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David Ray Camm is a former trooper of the Indiana State Police who spent 13 years in prison after being twice wrongfully convicted of the murders of his wife, Kimberly, and his children, Brad (7) and Jill (5), at their home in Georgetown, Indiana, on September 28, 2000. He was released from custody in 2013 after his third trial resulted in an acquittal.
Camm became a suspect because of an interpretation of bloodstain patterns on his clothing, as well as a number of leads and pieces of evidence that were later found to be unreliable or outright false. He was tried and found guilty of the murder, but his conviction was overturned in 2004 on the grounds that testimony about his marital infidelity had been prejudicial.
In 2005, forensic evidence identified a career criminal named Charles Boney as having been at the crime scene. Boney's modus operandi in previous crimes showed similarities to aspects of the murders. Boney had a history of stalking and attacking women, often stealing their shoes; Kim's shoes had been removed and placed neatly on top of her vehicle and she had a series of bruises and abrasions to her feet. The prosecution was widely criticized for the failure to find Boney prior to the first trial. They told the defense team in 2001 that the DNA had been run through CODIS and returned no matches. It was later discovered that Boney's DNA was entered into the system prior to the murders and would have returned a match if it had been run.
Boney gave a number of conflicting confessions, but eventually accused Camm of the murders, claiming he witnessed Camm shoot his family while he was at the home selling Camm a handgun. Camm was charged along with Boney as a co-conspirator, Boney was tried first and separately. Boney was convicted of the murders and sentenced to 225 years in prison. In 2006, Camm was found guilty on the murder charges at his retrial. Camm appealed, and the verdict was overturned on the grounds that the prosecution at the second trial had accused Camm of sexually molesting his 5-year-old daughter Jill, without producing evidence for the allegation.
Boney testified against Camm for the first time at the third trial, although his credibility was called into question when he was unable to describe the car Camm drove and also incorrectly described Camm's clothing on the night of the murder. Evidence was presented that Charles Boney's DNA was found on Kim's underpants, shirt, and broken-off fingernail; and on Jill's shirt, suggesting he physically attacked the family himself. Defense witnesses also testified that prosecution assertions about the stains were not widely accepted by others in the field of bloodstain analysis. It was also discovered that the blood spatter analyst Rob Stites, whose analysis had triggered the arrest, had falsified his credentials and did not work in the field of bloodstain pattern analysis at all. He had previously testified that he was a professor at Portland State University; it was discovered that he had no affiliation with the university. He testified in the third trial that he had perjured himself during the first two. Dr. Robert Shaler, who served on a committee for The National Academy of Sciences to evaluate forensic methods, testified that blood spatter pattern analysis was found to be unreliable in their studies. Another expert demonstrated that the pattern could be produced through transfer.
