Testimony: Bloody boot prints in retired Villanova prof’s home led to handyman’s arrest

A Philadelphia jury on Thursday heard testimony by police forensic scientists of DNA and fingerprint evidence that authorities say links a handyman to the 2013 fatal stabbing of a retired Villanova University astronomy professor in her Germantown apartment.

One scientist, Benjamin Levin, testified that Carol Ambruster’s DNA was found on a size 8 black boot recovered from Jose Diaz’s home. Another, Patrick Raytik, told jurors that a fingerprint found on a belt worn by Ambruster, 69, when she was killed matched Diaz’s right-middle-finger print.

The forensic evidence is key to the prosecution’s allegation that Diaz, now 48, fatally stabbed Ambruster in her second-floor apartment at 5501 Wayne Ave. on Dec. 9, 2013. The 8-inch knife blade was left stuck in her throat as she lay on the bloody kitchen floor.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Grenell contended at the start of the trial Tuesday that the killing was done during a robbery, “all for a couple of bucks.”

Defense attorney Gina Amoriello has countered that her client did not kill Ambruster, and pointed the blame toward the victim’s roommate, Daniel Sapon, whose DNA was found underneath the victim’s left-hand fingernails. Amoriello on Friday is expected to call to the witness stand a defense expert on DNA and bloodstain analysis after the prosecution rests its case.

Testifying Thursday, former police Homicide Detective Francis Kane told jurors that Ambruster’s body appeared to have been dragged from the front hallway into the pantry, as evidenced by smeared bloodstains.

Kane, who had been assigned to the case and is now retired, said bloody boot prints in the hallway led authorities to arrest Diaz. Police also confirmed that Sapon had been at a Queen Village store that evening, as he told police.

A few days after Sapon found Ambruster’s body in the four-bedroom apartment they shared, police executed a search warrant at Diaz’s home on the 100 block of West Hansberry Street in Germantown and recovered a pair of size 8 black boots from under his bed.

Levin testified that on Dec. 20, 2013, he determined that Ambruster’s DNA was found on a swab of a stain taken from the outside surface of one of the boots.

When police went to arrest Diaz that day, they found him at a Roxborough Salvation Army shelter, Kane told jurors.

Police Officer John Taggart of the Crime Scene Unit testified Wednesday that the bloody boot prints in the hallway were “rather small,” about a size 8. He showed jurors that the size and tread marks on the bottom of the boot recovered from under Diaz’s bed matched the size and markings of a boot print in Ambruster’s hallway.

Jurors also have seen video surveillance from Dec. 9, 2013, which showed Ambruster’s SUV returning to her apartment building’s parking lot at 5:53 p.m. The prosecutor has said that was about the time when Diaz repeatedly stabbed Ambruster in her apartment after she entered.

Sapon, 69, testified Tuesday that after he left work that day, he returned by bus to Germantown, arriving about 5:30 p.m., but didn’t go into the apartment building but to his car, parked on the street. He said he talked to someone on his cell phone, then drove to the Essene Market in Queen Village.

During Kane’s testimony Thursday, the prosecutor played a surveillance video from Essene, which showed Sapon in the store at 6:30 p.m.

Sapon said that after buying items at the store, he waxed his car windows to protect them from impending snow, then drove back to the apartment. There, he said, he found Ambruster on the kitchen floor and called 911. Not realizing that his 8:56 p.m. call to police went through, he went into the second-floor hallway and sought help from another resident, who also called 911.

The trial continues Friday before Common Pleas Court Judge J. Scott O’Keefe.