Criminal
Jun. 1, 2001
New Evidence, Old Crime Still Debated
SAN FRANCISCO - Aging underworld figures, a tangled pattern of evidence, nebulous motives and DNA testing will feature in the trial of a 14-year-old murder case that opened this week in San Francisco and seems certain to challenge the jury's fortitude.
SAN FRANCISCO - Aging underworld figures, a tangled pattern of evidence, nebulous motives and DNA testing will feature in the trial of a 14-year-old murder case that opened this week in San Francisco and seems certain to challenge the jury's fortitude.
"You will learn that almost everyone you will hear from, including the police, has lied," said Deputy Public Defender Michael Burt in opening statements to the jury Tuesday.
"Many are guys who have been in prison their entire lives, and the best you can say is that they have a very negative view of law enforcement. But you'll have to determine these people's credibility."
All that is known for certain is that in late October 1987, someone stabbed 56-year-old Virginia Lowery in the head with an ice pick and strangled her with a ligature.
The retired phone company supervisor, living in a spotless Excelsior District home, had 15 years earlier married William Lowery, a repeat offender who made a specialty of supermarket robberies and spent most of the 1950s and '60s in jail serving as an accountant to the Mexican Mafia's jailhouse drug trade. As a result of his career choices and associates, he had an assortment of unsavory contacts.
One of them, prosecutors allege, was Robert Nawi, now 58, whose attorney acknowledges he has long been involved in drug dealing.
He was picked up by police following a North Beach bar fight in 1998. When police ran a routine check of Nawi's fingerprints against those from unsolved cases dating into the '80s, Nawi's prints matched some found on Lowery's water heater and car. When police then tested material that had been taken from on Lowery's fingernails, they found a match with Nawi's DNA.
While the evidence against Nawi appears convincing, the timing of events is far from clear. Burt asserts that Nawi and others had gathered at a party thrown by William Lowery in earlier 1987, before Virginia was killed, and will present evidence that he was seen leaning on the water heater where detectives located his prints.
Burt also said he will present a Mexican police officer who says he remembers suckering Nawi out of $1,000 in a game of pool in Mexico around the dates that Lowery was killed.
"Experts can't tell you when fingerprints are laid down," said Burt. "And if those fingerprints were laid down not in connection with the crime they are useless.
There is no identifiable reason why Nawi would want to kill Virginia Lowery, said Burt, but he implied that others had incentive.
"You will learn that many people were William Lowery's enemies and that there were people who had access to his house who made threats against him and his family," Burt said.
Prosecutor Elliot Beckelman said the case is a "whodunit" with all indicators pointing to Nawi. In his opening statement, Beckelman recounted that Nawi lied to detectives in 1998, telling them that he had never met William Lowery, had never seen Virginia's car and never set foot in the Excelsior.
In fact, the prosecution contends, San Francisco police pulled over Nawi's wife behind the wheel of Virginia Lowery's Cadillac; Nawi had had previously transcribed William Lowery's phone number into two phone books; and phone records show they exchanged numerous calls in 1997.
Burt said the police lied too, when they questioned Nawi after he came under suspicion in the murder. He said they claimed to be interested only in the bar fight when they were really angling for information about the murder.
DNA technology may seem complex, Beckelman said, but the jury will be able to comprehend it. Along with the fingerprints, said Beckelman, this evidence would show that Nawi was the killer.
The trial, which will include videotaped testimony by William Lowery from Mexico, where he is recovering from two strokes, is expected to last about six weeks.
Robert Selna
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