KEY POINTS:
Two fingerprints found on the outside of Emma Agnew's car were a match for Liam James Reid but the defence at his murder trial has suggested they got there when he was reading a for sale sign in the car window.
Brent Wilson from the police crime prints section told the High Court at Christchurch how the prints were lifted using forensic crime light technology.
The prints were taken from the outside of the vehicle on the right rear door.
He said none could be found inside the car because it had been set on fire and was covered with smoke residue and a greasy yellowish film.
He also said fingerprints were hard to recover because the interior was typical of modern vehicles with fabric seats and textured surfaces. Miss Agnew's prints were found on the windscreen.
Defence counsel Glenn Henderson questioned Mr Wilson about where Reid's prints were in relation to the for sale signs that Miss Agnew had sellotaped in the rear window of the car.
The prints were just below where the sign would have been.
Mr Henderson: "He might have leant against the car looking at the sign? Is that a possibility?"
Mr Wilson: "Closing the door or pushing the door, or leaning. It is not an unusual place for a man his height to push the door shut."
Reid denies charges of raping and murdering Miss Agnew whose body was found at Spencer Park, north of Christchurch, 11 days after she disappeared last November.
He also denies rape, sexual violation, robbery, and attempted murder charges arising from an attack on a Dunedin woman the same month.
The trial is in its second week before Justice Lester Chisholm and a jury. It may last four weeks.
- NZPA
