The Mary Ann Powell Case
In the spring of 1996, a year and a half after a pregnant Mary Ann Powell was reported missing by her husband Warren, her body turned up in a bag imbedded in an ice chunk floating in the Hudson River.
| |  | |
| |
Performing the autopsy, Dr. Barbara Chaitin determined that Mary Ann had been strangled. Inside the bag (seen above) were 90 pounds of rocks, as well as maple seed pods that Dr. Norman Weeden (an Assoc. Professor of Plant Genetics at Cornell) determined came from a tree at the apartment complex where the Powells lived.
| |
After Dr. Martin Glickman (from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) discovered ribbed marks on a boat seat (above) matching those on the bag (seen right), Warren was arrested.
| |  | |
At his trial it was learned he had been taking Criminal Justice classes at a local community college. His professor remembered telling his class about a "perfect" crime: one fisherman kills another, weighs down the body, and waits for the fish to devour the evidence. Warren was found guilty of second-degree murder -- and sentenced 25 years to life.
| |
|
