‘You’re going to have to call this boy’s mother’ Focus shifts to the cover-up on the third day of Johnson trial

PALMER — The third day of the trial of Dominic Johnson, one of four accused in the murder of Palmer teen David Grunwald on November 13, 2016, ended abruptly Wednesday. After prosecutors called three witnesses to the stand, the testimony of the fourth witness ended before it became substantial.

Following District Attorney Roman Kalytiak’s opening arguments on Monday that portrayed Johnson as a catalyst to the crimes, Tuesday was focused on examining the evidence surrounding the weapons used in the brutal beating in a travel trailer camper and the subsequent murder of Grunwald. Wednesday’s evidence was focused around the cover-up efforts following the murder. David Kanaris, Assistant Chief of the Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Lab, began to detail the process of testing swabs collected from the trailer for traces of DNA. Johnson’s attorney, Lyle Stohler, objected to information provided by Kanaris, as he did not have copies of the notes that Kanaris was consulting during his testimony.

Stohler objected twice to Kanaris and five times during day three of the trial. His initial objection was to the qualification of Kanaris as an expert in bioscreening. A new report had been issued on the bioscreening of the shower curtain and mesh window cover seized from the travel trailer. Kalytiak claimed that questions would not concern the new report that Stohler did not have a copy of, and that Kanaris needed to give testimony on Wednesday to help provide groundwork for the prosecution’s further witness testimony. Kanaris’ testimony has been postponed. Stohler had received three pages of reports, but had not received the nine pages of bench notes that Kanaris was referring to.

Each of the 16 jurors got a chance to examine the Holiday Vacationer trailer, that sat on the Almandinger property the night Grunwald was murdered. Before the jurors arrived in the sally port where the trailer was parked, Johnson dragged his feet while entering the room and leaned against the wall. Johnson wore a purple striped shirt with no tie and black pants, fastened with a brown Louis Vuitton belt with LV logos around the belt and a large LV belt buckle with brown shoes. He kept his eyes forward and did not react to any of the jurors investigations of the trailer, but whispered with his attorney briefly.

The trailer had been parked on the Almandinger’s property the night of Nov. 13. The bathroom is a small room to the left of the doorway at the back of the trailer. The front of the trailer was stuffed with belongings including syrup, cider, blankets, and a fan. Jurors were allowed to touch items inside the trailer, and most entered, spent a few seconds, and exited. Just one juror spent several minutes examining various items within the trailer. One juror examined the floor upon entering the trailer, and another examined the orange paisley patterned drapes over the door window. When Grunwald went to the Almandinger’s house to spend time with David Evans and Erick Almandinger, he ended up in the trailer with Johnson and others, where they smoked marijuana. Grunwald was locked in the bathroom, and when he was let out, he was pistol-whipped and beaten.

Prior to the trailer examination, the state called Jamie Nading to detail her examination of evidence collected from the trailer used in building the case against Johnson. Nading also responded to the scene where Grunwald’s body had been left, looking for blood stains in the trailer. Nading, like many of the state’s witnesses, was qualified as an expert in crime scene processing. Nading does not spend the majority of her time on the job at crime scenes, but conducted various tests searching for blood in the trailer to help determine what happened. She detailed the methods utilized for collecting the six swabs that resulted in a presumptive positive for blood. Small Q-tip like cotton swabs called hemastix are removed from packaging, moistened with sterile water, and rotated around the possible blood stain to collect a sample. They were then returned to their own individual packaging and sent to a lab. Nading collected six swabs, and another presumed blood stain was not found to contain DNA. Stohler questioned Nading on the patterns in the DNA samples collected, and wondered why, if there was supposedly a large quantity of blood, that there was no pooling of blood on the floor.

“No I’m not a blood spatter expert,” Nading said.

