NAHA, Okinawa — Tests on semen samples collected at two Okinawa rape scenes showed blood types matching that of Dag Allen Thompson, 31, who has been charged with the rapes, an Okinawa police lab technician testified Tuesday at Thompson’s trial.
Lab technician Minoru Iha said he was able to identify the blood type of the man who raped a woman in her Naha home in June 1998 and committed a similar attack against a Chatan woman last August. He said the man had type A blood.
Thompson, a former Marine, is charged with burglary and rape in both cases. He was identified earlier in the trial as having type A blood.
Iha said semen gathered in the Naha home of a 27-year-old woman in 1998 tested positive for type A blood. He said all but one sample of evidence in the Chatan case also tested as type A.
According to the American Red Cross, 40 percent of the world’s population has type A blood.
The inconclusive sample was a mixture of semen and other bodily fluids collected from the 21-year old Chatan woman, Iha said. He was unable to separate the semen from the sample, in which blood types A and AB were present, he testified.
The lab technician said the woman’s blood type was B, so the AB result could have been a combination of her blood type and someone with type A, or someone with an AB blood type.
Citing the inconclusive sample, defense attorney Toshimitsu Takaesu attacked Iha’s handling of the evidence.
The blood-typing testimony was to set up afternoon testimony from Masanobu Omine, another technician who processed the evidence for DNA profiling.
But Omine, the prefecture’s chief lab technician, had time in Tuesday’s court session only to begin explaining how he did DNA profiles of Thompson’s blood and evidence from the two crime scenes. Omine is to return to the stand on May 26.
Thompson has said little since his arrest in October. In April he told the court he would not mount a defense of insanity or attempt to assert an alibi in the Chatan incident.
He was arrested based on identification by the Chatan woman, who said she was able to see him clearly in the light of her cell phone, which she shone in his face during the attack.
Tuesday’s court session was the eighth since Thompson was indicted. He has been held in the Naha Detention Center since his arrest.
