Uploaded: Monday, July 16, 2001, 12:15 p.m.

Key witness's aunt to return to stand
Fitzhugh trial continues today

by Bill D'Agostino

The prosecution in the trial of Palo Alto resident Kenneth Fitzhugh plans to recall the aunt of key witness Robert Brown sometime today.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Fletcher told Judge Franklin Elia that he wanted to hear more testimony from Janet Moore because she has personal knowledge of a telephone call made by Kristine Fitzhugh to Brown before she was murdered in May 2000. Moore also apparently has personal knowledge about the length of Kristine's relationship with Brown.

Robert Brown has told police that he had a longtime affair with Kristine Fitzhugh, spanning more than 10 years, and that she told him in a brief telephone conversation about five months before her death that she planned to tell her older son Justin the truth, that Brown was his biological father. She planned to tell the son after his graduation from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, but she was killed a week before.

This morning, jurors heard from an expert on the chemical Luminol, which is used by police and other investigators to reveal invisible blood at a crime scene. The expert said the chemical is a the test of choice for determining whether blood has been cleaned up from an area.

Criminologist John Bourke, of the Santa Clara County crime lab, also was on the stand this morning. During his testimony, the two attorneys stipulated that a shoe print found in the Fitzhugh kitchen was in fact made by an athletic like the one found in Kenneth Fitzhugh's sport-utility vehicle after the murder.

Fletcher says he still plans to rest his case Tuesday. Defense attorney Thomas Nolan plans to present his side next. The trial is expected to conclude by the end of the month.

Kenneth Fitzhugh is charged with murdering his wife Kristine by strangling and beating her on the head, and then placing her body at the bottom of the basement stairs in their home to make it look like she had fallen.