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Trial pieces together details surrounding girl's death By DANI DODGE Mail Tribune As medical examiner Ronald O'Halloran testified in the William Henry Allen Jr. murder trial Wednesday, a photo the size of a dining room table flashed on the screen behind his head. It showed a close-up of 17-year-old Evelyn Marie Smith's shoulder blade: A tattoo of a blue heart is framed on two sides by red scrape marks. They were just two of many abrasions all over Smith's nude body when police found her face down in the Medford Mid High School (now South Medford High School) football stadium tunnel. O'Halloran said the injuries could be consistent with being dragged on a concrete floor, or flailing around in a struggle on a rough surface. All except the injuries on Smith's head and throat, he said. Smith's throat showed the marks of being pressed against an object until she strangled. "The abrasion on her neck, it would be almost impossible to produce with hands," O'Halloran said. "It looked like a scrape against an object ... it could be the edge of something like a table." Smith was killed nearly 21 years ago. On the 20th anniversary of her death, police arrested Allen, a 37-year-old steelworker who was living in California. His murder trial began Tuesday in Jackson County Circuit Court, and is expected to continue through today and finish on Friday. He faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. Police made the arrest after technological advances allowed them to match the semen found in Smith with Allen's DNA. At the time of Smith's death, Allen told police he had run into Smith in downtown Medford and invited her to party. They ended up at the baseball diamond at Mid High where they talked and kissed but nothing more, he insisted to police. He told police that he got tired and went home between 12:30 and 1 a.m., leaving Smith there on second base. He said he only heard about Smith's death the next day when his friend Greg Gates told him police were removing a body from Mid High. "He told me Greg Gates said it was from the east grandstand, but he knew that's not where the body was found," Central Point police Chief Mike Sweeny testified. A former Medford police sergeant, Sweeny interviewed Allen after Smith's death. "He never did explain to me how he knew which side (of the stadium) if Greg hadn't told him," Sweeny said. Other former officers who testified Wednesday said they never found anything incriminating when they searched Allen's home. They never matched fingerprints or shoe prints found near Smith's body with Allen. In fact, they never found any of Smith's clothes or identification anywhere even though they dug through the landfill. Police only found the comb Smith had been carrying the night she died. A friend of Allen's said that he got it from Allen, police testified. Another of Allen's acquaintances, Fred Wall, said he was at a party near Mid High on Saturday, April 25, 1981, when he heard a scream at about 11:30 p.m. "We wanted to get more beer and we were leaving ... and I was the last one out," Wall testified. "I heard this scream. I told the guys to shut up. I said someone just got tossed off of the stadium." Wall then ran to the stadium, didn't see anyone and was persuaded by his friends to go to the market before it closed. "The place was going to be closed if we didn't get there on time," Wall said. "They were in a rush to get the beer." But in the first interview Wall had with police after the murder, no scream was mentioned. "It never even clicked," he said. Reach reporter Dani Dodge at 776-4471, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.