Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett testified that McKenzie Boothe’s cause of death was determined to be homicide.
Jessica Orozco | The Lima News
LIMA — Autopsy and DNA test results were shown to the jury while testimony continued Wednesday at the trial of a man accused of killing and burying a woman at Martin Luther King Park in 2020.
Melvin Boothe, 31, is charged with murder, tampering with evidence, gross abuse of a corpse and possessing criminal tools in the death of McKenzie Butler, 25. Butler’s body was found buried in the woods on the south side of the park in Lima after police learned she was missing on June 13, 2020.
Boothe and Butler reportedly lived together on Eighth Street, a short distance from the park.
Police obtained a warrant and searched the Eighth Street residence. Butler was not located, but her belongings were.
Other items found inside the residence included muddy boots and shoes, receipts for shovels and a pick, and cleaning supplies.
Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett, the Lucas County Coroner who performed Butler’s autopsy, said the woman’s body was in a significant state of decomposition when she examined her.
Scala-Barnett said she determined Butler died by “homicide by unspecified means,” meaning she was murdered but the manner in which she died could not be specifically determined.
Scala-Barnett said Butler being buried and covered in mud accelerated her body’s decomposition. She said her death was “certainly suspicious.”
Scala-Barnett said through her examination, she determined that Butler sustained a bruise on her forehead before or at her death.
“She had to be alive when she got that … If you’re already dead, you don’t bruise,” Scala-Barnett said.
The coroner said Butler had a “petrous temporal hemorrhage” — a hemorrhage at the base of her skull that often occurs as a result of drowning before death. She said this was still not enough to determine a cause of death.
Logan Schepeler, a forensic scientist at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation who performed DNA analysis on evidence from the Lima Police Department, said he found DNA that could be that of Boothe on scrapings from Butler’s fingernails.
Schepeler said there was little DNA found on much of the evidence, likely due to it being “caked in mud.”
Lima Police Sergeant Ben Thompson, who was a patrol officer in 2020, said he responded to the apartment on Eighth Street on May 25, 2020, in reference to a domestic violence incident.
He said Butler was bleeding from her left wrist when he spoke with her and there were “blood droplets on the floor from the hallway to the kitchen.”
Thompson said there was broken glass that appeared to be from a mirror and a damaged doorframe in the room that Butler said was hers.
In body camera footage, Butler said “he left,” which could mean that Boothe left.
In a still frame from Thompson’s body camera footage, the door to the bedroom can be seen removed from the frame behind Butler.
Thompson said Butler told him that Boothe had forced open her bedroom door when it was locked.
In response to Thompson asking Butler if she and Boothe were romantically involved, Butler replied “not really” and said she was trying to move out of the apartment.
Thompson said he spoke with Butler again in the early morning hours of May 26, 2020, in reference to her domestic violence report.
Thompson said in his report on the incident, he wrote that Butler did not say who broke the mirror.
Butler said in the body camera footage that she called the police because she was “not trying to have him kill me.”
Butler said in the footage that while she was asleep in bed, Boothe kicked down her door, causing the mirror to shatter because he wanted her to give him a pack of cigarettes. Butler said Boothe was interested in a romantic relationship while she was uninterested.
Butler said in the footage that she planned to make calls on May 26, 2020, to set plans in motion to move out of the apartment.
Messages extracted from Boothe’s phone show the man becoming angry with Butler when she tells him on May 25, 2020, that she planned to call off work on the next day to pay her belongings and leave the apartment.
In the last message, dated May, 26, 2020, at around 12:30 a.m., Butler tells Boothe “I’m packing today.”
According to data extracted from Boothe’s phone, the man viewed the “Murder on My Mind” music video by YNW Melly — a singer who confessed attempting two murders months before the song was released and killing two of his friends the previous year — 132 times between May 25, 2020, and June 13, 2020.
Boothe on June 4, 2020, also viewed or searched on YouTube “How do you do a perfect hole with a shovel,” “How to dig deeper faster” and more related videos and terms. The same day he made 15 searches relating to how to keep mosquitoes away.
In a recording of Lima Police Detective Brian Snyder’s June 14, 2020 early morning interview with Boothe, Boothe said the reason Butler had called the police was because he told her to move out.
In the interview, Boothe said he had kicked her door down “just for a cigarette,” but did not hurt Butler.
Boothe said he wasn’t sure if Butler called the police, but then later he said that she had. He also said he kicked her out before the police were called but later said he kicked her out after.
Boothe said a man picked Butler up on May 26, 2020, after Boothe threatened to call the police on her for “filing a false police report.” He said he didn’t see Butler after that.
“I don’t think she had time to take nothing but her cell phone and that’s it,” Boothe said in the interview.
Boothe said he told Butler she would have to return to collect the rest of her belongings.
Boothe said he didn’t know where she left or who the man she left with was. He said he called her twice on the 14th, but according to his cell phone records, he did not.
Boothe told Snyder that “wherever [Butler] is, I’m pretty sure she’s OK.”
Boothe said in the interview that, unlike what officers testified to Tuesday, he did not attempt to run from the police out of a back window when they arrived. He said he was looking to see what was going on.
In the interview, Snyder asked Boothe about many of the items found in the home, like the bleach and ammonia. Boothe said it was because he used to be a “germaphobe” and he was using it to clean.
Boothe said Butler had spilled hot sauce on the carpet which was why there was cleaning powder on the carpet.
Boothe said the muddy shoes found by police were what he wears to garden. He said he keeps his gardening tools like a shovel and a rake right by his apartment outside. Only a shovel and a pickaxe were found outside the home.
Snyder asked Boothe why Monica Jackson, Boothe’s wife, had reported the man to the police after she said he’d told her he killed Butler.
Boothe said he never confessed to anything to Jackson and had told her that Butler had left.
About an hour remains in the footage of Boothe’s interview with police. The video and testimony will resume Thursday at 9 a.m.
