A second court appearance is scheduled Monday for the man accused of killing Trudy Appleby. Although no remains have been located, prosecutors earlier filed murder charges against Jamison Fisher in the 29-year-old case.
A former prosecutor with extensive experience in these cases says this kind of case brings its own set of challenges to get a conviction.
“The most significant challenge in bringing these cases to trial is marshaling all that evidence,” said Tad DiBiase, a former homicide prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington D.C. “No-body murder cases tend to be circumstantial cases.”
DiBiase has collected information on more than 600 no body cases nationwide. He says the case against Fisher will be difficult because Trudy Appleby’s body hasn’t been located.
“In most no-body murder cases, they start off as missing persons cases and it’s never entirely clear whether the person is alive or not,” said DiBiase.
He says the age of the case further complicates things for prosecutors.
“Obviously the longer a case goes on, the more likely the person is not alive, but then you still have to question was it a suicide, was it an accidental death, was it an intentional homicide,” said DiBiase. “You have to have some forensic evidence, right, in order to test it. That can be a significant challenge because any forensic evidence over 30 years is certainly going to degrade. It’s going to be harder to find.”
DiBiase says cold cases like this usually depend on confessions to police or to friends and family, but even that evidence could prove challenging.
“The challenge with that, though, is you’re talking about memories from 30 years ago,” said DiBiase. “You’re talking about someone maybe coming forward today and saying ‘Yes this person told me this 30 years ago.’ The other problem is witnesses pass away.”
Fisher remains in the Henry County Jail without bond. He is scheduled for arraignment and pretrial conferences on Oct. 20 in Henry County Court.