Donthe Lucas trial: Testimony focuses on victim Kelsie Schelling's car

Mar. 3—The 10th day of the first-degree murder trial for Donthe Lucas featured testimony from a former neighbor of the Lucas family, a former FBI agent and a soil expert.

Lucas, 28, is charged with first-degree murder in the February 2013 disappearance of Kelsie Schelling, 21, who was 8 weeks pregnant at the time she vanished. Lucas was 25 when he was initially accused of Schelling's murder Dec. 1, 2017, even though Schelling's body has never been found.

Schelling reportedly drove to Pueblo from her home in Denver on Feb. 4, 2013, to meet with Lucas, who was her boyfriend at the time and the purported father of her unborn child.

Before the neighbor Mercedes Woods testified, 10th Judicial District Court Judge Thomas Flesher told the jury that the prosecution asserts the evidence (provided by Woods) goes to the defendant's state of mind and told the jury they may not consider the testimony for any other purpose. He said it is up to the jury to give what weight, if any, it wishes to give to the testimony.

Woods testified her grandmother was a neighbor of the Lucas family on Toronto Place. She said she became aware of Kelsie Schelling as a missing person in May 2013 and she and her family participated in a search for her.

At the search she was given missing posters featuring Schelling's photo. She testified about when she tried to hang up a poster on a tree near her grandmother's front yard.

"We noticed Donthe Lucas was home — he asked us to leave," by yelling through the screen door from inside the home, Woods said. "Moments later his mom (Sara Lucas) showed up and she physically tried to assault my mother.

"She was screaming at us and asked us to leave and not harass her son," Woods testified, indicating her mother had pointed out they were on public property and had a right to be there. "She came running at my mother and tried to push her."

She was asked by Deputy District Attorney Michelle Chostner if the posters contained any information about Lucas to which she replied "no."

Woods testified Sara Lucas called the police and accused the Woods family of slandering her son.

Under cross examination by Defense Attorney David Lipka, Woods said Donthe Lucas did not participate in the argument.

Former FBI Agent Rene VonderHarr testified she has specialized training in the recovery of human remains. She said she became involved in an investigation for Schelling in October 2013.

She testified she oversaw the teams that performed searches at the Manor Ridge home of Lucas' grandmother and a Chevy Cruze vehicle that belonged to Schelling

"We assessed the entire backyard to see if there was a change in vegetation," or the state of the soil, VonderHarr testified. "We went around the back yard dropping thin metal probes into the yard.

"If the soil has been disturbed it is going to be softer," she said.

Based on the state of the soil, they selected a site, which was an empty flowerbed, to start digging. She said the dig went to a depth of about 3 feet. She testified on cross examination nothing of evidentiary value was discovered.

She also testified canine handlers and a dog team conducted a sweep of the yard and she was not made aware if they alerted to anything.

At the Pueblo Police Department impound lot, she participated in a search of Schelling's vehicle.

Investigators used a vacuum equipped with a special filter for forensic vacuuming to process each section of the car including the trunk. Contents of the vacuum and the filter were bagged and labeled with the area of the car it was collected from.

Investigators also took swabs of the vehicle's front passenger seat, rear passenger seat and the trunk, she testified.

The search did not turn up any personal effects belonging to Schelling. When asked about each item she said there was no stuffed teddy bear, no lanyard and no documentation belonging to Schelling.

"I wasn't aware," of any earlier search of the vehicle, she testified under cross examination by Lipka.

A professor of soil science at Colorado State University, Eugene Kelly, testified he is responsible for soil science research, mainly focusing on soil distribution in the state. He was asked in 2013 to analyze six soil samples associated with the missing person case of Schelling.

The individual samples of soil from Schelling's were in evidence bags that also contained the vacuum filters.

He said the soil was unconsolidated which means at some point in time it was disbursed, probably by a stream. He looked at size, shape, color as well as types of mineral composition to help determine soil origin from certain deposits or geologic formations in the state.

"In this particular instance, the soils were similar based on my analysis I determined it came from something called the Pikes Peak Granite," he testified. The discovery of a bluish amazonite, "Was a mineral I was pretty certain came from the area between Colorado Springs and south of Pueblo."

He guided the construction of maps using a geographic information system pinpointing a general area where the soil had come from, indicating it was likely from southwest of Pueblo in the area between Interstate 25 and Colorado 78 between Pueblo and Beulah.

Former CBI fingerprint analyst Sarah Bohne, who currently works for the Colorado Springs Police Department Metro Crime Lab, testified she examined a head rest from the Schelling vehicle in April 2014. She found one hand print on the head rest.

"There were ridges, but it was not enough information to warrant a comparison," she testified.

