Carol Ege

Background

Carol Ege was imprisoned in Michigan for the 1984 slaying of Cindy Thompson. Ege was convicted of first-degree murder based on testimony from a bite-mark expert, Dr. Allan Warnick, whose testimony was later found to be unreliable.

The offence

Cindy Thompson was found slashed and bludgeoned to death in her home in Pontiac, Michigan. Thompson was described as pregnant. The child she was carrying was fathered by Mark Davis. Thompson was last seen alive between 8:45 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. on February 21, 1984.

Thompson’s home showed evidence of a violent killing. At approximately 5 a.m. the next day, Davis entered Thompson’s home and found her upstairs bedroom; she had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death, with her organs laying beside her. Dried blood was found on the bottom of the stairs, along with a clump of hair and more blood further up the stairs. There was a large laceration starting from the middle of her spine and going around to her right side. Pontiac Police Department Sergeant Steven Sitar testified that the wound was very extensive and was gaping open and that she had been disemboweled. He also testified that there was blood everywhere. There was a vanity table overturned by the victim’s feet and a telephone which had been pulled apart from the receiver. The walls inside the bedroom were also splattered with blood. Officer Michael Story found a bloody towel in the kitchen area. There was no sign of forced entry into the home, but the phone lines had been cut.

Investigation

The police suspected that Thompson had been murdered by Carol Ege. Both women had been dating the same man, Mark Davis, who impregnated Thompson. Investigators suspected that the motive was jealous rage.

The initial police investigation concluded in April 1984 and produced no definitive evidence. After failing to make headway with their probe, the police filed the case as open and unsolved in April 1984.

In 1992, after tipsters came forward with evidence incriminating Ege, the cold case squad reopened the case and submitted evidence to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab. Evidence that had been collected at the murder scene in February 1984 was submitted to the Michigan state crime lab for the first time in 1992–1993. The lab results yielded fingerprints of Davis and Thompson and hairs of Thompson and others, but no similar trace evidence connected Ege to the crime scene.

Thompson’s body was exhumed in 1993 because autopsy photographs revealed a mark on her left cheek. The initial autopsy report had concluded that the mark was livor mortis, also known as post-mortem lividity. Oakland County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic reviewed Thompson’s autopsy records and found that several important features and findings within the photographs were omitted from the report. The original report mentioned stab wounds caused by a sharp instrument but not injuries to the head and hands caused by a blunt instrument. After his examination, he determined that Thompson had received sharp force injuries to the chest and neck, and one of the cuts to the neck severed the spinal cord. She also received blunt force injuries to her face and head, which were likely caused by a hammer.

Arrest

Carol Ege was not arrested until 1993. The arrest followed forensic odontologist Dr. Allan Warnick identifying a bite mark on Thompson’s face as having been made by Ege.

Trial

Ege was indicted and went to trial for the murder of Cindy Thompson in December 1993. At trial, the prosecution attempted to show that Ege was obsessed with Davis and therefore furiously jealous of Thompson and the child Thompson was carrying.

The prosecution presented friends of Davis, Ege, and Thompson, including witnesses who testified that Ege had hatred for Thompson and that Ege and Thompson had argued several years prior to Thompson’s death when Ege entered Thompson’s house to destroy a watch case and T-shirts that Thompson had bought for Davis. Evidence was also presented that Ege and Thompson engaged in a physical struggle at Thompson’s sister’s house when Thompson was five months pregnant.

Witnesses testified that Ege attempted to hire two different men to kill Thompson. Another witness testified that about one week before Thompson’s death, Ege asked her roommate, Carol Parker, to provide an alibi in exchange for free rent.

Witnesses also testified about Ege expressing a desire to see Thompson killed. One witness testified: “Cindy [Thompson] was not going to have the baby; that she didn't know how or why, and she didn't want to get me involved, but that she wasn't going to have the baby.” Another witness testified that Ege told her “she could stomp the baby out of [Thompson], slit her throat, rip her up in little pieces and think nothing of it.” Another witness testified that Ege told him she wanted Thompson “really hurt bad, either beat her up bad or kill her.”

Thompson’s sister recounted an event that occurred two months before the murder in which Thompson was physically assaulted by Ege. Another witness who was aware of the assault testified that Ege planned to cause Thompson to lose her baby by pushing her down some stairs. One witness testified, without corroboration, that she and Ege once went to Thompson’s house and in the midst of destroying Thompson’s property Ege told the witness that “Cindy was not going to have the baby. She didn’t know how or why, and she didn’t want to get me involved, but that she wasn’t going to have the baby.”

Timothy Apker, the ex-husband of the Ege house guest, testified that Ege offered him $500 to kill Thompson. On cross-examination, Apker admitted that he strongly disliked Ege and that he could not remember if his ex-wife or Ege was the person who tried to hire him.

Dr. Alan Warnick testified that a mark found in a photograph of the corpse was made by a human bite and that the mark matched Ege’s tooth pattern. He stated there was a 3.5 million to one probability that the bite mark was made by the defendant. He testified that out of the 3.5 million people residing in the Detroit metropolitan area, Ege was the only one who could have made the impression that matched her front teeth. Warnick was asked: “Let's say you have the Detroit Metropolitan Area, three, three and a half million people. Would anybody else within that kind of number match like she did?” He responded: “No, in my expert opinion, nobody else would match up.” Warnick compared dental impressions of other suspects and found none could have made the bite mark. He also checked Ege’s dentition and concluded it was highly consistent with the bite mark. He opined that the mark was made by Ege.

