies," he said. "A
mother
blowfly can smell a dead organism, something we couldn't smell if we were
standing right next to it, a mile and a half away.
"She spends a little time flying around determining, 'Is this where I want
to put my kids?'"
Haskell said blowfly larva -- in this case, the green bottle fly -- feed
on
carrion, the rotting flesh of any vertebrate.
Houseflies, which he also found evidence of in the autopsy samples sent to
him by state police, are attracted to garbage, including urine and feces.
"I was able to determine when the mother fly came by and deposited her
eggs," Haskell testified.
Haskell placed the minimum dates for the blowflies' egg-laying between May
14 and 17, or three to six days before Leiben died.
He also placed the minimum dates for the houseflies' egg-laying between
May
5 through 8, or 12 to 15 days before her death.
He said he relied on the preserved autopsy specimens he received rather
than
the live ones, packed with beef liver as a food source, which unexpectedly
arrived dead.
Of the blowflies, he said: "The male and the female have ***. The female
goes off and lays her eggs. The male goes and does whatever he does, gets
hit by a car or a flyswatter.
"When the little teeny tiny maggots hatch out, they will go straight to
the
food source."
In this case, the food source was Leiben's rotting flesh and muscle tissue
on her heels, left knee and upper right arm.
Haskell said he used his expertise of more than 20 years in the field and
the ambient temperatures around Airville in the days before May 20, 2004,
to
reach his conclusions.
Neither Thomas L. Kearney III, Frances Donohue's attorney, nor Rick
Robinson, who is defending William Donohue, challenged Haskell's findings.
Both attorneys have argued their clients' treatment of Leiben might have
been neglectful but was not intentional and so does not rise to the level
of
murder.
AT A GLANCE
The victim: Bernadette Leiben, 87, formerly of Baltimore died May 20,
2004,
in a home in Airville that she shared with her son and daughter-in-law. An
autopsy determined the bedridden woman died of multiple infections brought
on by neglect.
The accused: Leiben's son, William J. Donohue, 73, and daughter-in-law,
Frances Ann Donohue, 62, were arrested March 14, 2007, and charged with
murder and conspiracy.
The trial: Dr. Neal Haskell, one of the founders of forensic entomology
who
has aided police investigations worldwide, testified Friday that maggots
collected at autopsy showed Leiben's wounds had not been treated for days,
if not weeks, before her death. He also said the hatched pupa of a
housefly
suggested there was urine and/or feces around Leiben's body.
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