Defense attorney in Kansas cold case blasts ‘laughable’ last-second emergence of eyewitness

TOPEKA — The defense attorney in a high-profile double-homicide case blasted prosecutors for presenting a new witness who emerged at the end of trial to claim for the first time she saw someone who looked like Dana Chandler leave the scene of the crime in 2002.

Tom Bath, who represents Chandler, told jurors during closing arguments Thursday in Shawnee County District Court that the incredible last-second testimony was the latest example of an un-American effort to convict his client.

Chandler faces two first-degree murder charges in the killing of her ex-husband, Mike Sisco, and his fiancee, Karen Harkness, in the basement of a southwest Topeka duplex. The Kansas Supreme Court threw out her conviction from a 2012 trial because the prosecutor in that case lied about nonexistent evidence.

The case went to the jury Thursday afternoon following three weeks of testimony in the retrial.

Charles Kitt, the prosecutor, told jurors to consider the rage Chandler had directed at her former spouse in the years before the killing, concerns raised by family and friends about Chandler’s behavior, and the flimsy alibi Chandler offered about driving around Colorado at the time of the killings.

Bath pointed to a litany of problems with the police investigation, including missing, destroyed and ignored evidence that could have benefited Chandler. Police, Bath said, had “tunnel vision” for Chandler from the start, and had lied about evidence to Chandler’s daughter to make her believe her mother was guilty.

And he took issue with Terri Anderson, who stepped forward after 20 years of silence to testify Wednesday.

Anderson, who lived in an apartment a block and a half away from the duplex where Sisco and Harkness were killed, said she heard gunshots about 11:30 p.m. and saw someone who looked like Chandler get in a car and leave. Her testimony doesn’t fit the timeline — Sisco and Harkness left a casino north of Topeka at 1:30 a.m. — and there is no record of the 911 call Anderson claimed to have made that night. Records show she made 911 calls on other days around the time of the killings.

Topeka police questioned neighbors in the days after the killings and filed reports about their conversations. Anderson told police about a suspicious vehicle she had seen a few days before the shootings, but she gave no indication that she heard a series of gunshots or that she saw anyone leave the area on the night the couple were killed.

Bath said the prosecutor should not have presented such “insulting” testimony by Anderson.

“Doesn’t your gut tell you, ‘Oh my gosh, what is going on here?’ ” Bath said to the jury.

The is a textbook case, Bath said, of why the framers of the U.S. Constitution set up a “presumption of innocence,” the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

“That should not happen in the United States of America,” Bath said. “It’s really like out of a movie. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable.”

Kitt told the jurors he wasn’t asking them to believe or disbelieve Anderson’s testimony, and that they weren’t here to punish police for their mistakes, “if mistakes were made.”

He focused the jury’s attention instead on the hostility Chandler had directed toward Sisco following a drawn-out divorce in 1997-98. Chandler was furious about losing custody of their children and being ordered to pay child support. In emails to her teenage daughter, Chandler repeatedly expressed her hatred of Sisco and his new lover.

Family and friends recalled Chandler’s extensive harassment in the years before the killings, when she took photos of Sisco and Harkness on a date, showed up unexpectedly at family gatherings, accosted Sisco and Harkness at a soccer game and after a school play, and called relentlessly — as often as 22 times in 31 minutes.

Police found no sign of forced entry or theft at the crime scene.

“From the beginning,” Kitt said, “I told you this case is about obsession, jealousy, rage. This is not a case that science can solve for us. This case is about obsession with Mike Sisco. Jealousy that Mike Sisco was able to move on with his life. Jealousy about the new relationship that Mike Sisco had formed. Jealousy about the relationship that Mike Sisco had with his kids. Rage because of all of that.”

In a phone call with her daughter in October 2002, Chandler asked if she ever thought about killing Sisco. When the daughter said no, Chandler interrupted.

“Honestly, I can say I did,” she said.

Kitt reminded the jury of what Chandler said after Sisco and Harkness were killed: “It’s all in God’s hands.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kitt said, “now it’s in your hands.”