A DNA expert testified Wednesday that evidence recovered from a 14-year-old Bartlett High School student who was raped and sodomized before being suffocated matched that of murder defendant Skyler Chambers.
On a police videotape played at his trial, Chambers said he never sexually assaulted Nassim Davoodi of Carol Stream.
But Tamara Camp, a DNA expert with the DuPage County crime lab, testified in the Rolling Meadows branch of Cook County Circuit Court that the DNA could be matched by only 1 in 695 quadrillion people, many times the amount of the world’s population.
Davoodi was raped and killed on May 31, 2002, and buried in a shallow grave in Long Grove, in Lake County.
Chambers, 23, of California and Turner Reeves III, 24, of Hanover Park are charged with murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, child abduction and concealment of a homicide. If convicted, prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty for both men. Reeves’ trial is scheduled later this year.
Chambers’ videotaped statement to police on June 5, 2002, contains graphic details of Davoodi’s death in the back seat of Reeves’ car.
He said he saw her outside Bartlett High School the day before she disappeared and said he and Reeves expressed a sexual interest in her.
Chambers said on the tape he was the one chosen to approach Davoodi, claiming he had “game” and that he was a “charmer who got all the sex he wanted.”
At one point, Assistant State’s Atty. Jeffrey Kendall asked on the tape, “You chose her?”
Chambers responded with a laugh, saying, “Yeah, just like that.”
The next day she accepted a ride with them and Chambers said in the 33-minute videotaped statement that they drove straight to Reeves’ garage.
Chambers said he never sexually assaulted Davoodi but was present when Reeves did. On the tape he recounted that she fought and said: “Let me go. Don’t do that to me.”
Chambers said he helped hold her down in the back seat while Reeves choked and suffocated her. He said she was thrashing and that he had to pin her legs against a front seat with his legs.
When asked in the videotape if it took five to 10 minutes to kill her, he answered, “No, about 15.”
Chambers said that at one point, when Reeves thought Davoodi was dead, she gasped for air and the suffocating resumed.
Chambers denied several times on the tape having sex with the victim. But Camp told the jury that Chambers’ DNA was found on two sets of swabs from the body and from her pants.
Reeves’ DNA also was matched to samples.
Chambers said Davoodi left them on her own because she was late getting home. But when police showed him photos at the burial site, he exclaimed, “You found her,” Kendall said.
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Another videotape shown in court Wednesday was of Chambers having a 10-minute “seizure” in a jail hallway on Nov. 4, 2002.
A camera was operating because Chambers had offered to pay a sheriff’s deputy $200 to help him claim he suffered from mental illness.
The deputy, who had reported the bribe attempt, was seen on the hidden camera talking to Chambers about the purported success of the seizure ploy.
The trial is expected to end Friday.
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