WORST-CASE SCENARIO: THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF SARAH HUTCHINGS

Hutchings, a perfectionist and punctual to a fault, didn't show up at Korbel the next day. O'Halloran, who had the day off, told Korbel employees she'd go by and check on Sarah.

She knew Sarah had a minor heart problem, and she was worried as she headed to her friend's home.

''I was concerned it took a turn for the worse. I was banging on the door,'' she recalls, remembering her anguished shouts for Sarah to hang on as she went for help.

Police Officer Mike Hardin was the first to arrive. He found the doors locked and climbed up to peer through the bathroom window.

Sarah Kate Hutchings was dead in the bathtub below.

O'Halloran told Hardin, Sgt. Tom Combs and sheriff coroner's investigator Greg Berry, who later arrived at the scene, that her friend liked taking baths. She told them about her friend's heart condition.

There was ''nothing to suggest foul play,'' Berry would later say.

Hardin and Combs thought something wasn't right, but the officers followed the coroner's lead -- natural causes.

The coroner removed her body and left the apartment to relatives, who went through Sarah's belongings and removed personal items the next day.

Two days later, an autopsy determined that Sarah Hutchings had been strangled.

THE CRIME SCENE

There were enough clues at the scene to tip off even amateur sleuths.

Why was she facing the wrong way in the tub, with her back against the faucet?

Why would a person alone turn off all of the lights in her home, shut the bathroom door, leave the light off in the bathroom and shut the bathtub sliding door?

There was a four-inch bloodstain on the bedspread, attributed perhaps to menstrual bleeding and not considered suspicious that August day.

There were marks around her neck and wrists, marks clearly visible in photos taken at the scene.

The coroner attributed a neck mark to post-mortem coloring. Sgt. Combs later said he'd noticed the red marks, thought them suspicious but didn't override the coroner, who had far more experience with dead bodies, according to court records.

The autopsy revealed the marks were made when Hutching's hands had been bound, most likely with handcuffs, and by a length of fabric that had been used around her neck.

The bloodstain on the bedspread was determined to be from Sarah's mouth, probably caused by strangulation. It now appeared someone had strangled her as she lay face-down on her bed.

Was it a sexual bondage act gone wrong, leaving Sarah dead and sending her lover into a panic?

Was it murder -- and if so, what was the motive?

Whatever the circumstance, someone carried her to the bathroom and placed her naked body in a tub of water. The autopsy showed she probably was strangled and near death when she was placed in the tub and drowned.

FINDING A SUSPECT

Two days later, with crucial time lost and a crime scene spoiled, the case was assigned to veteran police officer Keith Thomas, about to begin his second homicide as lead detective.

He worked leads for a few days with then-Detective Brian Davis, but Davis was due a vacation and quickly left the case.

Thomas knew Sarah Hutchings, but they did not have a relationship. He said they'd met while she was working in local restaurants and he'd come in for a bite to eat while on patrol.

Sarah was known to mix with a number of cops. She kept a binder filled with business cards, including those of police officers from Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa counties. Two of Thomas' business cards also were in the binder.

The cops, male friends and men she'd met through personal ads, made for a long list of possible suspects.

But Thomas and Davis quickly focused their attention on a single man, Mark Marsh, who met Sarah in June 1991 through a Press Democrat personal ad while he was briefly separated from his wife.

Hutchings' friends, including O'Halloran, told detectives Marsh appeared to be the only man Hutchings had complained about that summer.

Marsh told Thomas and Davis he dated Sarah a few times and that he and Sarah had argued about sex. But he insisted the last time he had seen her was more than a month before her death.

The detectives had reason to doubt him -- and a week after the murder, police officials announced they had a suspect, a Sonoma man who had dated her. The motive: anger.

Santa Rosa police did not publicly name the suspect and there would be no quick arrest.

For the next 18 months, Detective Thomas, under the supervision of veteran detective Sgt. Jim Carlson, relentlessly pursued Marsh, trying to find evidence for a murder prosecution.

Marsh said that sometimes Thomas would park outside his home, smoking cigarettes and star-

PUSHING FOR AN ARREST

Thomas went to the District Attorney's Office at least twice seeking an arrest warrant for Marsh, but was turned down.

Finally, Thomas showed prosecutor James Casey his case, and the veteran prosecutor agreed the circumstantial case looked like a good one.

In March 1993, Casey and Deputy District Attorney Greg Jacobs got approval from then-District Attorney Gene Tunney to take the case to a criminal grand jury.

