On March 16, 1995, two years after the murder and five months before the trial of Michael Chapel began, Dennis Miller, a defense investigator, wrote a memo to file about an incident that happened on the previous day, March 15, 1995.

On the previous day, Miller, along with defense attorneys Johnnie Moore and Elizabeth Rogan along with Reese Smith, an attorney and blood spatter expert witness, met with Jennifer Wilson and Keith Goff at the GBI Crime Lab in Decatur, Georgia. Ms. Wilson of course is a serology expert, and Mr. Goff a DNA expert with that organization. The purpose of the meeting was to view and photograph forensic evidence in the Chapel case. Mr. Miller was the photographer.

The first evidence to be viewed were Mrs. Thompson’s personal items, including her blood soaked clothing, and then later Chapel’s raincoat. Mr. Miller was concerned that the viewing table was never cleaned during the viewing, and that as the victim’s clothing was viewed, several items shed flakes of blood, some of them large, onto the table. His concern prompted the memo of the 16^th. Photographs of the clothing and the raincoat confirm that indeed there could well have been a transfer of blood from the clothing to the raincoat.

The following series of photographs demonstrate how this happened. The articles of clothing were brought out from cold storage and displayed on the viewing table in order. First came the victim’s innermost garments: her bra and panties. Then her sweater, pants and jacket were displayed on the viewing table.

There was little or no blood on Mrs. Thompson’s innermost garments: her bra and panties; but when her sweater was removed and placed on the table, flakes some very large of dried blood fell off the sweater and onto the viewing table. This first photograph of the victim’s sweater shows the extent of the blood that was on the front of the sweater.