Two murder mysteries will unravel over the next few weeks in side-by-side Douglas County courtrooms.
One case is two years old and promises to test the bounds of prosecuting a defendant without a victim's body.
The other is 33 years old and will test jurors' belief in whether DNA testing is enough to solve a cold case.
The first: the high-profile December 2009 disappearances and presumed deaths of three members of a Brazilian family doing missionary work in Omaha.
Valdeir Goncalves-Santos, 31, could face the death penalty if convicted in the deaths of his boss, Vanderlei Szczepanik; Szczepanik's wife, Jaqueline; and the couple's 7-year-old son, Christopher.
The second: the 1978 sexual assault and stabbing death of Carroll Bonnet, a 66-year-old hospital worker. Fifty-one-year-old Jerry Watson, then a 19-year-old vagabond from Illinois, is on trial after DNA tests linked him to items found in Bonnet's apartment.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys began quizzing prospective jurors in both cases Monday morning,
In all, 137 prospective jurors were called — 77 for the case against Goncalves-Santos, 60 for the Bonnet case, said John Friend, clerk of the district court.
It was apparent early why so many people were needed for the Brazilian case.
When prosecutor Jim Masteller asked how many had read news reports about the case, more than 30 prospective jurors raised their hands.
Masteller then asked if any jurors had a moral objection to the death penalty that would interfere with their ability to sit on the case.
Not a hand went up.
Douglas County District Judge Thomas Otepka ordered the attorneys to individually interview prospective jurors to determine whether they could set aside the pretrial publicity and decide the case only on evidence presented in court.
Prosecutors have built their case against Goncalves-Santos largely on the testimony of his estranged wife and the wife of another man suspected but never charged in the disappearance of the Szczepanik family.
Authorities flew in the two women and their children from their tiny village in Brazil so the women could testify to what Goncalves-Santos said.
Szczepanik and his family had been living in and renovating a church and school at 1722 S. 16th St. The Szczepaniks' Florida-based church had sent them to Omaha in 2005 to turn the former Paul VI High School campus into a missionary training center.
Szczepanik had hired Goncalves-Santos and two other Brazilian men to help him renovate the school and a house at 524 Park Ave.
Authorities believe the Szczepaniks may have been killed in the Park Avenue home.
The two other workers questioned in the Szczepaniks' deaths have faced theft charges in connection with several withdrawals made from Vanderlei's accounts in the days after the family disappeared.
Jose "Carlos" Oliveira-Coutinho is awaiting trial on a theft charge. Prosecutors dropped a theft charge against the other — Elias Lourenco-Batista — and he has been deported.
Goncalves-Santos maintains his innocence. His attorney, Kevin Ryan, has argued that prosecutors have no information to corroborate the women's accounts. Ryan noted that authorities don't know how or where the Szczepaniks died.
By contrast, authorities have long known how Bonnet died: a stab wound to the chest. They just didn't know who killed the Clarkson Hospital worker in October 1978.
However, in 2008, the Omaha Police Department's crime lab ran Watson's fingerprints through a computer software program — a process that produced a match to a fingerprint found in Bonnet's apartment.
DNA testing further connected Watson to a few items found in Bonnet's apartment. And Bonnet's car was found in Cicero, Ill., in a neighborhood where Watson reportedly had lived with his brother.
Watson maintains his innocence. He told a detective that the only places he had been in Omaha were a bar, a shooting range, his mother's house and an aunt's house.
Detective Doug Herout said Bonnet had lived alone in the apartment where his body was found — a building at 204 S. 25th Ave. since torn down. He also had been known to frequent downtown bars, Herout has said.
Goncalves-Santos' case could take three weeks; Watson's trial may spill into next week.
In a previous online version of this story, the fingerprint evidence was credited to a Florida law enforcement agency.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1275, [email protected]
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