Assembling a criminal grand jury is a rare move in Sonoma County, but a legal option to bring charges against someone. In legal circles it is considered a way to ''test the waters'' of how a case will play to a jury.

Thomas thought he had compelling evidence. Although he could not present it to the grand jury, a polygraph test shortly after the slaying indicated Marsh had given ambiguous or deceptive answers to some questions.

In building his case before the grand jury, Thomas noted inconsistencies in Marsh's story, including different versions of how he sustained cuts Thomas observed on his hands on Aug. 20. Other evidence included:

Witnesses at the Lyon's Restaurant had identified Marsh as the man seen with Hutchings hours before she died.

A neighborhood boy reported that he saw Marsh in Sarah Hutching's Benton Street neighborhood.

A photo of Marsh was reportedly displayed in Sarah's home.

And a blood type taken from a semen sample at the scene matched Marsh's blood type.

The next day, March 4, 1993, the grand jury determined Marsh should be indicted. Armed with an arrest warrant, Thomas, Casey and other detectives met Marsh and his wife at about midnight as they stepped from a plane at San Francisco International Airport, arriving home from a Hawaiian vacation.

Marsh was taken into custody, accused of killing Sarah Kate Hutchings.

Marsh's attorney, Steve Gallenson, and private investigator Chris Reynolds quickly began punching holes in the case.

In May 1993 -- only two months after the arrest -- Superior Court Judge R. Bryan Jamar threw the case out of court. He ruled after Marsh's attorney argued that Thomas misled the grand jury by omitting information that pointed away from Marsh as the suspect. Jamar agreed Thomas did not accurately present interviews Marsh gave to police.

Gallenson also had argued the grand jury hadn't been told Hutchings was dating other men at the time she was murdered.

The grand jury also didn't learn that two unidentified fingerprints were found in Sarah Hutchings' home and that lots of photos were on Sarah's kitchen table, not just Marsh's, Gallenson said.

Prosecutors dismissed the judge's ruling as a ''technicality'' and vowed to refile the charges.

But two months later, District Attorney Tunney admitted his own investigator had verified problems with witness statements, casting doubt on the case. He said he would not refile charges.

MARSH FIGHTS BACK

In September 1993, Marsh filed a $1.3 million claim against the city, demanding compensation for false arrest and prosecution. The city rejected the claim, and in January 1994, the claim became a lawsuit as Marsh tried to regain his reputation and the cost of defending himself.

He wanted to prove that Thomas and others in the Police Department withheld evidence as they sought to build a case against him, and provided a prosecutor with false information.

Attorneys for Santa Rosa fought Marsh by burying him in paperwork, Gallenson said. He claims it prolonged the case and kept costs mounting.

Gallenson said his investigation for the civil case had turned up at least two other men worthy of scrutiny in the murder case. But he said police would not investigate, continuing to focus on Marsh.

During the almost two years of legal wrangling in preparation for the civil suit trial between Santa Rosa and Marsh, the homicide investigation slowed.

Thomas was transferred to other duties -- part of the regular police rotation -- and the case was assigned to another detective. Davis said little progress was made.

''They were not investigating the homicide, just defending the civil case,'' Gallenson said. ''They had no interest in finding anyone else. It was to the city's advantage not to find someone else. At worst it's abuse of power, obstruction of justice. At the least it's a conflict.''

Gallenson repeatedly asked that the city give the homicide investigation to an outside agency. The city repeatedly refused.

City attorneys denied any conflict, saying the two cases were independent.

''We don't stop investigating a homicide because of a civil suit,'' said City Attorney Rene Chateau.

THE TURNING POINT

In June 1994, as preparation for the civil suit was under way, detectives took advantage of new testing technology and sent the semen sample taken from Sarah's bedspread to a Department of Justice crime lab. The results came back nine months later, according to Davis, now the sergeant in charge of the case.

The DNA did not match Mark Marsh.

Looking back, Davis says, the DNA test was a ''turning point.'' Months earlier, then-Chief Sal Rosano told Davis to take another run at the case. When the results came in, Davis began rethinking every detail.

''At some point after we got the DNA results back, I took out the whole case file and read it cover to cover over many weeks.''

But it was a time of several homicides in Santa Rosa, including the shooting death of a sheriff's deputy, and it wasn't until 1996 that any significant work was done by detectives.

The DNA did not prove Marsh's innocence, but the test eliminated the key element of a blood match in the case against Marsh. The revelation came after the filing of the civil case, and so did not become part of the record in determining whether the department had maliciously pursued Marsh.

''I certainly didn't know anything about it during the lawsuit,' Gallenson said of the DNA results. He said it's another example of the conflict the city faced defending itself and searching for a killer.

