Impressions of a tire tread and a shoe print found in the snow where the body of a teenaged girl was found were "similar" to those seized from Cody Alan Legebokoff, the court heard Monday.
Cpl. Kimberly Tremblay, who was qualified as an expert in examining tracks left by tires and footwear, took the jury step-by-step through the process she followed to reach her conclusions from evidence found where 15-year-old Loren Donn Leslie's body was discovered Nov. 27, 2010.
The work consisted largely of comparing photos from the site, near a gravel pit north of Vanderhoof and off Highway 27, with impressions taken from the two items but it was a bit more complicated than that.
Tremblay said it took two attempts to get a proper impression from the front passenger-side tire taken from Legebokoff's truck.
During the first effort, the tire was sprayed with cooking oil while still on the truck and driven over a piece of paper. Tremblay then used fingerprint powder to fill out a picture but there were problems with smearing.
Consequently, she took the tire, now off the truck but still on its rim, and rolled it over MACtac - paper with adhesive on one side - to get a more consistent result that she then compared to a photo from the scene converted into grayscale and sized to the same dimensions as the tread.
Tremblay said the tread found at the scene matched the make and model of the tire from Legebokoff's truck but added she could not make a "positive match" in terms of the "distinguishing" characteristics or those unique to that particular tire.
She reached the same conclusion for the shoe seized from Legebokoff and noted it had snowed in the time between the discovery of the body and her arrival on the scene the next day.
Along with comparing the tread to a photo of a footprint from the scene, Tremblay also made an impression of the tread in some Foamart, which was entered as an exhibit and passed to the jury.
Tremblay also examined a tree with a missing branch found at the start of a small path into where Leslie's body was uncovered and a branch found at the foot of her body. Droplets of blood were noticed along the path and the area appeared to have been swept, Tremblay said. She and a fellow officer went to an undisturbed area nearby and "using a tree branch we were able to recreate a similar type sweeping motion in the snow."
The tree was cut down and taken away for further examination as was the branch. She noted a "recess or void" on the tree matched up with a ridge on the branch, and patterns of missing bark corresponded between the two. Tremblay concluded the branch and tree "did at one time form one continuous piece."
Tremblay was also among the RCMP officers who searched Legebokoff's 1400-block Liard Drive apartment where a couch with a blood stain large enough to soak through to the bottom was found.
Photos of the stain were shown to the jury, as were ones indicating blood on a carpet in a basement suite of a 1500-block Carney Street home where Legebokoff had previously lived.
Crown prosecution is alleging the blood is from Jill Stacey Stuchenko, 35, whose body was found Oct. 26, 2009 in a gravel pit off Otway Road near Foothills Boulevard.
Legebokoff is accused of murdering Stuchenko and Leslie, as well as Cynthia Frances Maas, 35, whose body was found Oct. 9, 2010 in L.C. Gunn Park, and Natasha Lynn Montgomery, 23, who went missing in September 2010 and whose body has never been found.
The trial continues today at the Prince George courthouse, 9:30 a.m. start.
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