DNA Ties Suspect to Slayings At Md. Shop, Prosecutors Say

About a minute after a call went out about a possible carjacking at a Suitland flower shop, Hugh Darden, then a Prince George's County police officer, arrived at the store and found a horrific scene: two elderly women, bloodied, on the floor behind a counter.

One of the women was dead, Darden said yesterday in Circuit Court in Upper Marlboro, and the other was curled up behind her, gasping for air. Darden was among the first witnesses to testify in the trial of Adam I. Neal, who is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of shop owner Mary Frances McDonald, 76, and her friend and employee, Madeline "Mattie" Thompson, 73.

The women were fatally stabbed about 10:30 a.m. Sept. 24, 2003. The killer took about $60, authorities said. No one was arrested until February 2006, when a DNA match from a federal database pointed to Neal, 25. Prosecutors said DNA from the double homicide matched the DNA profile of Neal, who was in the Alexandria jail on unrelated charges.

The killings shocked not just relatives and friends of the victims but also business owners and residents who work and live near the flower shop, which is in a strip mall in the 4600 block of Suitland Road.

McDonald and Thompson were longtime friends. Over the years, McDonald, a Glenn Dale resident, had worked in a number of flower shops and saved what she could of her modest earnings, relatives said. In 1994, she bought Suitland Florist, one of the shops where she had worked.

Thompson lived on a fixed income in a small apartment in Oxon Hill, relatives said, and she needed the $100 a week she earned at the shop to get by.

The two were known to customers and others as Miss Mary and Miss Mattie, Assistant State's Attorney Cherie Simpkins said in her opening statement yesterday.

Simpkins said Neal killed "two of the most precious flowers in the shop," leaving "a horrific sight among the tulips and roses and lilies."

McDonald was stabbed and cut 29 times, Simpkins said. Thompson was stabbed and cut 19 times, she said.

As Neal fled in McDonald's red Ford Escape, he left a trail of blood and DNA evidence, Simpkins said. The sport-utility vehicle was found about a mile from the shop, in the parking lot of an apartment complex where Neal was living, Simpkins said.

In a dumpster next to the SUV, police found a T-shirt that contained Neal's DNA, Simpkins said. Police also found a pair of gloves and a sweatshirt jacket tying Neal to the crime, Simpkins said. Blood from the victims was found in the SUV, Simpkins said.

In his opening statement, Assistant Public Defender Robert E. McGowan said DNA on the T-shirt and jacket came from more than one male. McGowan said no physical evidence -- such as a fingerprint -- places Neal at the crime scene. And investigators have found no witnesses who said they saw him at the shop, he said.

Among the state's witnesses yesterday was Sade Spriggs, who testified that she was dating Neal at the time of the slayings. Spriggs said that on the day of the killings, she and Neal saw a TV news report that showed the design of the T-shirt: black, with squiggly lines that read "CLASS OF 2003" and an image of a blue roadrunner with its tongue extended. He did not react, she said.

Spriggs testified that she bought such a T-shirt at Potomac High School in Oxon Hill. Police later contacted her and asked whether she owned such a shirt, Spriggs testified. She said that Neal had told her that if she found it, she should just throw it out.