Nading detailed the various substances that can return false positives on the presumptive positive. The hemastix change color when reacting with blood, and once collected, are sent to a lab for further testing. Bleach was listed as one of the chemicals that can return a false positive, as well as various fruits and ketchup. Nading’s testing continued on Dec. 1, 2016, with a chemical called blue star, which helps to illuminate blood stains by making them glow in the dark so that examiners could test any stains that they may have missed with the naked eye. Kalytiak made his case on Wednesday surrounding the efforts to destroy evidence linking Johnson to the murder. Aside from the blood stains, Nading’s coworker noticed white residue on the floor.

“I believe she took the photograph to show the visible residue that was there,” Nading said.

Following the beating and murder, the inside of the camper was doused in bleach, and a rug from the camper went missing. Though bleach is one of the chemicals that can result in a false positive on the hemastix, Nading was questioned as to if DNA samples could still be collected after being exposed to bleach.

“Through the reading I have done, I know it has been found that you can still get a DNA profile from areas that have been treated with cleaning agents, but I can’t say for sure,” Nading said.

Kyle Pratt, a neighbor of the Almandinger family, was called to the stand to give testimony about what he witnessed on the night of the Nov. 13 and the next morning. Pratt said he had finished work and was exiting the steam house on his property when he overheard Rodney Almandinger speaking to someone on his property. Pratt did not get a good look at who Almandinger was speaking to, but noted that they were not full grown men.

“I heard a conversation from the Almandingers and it was, what I heard was Rodney speaking from underneath his car port. He mentioned, he was saying you're going to have to call this boy’s mother,” Pratt said.

Pratt had the day off of work on Nov. 14, and went to cut firewood at around 9:30 a.m. Pratt noticed a distinct smell when he fired up his chainsaw to cut wood. He then split the logs with a maul and noticed that the smell remained when he had finished. Kalytiak connected the weather on the morning of Nov. 14 with the snow that had fallen on Grunwald’s body that had been left at Mile 7.3 of Knik River Road. Pratt recalled that the morning of Nov. 14 was clear, with very little wind, and that the smoke he was smelling hung in the air around his property.

“There was a heavy smell of different chemicals in the air and a smell of smoke. It was a really different kind of smell that kind of raised alarm to me,” Pratt said.

Pratt had difficulty recollecting if he knew that there was a rug that went missing in connection to the investigation. He believed that he had seen a post on the internet, but it could have been an article in the newspaper, leading his suspicion to believe that the smoke he was smelling was the smoldering rug. Pratt spoke to police on Dec. 7 and provided his recollection of the night of Nov. 13 and morning of Nov. 14.

“It was a strong smell of, it was like a heavy smell of plastic in the air, like burning plastic mixed with just a chemical smell,” Pratt said.

Stohler questioned what heat Pratt kept his steam house at, and if he was dehydrated upon exiting. Stohler also wondered if the smoke that Pratt saw came from his two-stroke chainsaw engine.

“I would think that it was possibly the rug that was burning and casting off a smell of burning plastic,” Pratt said. “I had smelled that smell before I started running my chainsaw and it was still there after I was done running my chainsaw, and there’s a pretty distinct smell to my chainsaw.”

The prosecution called on the testimony of Alaska State Trooper Shawn Norman, who collected evidence believed to be the burnt remnants of the trailer’s rug. Nearly nine months after David Grunwald was murdered, Norman was called out to a trail down a hill off of Kangaroo Court in Palmer, just down the street from Pratt and the Almandingers. David’s parents, Ben and Edie Grunwald, had discovered charred cloth remnants in an area five feet in diameter off the trail on July 15, 2017. Norman had detailed photos he had taken with his phone of pieces of what appeared to be a rug and burnt items of clothing. Norman also collected a hat that was some distance away from the rest of the remnants, but he could not place how far away it was. Norman showed 10 photos that he took before collecting the evidence. He then turned the evidence over to other troopers working the case.

Stohler called into question the proximity of the area to the extended trails from the Crevasse Morraine trail system. He also asked Norman if he had tested any of the items for blood or DNA. Norman had not tested any of the items, but handed it over. After Stohler had questioned Norman as to if he did or did not test the evidence, Kalytiak asked Norman if it was his call.

“No, my responsibility was to chain of custody and to put it into evidence,” Norman said.

The trial continues Thursday.

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.