''I believe they took the position that the criminal investigation was confidential. Even though that's what the conflict is,'' he said.

DNA testing in criminal cases wasn't a common tool for local law enforcement in 1991. But the results became a key piece of evidence in pointing the criminal case away from Marsh and toward other suspects.

Assistant City Attorney Brian Farrell, who spearheaded much of the city's defense, said the city was right to fight the lawsuit, based on the criminal case given to the city by police.

Outside investigative experts reviewed the case, Farrell said, and agreed there was reasonable cause to arrest and prosecute Marsh.

Just before the lawsuit was scheduled for trial in late fall of 1995, after Marsh's legal bills rose to more than $120,000, he gave up the fight. He filed for bankruptcy and began the process of rebuilding a shattered life.

''I'm not vindictive at this point,'' Marsh said from his home in Sonoma. But he declined to comment further about the case -- or relationship -- that changed his life: ''I don't want to go back in time.''

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Before Marsh dropped his lawsuit, Gallenson threatened the Police Department and city with a second lawsuit in an attempt to force police officials to turn the homicide investigation over to an independent police agency.

Troubling questions arose during the civil suit.

One witness questioned by Marsh's private investigator said she'd asked police for a photo to see how tall Marsh was, but was never shown one. Another said she told police she saw Sarah seated with two men the night she was killed, but that information never appeared in police reports.

Still another witness said she saw Sarah Hutchings with a man the night of the murder, and had seen them together two weeks earlier at the restaurant.

But the woman was unable to identify the subject in a photo lineup that included a picture of Marsh. That information was not included in the police report, Davis said.

''Inconsistencies (raised) in the civil litigation pointed more and more to the person we're looking at and less and less to Mark Marsh,'' Davis said.

About a month after receiving a letter from Gallenson making the demand for an independent review, Chief Rosano sent the case to the Attorney General's Office to consider.

Rosano and Farrell said the timing had nothing to do with Gallenson's threat. Rosano, at the time, said he wanted to make sure no loose ends were left from the initial investigation, and that a review could help detectives strengthen the original case.

Profilers with the Department of Justice reviewed the case and offered a simple recommendation: Start over.

They suggested taking a broader look at Sarah Hutchings' circle of friends, including the police officers listed in her business card collection.

It was 1995, four years after the murder.

THE SECOND INVESTIGATION

In April 1996, the case was assigned to the department's senior homicide investigator, John Kilass, who was in his tenth year as a violent crimes detective.

Months later, because of the extensive amount of work, and to give the investigation an outside eye, the city added Jack Carr, the senior investigator in the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office.

Police officials discovered that in his pursuit of Marsh, Detective Thomas closed the door on other leads and ignored some of the basic tenets of detective work. With insufficient supervision, the case's failings had long gone uncorrected.

After turning down Thomas' request for an arrest warrant, the District Attorney's Office had told him to strengthen the case by clearing other men she had known.

Police reports indicate Thomas contacted men Sarah Hutchings knew, but that he made only brief phone calls to them several months into the investigation. One of those calls was to the man who would later become the chief suspect.

One of the cornerstones of the criminal investigation was the testimony of a boy who swore he saw Marsh in Sarah Hutchings' neighborhood after Marsh had said he stopped seeing her. The information was a key piece of the grand jury case, used by Thomas and prosecutor Casey to suggest Marsh lied to police.

But during the second criminal investigation, much of the case against Marsh evaporated.

Investigators cast doubt on the polygraph test.

A check of the boy's story showed he was mistaken about the date -- whoever he saw, it was before Marsh met Hutchings, Davis said.

Some witnesses, friends and co-workers interviewed by new investigators indicated they'd given specific information to Thomas, Sgt. Davis said. But there was no record of some of those interviews, or of the information gathered.

What police had originally presented as a clear identification was now not clear at all.

Most of the interviews with witnesses weren't taped, and notes were not kept.

''Things like that started cropping up, that cast less and less light on Mark Marsh,'' Davis said.

Because the record of Thomas' interviews was not complete, there was no way for the current investigators to verify whether witnesses had changed their stories, or whether Thomas had failed to include their information in the original report.

''I was concerned and was surprised and somewhat chagrined at the failure of the initial investigation to do the basic things a homicide investigation requires,'' said Rosano, who led the department at the time of the murder and first investigation.

Rosano said Thomas should have had ''detailed taped and written statements of all witnesses, not just those that might point in the direction of a suspect.''

