photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Rontarus Washington Jr. left, stands with his defense attorneys, Angela Keck and Adam Hall, as the jury enters his trial on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019 in Douglas County District Court.

A jury learned Friday that two prints were found on fragments of a toilet tank lid used as a murder weapon: one from the defendant and another from the victim’s husband.

Also, a detective with bloodstain pattern analysis expertise testified, a footwear impression in blood found at the crime scene would have required that the wearer step close to the body of 19-year-old Justina Altamirano Mosso.

Rontarus Washington Jr., 23, is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated burglary in connection with Mosso’s death in apartment 13 of Lawrence’s Cedarwood Apartments, 1727 W. 24th St. Mosso’s body was found Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014, though investigators believe she died the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 7, 2014.

photo by: Contributed photos

Photos of Justina Altamirano Mosso, 19, provided by the Lawrence Police Department.

Washington has been in custody for nearly four years and nine months awaiting a trial that has been repeatedly delayed.

Evidence indicates Mosso was bashed over the head twice with a toilet tank lid and stabbed repeatedly. The cause of death was blood loss from her many wounds, the coroner testified.

Washington, who lived in apartment No. 10 on the opposite end of Cedarwood’s third floor from Mosso, admitted to detectives that he walked in and discovered Mosso’s body, but he said he ran out of the apartment “like a little (expletive)” and didn’t call police because he thought he would get blamed for her death. He told police he didn’t touch anything, and that he didn’t step inside the bathroom.

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Jacqueline Hayworth, an expert in latent prints, footwear impressions and tire tracks with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, testified Friday about several items police had submitted for analysis of fingerprints or ridge detail, prints left by other parts of the fingers, hands or feet.

photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Prosecutor C.J. Rieg greets a witness during trial for Rontarus Washington Jr. the morning of Friday, Sept. 27, 2019 in Douglas County District Court.

Prints from Mosso and her husband, Felipe Cantu Ruiz, were found in several places at the crime scene. Mosso had lived in the apartment until she moved out a few weeks prior to her death; Cantu Ruiz had lived there until he left to move to Manhattan the same afternoon that Mosso is believed to have died.

Cantu Ruiz’s right palm print was found on the smooth outside of one piece of the ceramic toilet tank lid inside the bathroom. His prints were also found in places on the drywall and bathtub.

Washington’s left ring finger print was found on a larger piece of the tank lid found on the floor outside the bathroom door. The print was on the rough underside of the lid, near the rim. Photos from the crime scene show that piece of the tank lid was lying underside up on the floor just outside the bathroom door in the small studio apartment. Another large piece lay close nearby.

Hayworth also processed a fingerprint on the inside back cover of Mosso’s cellphone, which had been found on the roof. The print ruled out Cantu Ruiz and Washington as sources and could not exclude Mosso due to the insufficient quality of her prints, which were taken postmortem.

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Mosso was stabbed or cut more than 30 times, but no testimony jurors have heard so far has mentioned a specific knife or sharp object connected to her death. On a walkthrough of the apartment with police to let them know if anything seemed out of place a couple of days after his wife’s body was found, however, Cantu Ruiz pointed out that the knife he usually kept on the counter next to the stove was missing.

Lawrence police Detective Zachariah Thomas, who had previously testified about using chemical reagents to reveal blood and about searching Washington’s apartment, returned Friday to discuss his analysis of bloodstain patterns at the scene.

photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Douglas County District Court Judge James McCabria addresses Rontarus Washington Jr. and one of his defense attorneys, Angela Keck, during Washington’s trial on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019.

Most of the blood on various surfaces of the bathroom, his report showed, was below 2 feet from the floor, including on the wall behind Mosso’s body, the bathtub, the toilet and the cabinets below the sink. Mosso was just short of 5 feet, 1 inch tall, so Thomas concluded she was not standing when the bloodstains were deposited.

Though a good deal of blood had pooled on the floor around Mosso’s body, slumped against the bathtub and the wall, and her legs, splayed on either side of the toilet, not much was found on the rest of the bathroom floor.

On that basis, Thomas said that a footwear impression made by an orange Nike slider that police collected from a suitcase inside Washington’s apartment could only have been left by someone who had stepped close to Mosso’s body. There was not enough blood on the rest of the linoleum floor to have created that impression from stepping just inside the bathroom, he said.

Previous experts have testified that there was no blood found on the tops of the Nike sliders, however.

Thomas said he believed that based on the directionality and location of some of the bloodstains on the cabinets of the bathroom sink, the stains originated from Mosso’s final resting position in the opposite corner of the small bathroom.

On her cross-examination, defense attorney Angela Keck asked Thomas whether anyone positioned between the victim and the cabinets would have had blood on their clothes and shoes. Thomas said it was “definitely a possibility.”

The trial — which had been scheduled to last from Monday, Sept. 9, through Friday — will resume Monday morning. The state has not rested, though two witnesses for the defense already testified because of schedule complications.

photo by: Shutterstock Image

This Shutterstock photo shows a Nike Slide sandal for sale in a shop in Manchester, England, on May 30, 2019. Lawrence police seized a pair of Nike slide sandals from a suitcase inside the apartment of Rontarus Washington Jr. on Nov. 24, 2014. That pair had dark gray insoles, orange soles and thick orange straps with dark gray Nike logos.