Lyle Boicken, a retired forensic analyst with the Illinois State Police, took the stand as an expert witness Tuesday in the ongoing murder trial of Donol Clark for the 2012 death of Gena Chiodo.
Boicken ran multiple rounds of tests on blood samples collected from throughout the house.
Blood swabbed from the living room, bathroom and den all came from a single female source, Boicken said.
“And did that single source profile match Gena Chiodo?” asked prosecutor Cheryl Galvin.
“Yes,” Boicken said.
Chiodo was reported missing in October 2012 after failing to show up to work, and officers were dispatched to the Calumet City home she shared with Clark, her boyfriend, for a well-being check. They eventually forced entry when no one answered the door, though Clark was home, according to officer testimony.
Inside, they found what appeared to be numerous bloodstains, as well as evidence that some areas of the house had been recently cleaned. A rug, shower curtain and articles of women’s clothing that appeared to be bloodstained were found in a trash can in the alley, officers testified.
Boicken testified that he’d performed chemical analysis on all of those items to verify the stains were blood, including on a gold necklace.
In other areas of the house, bloodstains were found to contain blood from two people, with the major source matching Chiodo, Boicken said.
Chiodo’s partially decomposed body was found in a wooded area outside Lowell, Indiana in December 2012.
“The skull and teeth were used to positively identify Gena Chiodo using dental records,” Galvin said.
Cook County Judge Carl Boyd will issue the verdict in the bench trial, which was set to continue Wednesday. Clark’s attorneys said that after the prosecution concludes its case, they plan to begin the defense presentation on June 10 at the Cook County courthouse in Markham.
A group of friends and supporters of Chiodo have attended every day since the trial began in early March with a week of testimony. It was paused for about three weeks before one more day of testimony from a bloodstain expert March 27.
Some are frustrated with the slow pace, especially for a case that has already taken more than 13 years to go to trial.
“It’s just been a long, long time,” said Chiodo’s friend Donna Wuchter. “Someday it’ll be over.”
Tuesday would have been Chiodo’s late father’s birthday, Wuchter said.
Clark’s attorneys concurred the case was long overdue for trial, though they declined to comment on specifics of the trial’s progress.
“It’s been a long time,” said defense attorney Ziad Alnaqib. “We needed to get it started and going and, hopefully, finished soon.”
elewis@chicagotribune.com
