In his closing argument in the trial of Michael Chapel, District Attorney Danny Porter assured the jury that, without exception, the only way that the bloodstain containing the DNA of Emogene Thompson could have gotten onto the armrest of his police vehicle was by his throwing the bloody purse that he had just retrieved from the victim’s automobile after murdering her onto the passenger seat of his police vehicle.

Emogene Thompson’s purse in which she allegedly carried the $7,000 and supposedly that was in her vehicle at the time of the murder, had not been found at the time of Chapel’s trial. This purse was found by accident by a child playing in the woods behind the victim’s next-door neighbor’s trailer in late February or early March of 1996. The purse was turned over to police, and it was thoroughly tested, including luminol testing for the presence of blood, and inventoried. There was no evidence of any bloodstains either on the outside or the inside of the purse. Significantly, the victim’s driver’s license was not found in the purse.

A purse that was found in the victim’s automobile is pictured here. It is a combination cigarette, change-purse and perhaps wallet and certainly could have held a driver’s license. There is no mention of a driver’s license that can be readily found in the list of items recovered from the victim’s car. In fact there is no mention of this small purse mentioned anywhere in the GBI Forensics Report.