Warnick conceded on cross-examination that because the victim was found lying on her left side, face down on her left cheek, an oval mark, possibly a “pseudo bite mark,” could have been impressed on her face. Warnick formed his opinion solely from carefully examining an autopsy photograph, because the body was too decomposed when exhumed about nine years after her murder for him to examine the cheek tissues at that time.

Ege’s defense presented two expert witnesses. A pathology professor from Wayne State University identified the mark on Thompson’s face as a bruise-like discoloration caused by post-mortem lividity (liver mortis). A dentist/MD testified that he did not think the bruise had been made by teeth; he also testified that if it had been a bite mark, the pattern did not match Ege’s dentition.

Notwithstanding the defense testimony and lack of other physical evidence connecting Ege to the murder scene, the jury found Ege guilty of first-degree murder.

In 2005, a federal district judge set aside Ege’s conviction on the grounds that bite mark identification was not reliable evidence. A federal appeals court affirmed this decision.

In October 2007, Ege was retried without Dr. Warnick’s bite mark testimony. The jury convicted Ege of first-degree murder again. The jury reached its verdict in less than five hours. On November 20, 2007 an Oakland County Circuit Court Judge sentenced Carol Ege to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Sentencing

On January 28, 1994, Ege was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted for the 1984 murder of Cindy Thompson.

After the retrial in 2007, on November 20, 2007 an Oakland County Circuit Court Judge sentenced Carol Ege to life in prison with no possibility of parole. She faced a mandatory term of life in prison without parole when sentenced on November 28, 2007.

Appeals

Ege’s direct appeal was rejected by the Michigan Court of Appeals on September 17, 1997.

Ege filed a motion for post-conviction relief in Michigan circuit court on July 28, 1999. The circuit court concluded on January 11, 2000 that Ege’s due process evidentiary challenge to the bite mark evidence lacked a proper foundation and should have been excluded had an objection been raised. The court nevertheless denied relief, finding that trial counsel’s failure to object did not require relief because any prejudice was removed by the opportunity to present evidence challenging Dr. Warnick’s methodology. The circuit court also denied relief on Ege’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim on the basis that trial counsel’s performance was not substandard. The circuit court denied a motion for reconsideration on February 15, 2000. The Michigan Court of Appeals denied Ege’s appeal on August 24, 2000, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal on April 30, 2001.

Ege presented in federal district court claims in a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed August 13, 2001. The State moved to dismiss on the basis that the petition was time-barred under the one-year limitations period of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). The district court denied the State’s motion and later reached the merits, concluding that the bite mark evidence and statistical probability testimony had a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict. The district court granted Ege’s petition for conditional writ of habeas corpus on July 22, 2005. The State appealed.

On April 24, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued its decision. The court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment. It affirmed the district court’s conditional grant of the writ of habeas corpus as to Ege’s due process claim, while reversing as to the free-standing claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The dissenting opinion addressed the portion of the decision related to timeliness and due process analysis.

Outcome

After the 2007 retrial, the jury convicted Carol Ege of first-degree murder. The conviction resulted in a life sentence without parole.

After receiving the sentence in 2007, Ege said: “I did not commit this crime.”

Other details

Thompson’s neighbor testified that she heard what she believed to be Thompson’s car pull into her driveway, followed by a second car, and that the second vehicle left a few minutes later.

Mark Davis testified that he found Thompson in her upstairs bedroom some time before 5:00 a.m. on February 22, 1984, bludgeoned and stabbed to death, with her organs laying beside her.

At trial, it was stated that “At the time of the murder, most of the witnesses drank heavily and used drugs,” as described by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

The Michigan Court of Appeals summarized the case as “This is a troubling case. The crime is horrific. The initial investigation was deficient. Defendant was not charged until nine years after the murder. There are others who are logical suspects. No one saw defendant at the scene the evening of the murder. No physical evidence links defendant to the crime except testimony that a mark on the victim’s cheek is a bite mark that is highly consistent with defendant’s dentition. It is that bite mark and the testimony at Ege’s trial that led the U.S. District Court to order the new trial.”

Carol Ege was described as 51 years old at the time of the 2007 conviction. She was described as formerly of Birmingham, Michigan.

Assistant Prosecutor John Skrzynski told the jury: “It wasn't just a murder, it was an annihilation of a human being.” Defense attorney Craig Daly argued that there was no physical evidence linking Ege to Cindy Thompson's death or placing her inside the house where Thompson's body was found.

A witness testified that Ege told her she wanted Thompson killed after Thompson became pregnant. Davis testified that he had been drinking most of the day and night prior to Thompson’s murder and that by the time he decided to go to Thompson’s house on the morning of February 22, he had consumed approximately five bottles of wine.

The federal district court concluded that without Dr. Warnick’s statistical bite mark evidence, “the nature of the State's proofs would have been altogether different and a weaker case necessarily would have resulted with no physical evidence connecting the petitioner to the crime.” The federal district court also stated there was “grave doubt” about whether the evidentiary error had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict,” and concluded that the state court’s conclusions to the contrary were an unreasonable application of federal law established by the Supreme Court.