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The Glock 19 used to gun down OPP Const. Greg Pierzchala had a DNA profile linked to Randall McKenzie – one of the two people currently on trial for first-degree murder.
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Forensic scientist Renata Dziak testified that a swab taken from the grip and slide of the Glock 19 recovered from the murder scene had a DNA profile mixture of four people, with it being 620 billion times more likely that it originated with Randall McKenzie and three unknown people than from four unknown people unrelated to McKenzie.
A swab of the Glock’s magazine, where the gun would have been loaded, showed McKenzie was the prime DNA profile, with the odds being more than a trillion that it came from him.
There were no traces of DNA on the gun from his co-accused, McKenzie’s then-girlfriend Brandi Stewart-Sperry, Dziak said.
McKenzie 27, and Stewart-Sperry, 32, have both pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder at their Cayuga trial.
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On Dec. 27, 2022, the 28-year-old OPP rookie, who had just passed probation that morning, was responding to reports of a vehicle in a ditch west of Hagersville near Brantford. It was just an ordinary call.
Pierzchala arrived on Indian Line to find a Nissan Armada that had run off the road and several people nearby.
The forensic scientist said a DNA profile taken from a swab of the Nissan’s steering wheel showed Stewart-Sperry couldn’t be excluded as the source – in fact, it was a trillion times more likely that the DNA originated with her than some unknown female.
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Grey track pants seized from the Nissan’s front passenger seat had blood on the cuff and DNA analysis found the results were more than a trillion times more likely that the profile originated from McKenzie than from someone unrelated to him, Dziak said.
The jury has heard the Nissan Armada had been reported stolen the previous day – but Pierzchala wouldn’t have known that when he stopped to investigate.
A young man and woman were standing at the side of the road as the officer approached. Another woman had stopped to help. Pierzchala’s body-worn camera captured his own killer as the man in the hooded puffy jacket suddenly fired six shots through the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.
The couple then made off in the Chevy Silverado owned by the Good Samaritan. After a short manhunt, two suspects were arrested by the OPP later that day as they tried fleeing through the nearby woods.
The main issue at the trial is identification – McKenzie denies being the man in Pierczchala’s body-worn footage.
That’s where OPP forensic video analyst Ronald Schistad comes in.
He was tasked with comparing the image of the killer in the police body-worn video with known footage of McKenzie, including a selfie video on his seized cellphone that shows him driving while wielding a gun.
Schistad presented a series of eerily similar images to compare the two, leaving it ultimately to the jury to decide.
The trial continues.
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