Donna Williams, an American Airlines analyst, testified that in November 2017 she was asked by a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent to look into a flight that was purchased for Donthe Lucas.

The one-way ticket was purchased on his behalf Nov. 12 by Sara Lucas. The flight was to go from Denver to Phoenix on Nov. 13.

"He did not show up for the flight. There was one bag checked and that bag did go from Denver to Phoenix," Williams testified.

Lucas had been arrested on an unrelated aggravated robbery charge at Denver International Airport before he could get on the flight.

Chad Moore, a FBI forensic chemical examiner for the lab in Quantico, Virginia, said he examined a small 3 by 3-1/2 inch piece of trunk liner in August of 2019.

"There was a white stain on the trunk liner so that is what I focused on in my examination. I looked at the stain under the microscope and it looked like a powdery crystalline material," Moore testified.

"The particles had a high carbon and nitrogen content which generally indicates material with protein. It is consistent with protein made with small molecules of amino acids that form a long chain," he said.

"The other thing we were seeing was a number of different fatty acids. It really didn't provide much information except the stain was from a product that had a mature protein and fatty acid and it was an organic material," Moore testified.

Under cross examination, Moore said the very minor stain could have originated from a plant or an animal. Moore, could not say it was produced by a deceased woman's body.

James Schneider, an FBI forensic examiner, said he specializes in computer and cellphone analysis and was asked by the CBI to unlock an iPhone 5 cellphone in July 2017. He was unable to unlock it and sent it to Quantico asking examiners there to try, but they also were unable to unlock the phone.

Melea Lobato, who had just moved into Manor Ridge home where Sara Lucas used to live, testified that on April 7, 2017, she had just gotten home.

"There was a knock at the door. I wasn't expecting anybody — it was Donthe Lucas.

"He seemed to fit the description from the media. I had never met him," she testified.

"He said he knew someone who had lived there and I don't really know what he was doing there. He wasn't focused on me he was kind of focused on what was around me," she said.

Lobato said Lucas was looking toward the backyard, which was actively being dug up and searched by authorities for a second time.

She said, "we had just looked up the Kelsie Schelling case," and there were pictures of Lucas which confirmed her suspicions. "It was a little unsettling."

Melea Lobato's friend, Alisha Lobato, who was hanging out at the home at the time Lucas dropped by the home on April 7, 2017, testified, "We see who it is," because "we knew who used to live there and we had been looking on the 'Help Find Kelsie' Facebook page," and had seen pictures of Lucas.

"He was asking some questions to her. I held the knob to the door and locked it.

"It just made me a little nervous, we were home alone. He said he knew someone who had lived there before.

"He was distracted and was looking more behind us at the backyard," she testified.

When Lucas left, "I looked back out the window, he was looking into the kitchen window and then he got into his car and pulled a U-turn and sat there and looked at the house for a bit," she said, before driving off.

Lauren Schur testified she met Lucas in April 2016 when she and some friends were talking about the case and decided try to get more information about the case. She reached out to Lucas on Facebook.

"I volunteered to talk to Donthe and tried to get some information out of him. We exchanged numbers and talked about hanging out," Schur said.

"We first met at his grandmother's house and then we went out to dinner. We just kind of talked about our families and getting to know one another," she testified.

Schur met up with Lucas several other times.

"We went to a park to play basketball, there was a man that showed up with a camera and started asking him about Kelsie and I asked him what was going on," she said. "He basically told me what was going on.

"He said, she was an ex-girlfriend, she was saying she was pregnant with his child and then she went missing and he was the last person to be seen with her. He said at that time they were not together, the baby was not his and that she had said she was pregnant before.

"She would pay for everything he needed. They were kind of like friends," Schur testified.

"I told him I went on the internet and had seen everything that was on the internet. He said they would do coke together and I guess that was the surprise he had for her the day that he had talked her into coming down, to Pueblo," Schur testified.

"He said they got into an argument and this guy she knew in Pueblo had came to pick her up," she said.

She said he never told her who the person was.

"He said he had took her to Parkview because she wasn't feeling well. He said that was him on the surveillance camera dropping her car off at (St.) Mary Corwin.

"He would start crying and saying she was my best friend and I would never hurt her.

Once or twice things would change. I would mention him being in the surveillance video pulling money out of the ATM with her credit card and he said he was never arrested for that and then he got arrested," she said.

Lucas indicated he had nothing to do with her disappearance, Schur testified.

Schur will continue testifying at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Chieftain reporter Tracy Harmon covers business and Fremont County news. She can be reached by email at tharmon@chieftain.com or via Twitter at twitter.com/tracywumps.