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When she purchased Suitland
Florist in the early 1990s, Glenn Dale resident Mary Frances
McDonald could not have known that she would die in that
flower shop.
But on the morning of Sept. 24, 2003, shortly after she
had opened the store for the day, McDonald and longtime
friend and employee Madeline ‘‘Mattie”
Thompson, 73, were stabbed to death.
And nearly five years after their deaths, the trial of defendant
Adam I. Neal, who was indicted in 2006 on two charges of
first-degree murder and two counts of robbery with a deadly
weapon, began in Upper Marlboro.
Mail carrier Swillie Ross of Suitland said he found the
bodies Sept. 24, 2003 just before 10:30 a.m.
The incident initially was reported to the Prince George’s
County Police Department as a carjacking and possible shooting,
said former county police officer Hugh Darden, who testified
Wednesday at the trial.
‘‘I was there in about 60 seconds, 90 seconds,”
said Darden, now a sergeant with the county’s Internal
Affairs Division. ‘‘I got to the counter where
the cash register was [in the store] and that’s when
I was able to see a little bit farther — and I saw
the victims. ... They were just a mess. ... They were very
bloody.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Cheri Simpkins, who prosecuted
the case, in her opening statement to the 15 jury members
and Seventh Judicial Circuit Associate Judge Michele Hotten,
described the wounds McDonald and Thompson sustained shortly
before death.
‘‘The defendant viciously stabbed Miss Mary
29 times,” she said. ‘‘The defendant sliced
her vocal chords, the defendant sliced her kidney, the defendant
... punctured her right and left lungs.”
In February 2006, Prince George’s County police said
they had gotten a match for the DNA found in a Dumpster
on several discarded items of clothing mixed with the two
victims’ blood. According to police, the person with
the matching DNA was Neal, who was serving time in an Alexandria,
Va. jail on other charges.
As she concluded her opening statement Wednesday, Simpkins
pointed to Neal, 25, who sat silently next to his attorney.
‘‘[McDonald’s] dream of owning a flower
shop came to an abrupt end at the hand of that man, Adam
Neal. He killed her dream,” Simpkins said.
But in his opening statement, Neal’s attorney, Bob
McGowan, reiterated to the jury Hotten’s statements
of the defendant’s presumption of innocence.
‘‘On behalf of Mr. Neal, I would like to thank
you for your service in this case,” McGowan said.
‘‘You just heard the state tell you that they
intend to prove that Mr. Neal committed these heinous acts
that killed two women ... [but] there was also DNA from
at least two other male contributors on [the clothing found
in the Dumpster].”
Simpkins and Assistant State’s Attorney Richard Moore
II, who also prosecuted the case, called their witnesses
first on Wednesday. They included Ann Swann, McDonald’s
daughter, Ross and Darden.
The trial is expected to continue for about a week.
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