'I have to live with that': Sudbury police officer made 'mistake' that led to first arrest in Sweeney murder

Todd Zimmerman took a deep breath on the witness stand when he was asked to think back to Feb. 10, 1998.

"I'll never get over this," the retired police officer told a Sudbury courtroom on Wednesday. 

That morning, Zimmerman was fingerprinting three people who had been arrested overnight, including a man named John Fetterly.

The thumbprint looked a lot like one investigators had seen two weeks earlier on the cash register at the Adults Only Video store, where 23-year-old Renée Sweeney was stabbed to death.

Zimmerman consulted with his colleagues in the forensic unit and they confirmed it as a match, which led to Fetterly being arrested and charged with murder. 

"My mistake was I did not take enough time to verify it. I have to live with that," Zimmerman told the jury. 

The following day, taking a closer look at the prints, he saw eight points where they were similar, but he saw other patterns that "I'd have difficulty explaining in court."

On Feb. 12, 1998, the charges against Fetterly were dropped and he was released.

Now, 25 years later, the Sudbury police are saying that thumbprint found on the cash register in the video store, made visible by Sweeney's blood, is a match to Steven Wright, currently on trial for second-degree murder.

Wright's lawyer Michael Lacy said during his cross-examination that he didn't want to "belabour" Zimmerman's "professional embarrassment," but did draw a parallel to his own client.

"Even well-intentioned people, thinking they have found the key, the answer to a case, can make grave mistakes and people can get arrested as a consequence, correct?" Lacy asked

"Correct," Zimmerman answered.

Zimmerman also testified about a moment, the day following the murder in the bathroom of the video store, when he could suddenly see the word "Brooks" appear on the floor.

He told the court that he had sprayed a special chemical called leuco-malachite green that reacts with blood and other bodily fluids and turns green.

Zimmerman said he found traces of blood in the sink, on the soap dispenser and in several footsteps from those Brooks running shoes on the floor in the bathroom of the store.

He testified that he had to drive to Peterborough and back the day after the murder to borrow some of the chemical from the OPP, which Sudbury police did not have in stock. 

The defence pointed out that several items from the bathroom, including a coffee cup, had been moved before he searched for blood and suggested that what he found suggested that the killer took some time to wash up.

The defence also questioned why there are no photographs of the blood that showed up on the door out of the store after being sprayed with the chemical. 

Another group of police officers told the court Wednesday that they had followed a tracking dog from the Adults Only Video store and could see "obvious blood stains" on the teal jacket and white gloves they found in the bush.

Retired officer Scott Grenough told the court that he remembered the jacket and gloves being "stuffed in" between some rocks off a trail through a wooded area leading between Walford Road and the health unit parking lot.

But the defence suggested, after showing him photographs from Jan. 27, 1998 of the jacket sitting on the snow in front of the rocks, that it could be a false memory 25 years later, and Grenough agreed.

Later in the day, the court heard there was an extensive search, including the use of a flexible snake-like camera, of that bush area in May 1998 once the snow had melted to try to locate a murder weapon, which was never found. 

The defence asked several questions of the police witnesses about the things they did not find, including a knife or any of the items later discovered to be missing from the video store, including three pornographic magazines and two sex toys.

The defence has said that Steven Wright, who was 18 at the time, admits to being in the store that morning, but found Sweeney stabbed to death, attempted to help her and then fled from the scene, discarding his blood-stained clothes along the way. 

The 43-year-old, who is facing a charge of second-degree murder, is expected to take the stand in his own defence later in the trial.