Anchorage Daily News

When police investigators found a homeless woman raped and stabbed to death under the A Street Bridge in 2002, their best lead was a plastic Gilbey's Vodka bottle found near her body.

The bottle carried a partial palm print of a man they suspected was her killer.

However, before 2004, there was no database of palm prints for police to check like the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) that routinely leads investigators to suspects.

The case of who killed Cynthia Henry went cold.

Then, two years later, an anonymous voice on the phone told police to check out Roger Wade McKinley.

McKinley had been living on and off the street. He had a criminal record. So investigators got a palm print from him.

It was a match. Now he's on trial for murder.

"This was not just any print," prosecutor Alan Goodwin told jurors during opening statements Wednesday. "This was a print made in blood."

Henry's blood.

"You're going to hear the defendant had blood -- literally -- blood on his hands."

McKinley, 36, stabbed Henry and assaulted her with the vodka bottle while she was still alive, Goodwin said.

But defense attorney Paul Maslakowski told jurors the partial palm print was not enough prove murder, especially not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Police jumped to conclusions and ignored other evidence at the scene, including DNA from other men and used condoms, Maslakowski said. Reciting lyrics from an old song, "The Boxer," he warned jurors that "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Pay attention to inconsistencies in the stories witnesses tell from the stand, he advised jurors.

"Roger doesn't know who killed Cynthia Henry, and neither do the police," he said in the still courtroom, the public seats empty except for the media.

Henry was last seen alive on a surveillance tape leaving a bar in downtown Anchorage in September 2002, on the night she was killed. Police found her the next day, facedown on the concrete under the A Street Bridge, blood pooled beneath her. She had been stabbed four times in the back, and there was evidence she had been raped.

Police say McKinley spent time at the Avenue Bar on Fourth Avenue on the night of the killing and left, telling friends he was going to find some marijuana. He had a hunting knife with him, they said.

According to police documents, he came back with the sleeves of his white button-down shirt stained with blood.

"He had blood from the mid-forearm all the way down to the cuffs of the shirt," Goodwin said. "A lot of blood."

Goodwin held up a Gilbey's Vodka bottle, similar to the one found by police. Projected on a wall screen behind him was a crime scene picture of Henry, four slash wounds in her back, the bottle resting between her bare legs.

The trial continues today.

Monique Newton can be reached at mnewton@adn.com. Julia O'Malley can be reached at jomalley@adn.com.

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