Dion is now 41 and on trial for Craig's murder and sexual assault. His lawyer says Craig had consensual sex with his client and fell off a cliff to her death some time afterward.
Craig's family counters that the University of Alaska Anchorage student had no reason to be with Dion, a man they didn't know. They believe Craig was abducted on her way to classes.
Prosecutors on Thursday showed jurors a video filmed by troopers on the brisk, sunny day Craig's body was found. The footage showed yellow leaves and crime-scene tape fluttering along Turnagain Arm as the camera followed troopers to the top of a cliff. The lens zoomed to a drop of blood on a light-brown leaf.
Once thought to be lost, the video was admitted as evidence when troopers found it two days after the trial began. The discovery forced a weeklong delay so Dion's defense team could review the footage, which brings to life an investigation seen before only in still images.
As the trial resumed this week and each side battled over the potential causes of Craig's death -- accidental fall or murder? -- Craig's family watched the video for the first time on a courthouse projector screen.
The footage soon cut to a shot from below the cliff. The camera panned from the creek's rock walls to a body lying in the water about 30 feet below, knees bent and hands clenched. The troopers didn't know it yet, but it was a young woman. She wore a denim jacket, a red, long-sleeve shirt, light denim pants and sneakers.
Further into the recording, the camera showed Craig's lifeless face as troopers lifted her head out of the water.
Her mother, Karen Foster, sobbed in the courtroom.
Foster had seen photos from Craig's autopsy six months after her daughter died. But this video was new to almost everyone else involved in the case: It had apparently been missing for years. Prosecutor Paul Miovas said the video was checked out of evidence and not returned. Troopers recently found it.
Judge Jack Smith put the trial on hold beginning May 24 so Dion's lawyer, Andrew Lambert, could review the footage.
The trial had resumed Tuesday with testimony from a former medical examiner who conducted the autopsy of Craig's body. Norman Thompson was on the witness stand through Wednesday and into Thursday morning.
Miovas and Lambert asked Thompson to explain hundreds of aspects of his examination of Craig and the circumstances of her death, which Thompson concluded was a murder.
The two attorneys also analyzed -- in painstaking detail -- several photos of Craig's corpse, projected on a screen in the courtroom.
Foster said it had been difficult for her to see the pictures again, more than 16 years after her daughter's death. One shows about a dozen lacerations on the back of Craig's head, one fracturing her skull at its base.
The gruesome pictures are important to the case, Foster said. "I think it's critical to this case to show the pattern of injuries."
The pattern shows Craig died at the hand's of another person, not in a fall, said Thompson, the former medical examiner.
Lambert had questioned Thompson during cross-examination Wednesday and asked the doctor about other ways Craig could have died. Specifically, a fall from a cliff.
Thompson admitted he could not rule out certain possibilities that Lambert proposed. That, for example, a broken fingernail could be caused by an accidental fall, or that a small cut inside Craig's vagina could have been the result of foreplay or rough sex. But Thompson said many parts of Lambert's theory were highly unlikely.
"I can't rule out consensual sex, but I'm skeptical of that," Thompson said.
On Thursday, Miovas, the prosecutor, questioned Thompson for a second time. The doctor stated his opposition to Lambert's theory more clearly.
Did any facts presented by Lambert sway the doctor's opinion that Craig was murdered, Miovas asked.
"I'm comfortable about my opinions on the cause and manner of death," Thompson said flatly.
"As I look at the injuries to the head, I see a remarkable similarity," Thompson testified. "The fact that they're all focused makes me unable to think this was a fall."
Three TV cameras trained on the defendant and Craig's family as the pictures once again flashed on the screen, showing Craig with her eyes closed and her mouth open.
Dion, in a black shirt and sporting a new, spiky cut for his red hair, looked down often Thursday and scribbled notes throughout the morning. His tattooed fingers flashed over the legal pad in front of him.
"I just know he beat the heck out of her," Foster, the victim's mother, said outside the courtroom.
The trial, expected to end in mid-June, resumes Monday.
Reach Casey Grove at 257-4589.
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