''It may have been done incompetently, but not purposefully,'' Rosano said. ''Maybe in retrospect, we erred in assigning a major case to a newly assigned detective.''

Thomas defends his actions, saying he put into his police reports the information he collected and that he firmly believed he had the right man.

''I stand by my investigation at the time,'' he said.

But Thomas, who is currently a motorcycle patrol officer, also conceded: ''There were things I could have done a lot better. At that time, I was a new detective ... and got this case basically botched from the get-go. I could have used a little more help.''

FINDING NEW SUSPECTS

Much of the legwork done in the next three years by detectives Kilass and Carr would be to rule out the men Sarah Hutchings had known and dated -- one by one.

Leads in the case have taken the detectives to the four corners of the nation, including two trips to Georgia to interview O'Halloran, Sarah's friend, and throughout California.

Detectives obtained blood samples from as many as 12 men who might have been connected to Hutchings, including several police officers.

Two men went to the top of a short list -- two men whom Gallenson had recommended as possible suspects.

Marsh was not among them.

A former correctional officer whom Hutchings had seen several times in the weeks before she died, was investigated. Last year, investigators began to believe he wasn't the killer.

The new investigation now focuses on a Santa Rosa businessman who is not in law enforcement. His DNA matches the semen sample, according to law enforcement sources.

INVESTIGATING THE INVESTIGATION

By early 1997, the many inconsistencies in the original case bothered Davis enough that he documented his concerns in a memo to a supervisor.

After almost a year of internal discussion, those concerns became the basis for the administrative investigation into how Sarah Hutchings murder case was handled.

Dunbaugh, who became chief in July 1996, said he ordered a departmental review in an attempt to uncover or put to rest rumors, including rumors that suggested a police conspiracy or cover-up.

''Conspiracy rumors about different suspects, different witnesses, speculation over a long period of time over all kinds of things,'' Dunbaugh said.

Sgt. Jerry Briggs conducted a six-month investigation, called the most extensive in the department's history. It was concluded last summer.

Dunbaugh said Briggs found no conspiracies, but did find ''performance deficiencies by some of those who were previously involved'' with the case.

''These deficiencies have been addressed appropriately and to the degree possible at this time,'' he said.

Citing personnel rules, Dunbaugh said he could not comment on what action was taken or on the specifics of what went wrong.

Thomas confirmed he received a letter of reprimand for not taping his interviews and indicated that he wasn't found to have done anything seriously wrong. ''I got no bad time,'' he said.

Dunbaugh, however, said his office considers what occurred very serious.

''Officer Thomas can divulge what he wants to. If it's his opinion it's minor, he's within his right to say that,'' Dunbaugh said. ''I don't agree.''

Davis said that when he inherited the case, he was told to do whatever necessary to solve the murder.

''It would have been easy to sweep the matter under the rug. But the prior and current chief have been extremely adamant about getting to the truth of the matter,'' Davis said.

For his part, Dunbaugh refuses to officially rule out any suspect. But sources in the department confirm the focus remains on a single man.

''We feel like we're very close,'' Davis said.

Police officials said they could not give an accurate appraisal of the financial cost of the 7year-old case. But the thousands of hours of manpower from two separate investigations, attorney costs to battle civil litigation, and the cost of extensive travel to interview witnesses far afield could put the figure well above $500,000.

The human cost lands directly at the Roseland doorstep of Joyce Whalen, Sarah's mother.

The slight, white-haired 73-yearold, who speaks with a soft English accent, recently poured tea into her decorative teacups, put out a plate of cookies and talked about wanting to write to ''Unsolved Mysteries'' about the murder of her daughter

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>''People say, 'Forget about it.' You don't forget about it. I'm not grieving like I was,'' she said, sitting at the table, resting her face in one hand

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>But after seven years, she said, it's time to ''put it to rest.'

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>

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>PHOTO: 1 color, 1 b&w by John Burgess/Press Democra

>1 b&w by Mark Aronoff/Press Democra

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>1. Joyce Whalen of Santa Rosa has spent more than seven years not knowing who killed her daughter, Sarah Kate Hutchings

>2. Diane Geldert, a friend of Hutchings at the time of her murder, says she'd like to see some closure. "It's an open wound... the person could do it again, even if it is an accident

>3. Defense attorney Steve Gallenson has long been critical of police handling of the case, and suggested they pursue other suspects besides his client, Mark Marsh

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>Infobox: Who killed Sarah Hutchings

>The murder of Sarah Hutchings more than seven years ago remains unsolved, and the bungled investigation remains the SR Police Department's..

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>Keywords: MURDER INVESTIGATION POLIC

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