Louise Bell's convicted murderer Dieter Pfennig lodges appeal
Updated
Adelaide girl Louise Bell's convicted killer Dieter Pfennig has lodged an appeal against his murder conviction, arguing DNA evidence could not prove his guilt beyond doubt.
A court convicted Pfennig of murdering the 10-year-old girl, whose body was never located, after her abduction from her bedroom at Hackham West in 1983.
Pfennig was already serving a non-parole jail term of more than three decades for murdering South Australian boy Michael Black and abducting and raping a teenager, when he was given a non-parole period of 35 years for murdering Louise, resulting in a combined non-parole term of 60 years.
Pfennig, now 69, was charged with the Bell murder in 2013 based on evidence gathered using DNA technology advances.
A pyjama top found at a neighbour's property was analysed decades later by South Australian forensic scientists and by the world-leading Netherlands Forensic Institute.
Pfennig's legal team challenged the validity of the DNA evidence during his trial, pointing to inconsistencies in the results from the laboratories.
In the latest Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) hearing, Pfennig's lawyer Paul Charman said the evidence was incapable of proving beyond reasonable doubt the DNA was Pfennig's or how it got onto the pyjama top.
"There are two minute pieces of material from an unknown source ... that could've been in the Bell environment, that could've come from family, friends, anyone visiting," Mr Charman said.
He argued expert witnesses could not exclude secondary DNA transfer onto the pyjama top and that Justice Michael David had been wrong to conclude that was not a possibility.
"The issue of transference is simply fatal to the prosecution case and always has been, and the CCA must allow the appeal on that basis," the lawyer said.
Mr Charman said a "combination of guesses" meant a court could not find beyond reasonable doubt "when there is a background of different results for different exhibits from different laboratories with different techniques and different software".
"The question is not whether the results are scientifically unreliable but whether the court can find beyond reasonable doubt, with the knowledge that further technologies might lead to different results again," he said.
Pyjama top had been submerged in river and later rinsed
Prosecutor Sandi McDonald said none of the high-calibre expert witnesses had concerns about the test result differences.
"These weren't just any experts that the prosecution called — some of them were internationally renowned and Professor Peter Gill is one of the leading forensic scientists in the world relating to DNA evidence," she said.
"There was a very logical explanation for the different results."
She also argued it was open to the trial judge to reject the secondary DNA transfer hypothesis.
Ms McDonald said there was evidence the pyjama top had been submerged in the Onkaparinga River and later rinsed thoroughly.
"Despite all of that, when it's tested decades later the only DNA located matches the accused," she said.
Mr Charman told the appeal hearing there were two unidentified partial DNA profiles on the pyjama top which, if put through a cold case database, might find other people of a "higher likelihood ratio than Mr Pfennig".
Justice Malcolm Blue reserved his decision on whether to grant permission to appeal.
Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, crime, courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, hackham-5163, adelaide-5000, sa
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