Another couple of months…another pretrial conference and another twist in the case involving Andrew Compton. Andrew is presumed to have been murdered in Louisville, Kentucky by Gregory O’Bryan in the fall of 2010. O’Bryan has confessed to killing Compton…the young mans body has never been found. Now we are learning that a small amount of hair and human DNA was found in a Southern Indiana landfill where police searched for Compton’s body according to recently released court records.
For those of you new to this story 40-year old Gregory O’Bryan is charged with Compton’s murder, sodomy, two counts of tampering with physical evidence and three counts of abuse of a corpse. He has pleaded not guilty and could face the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors will ask a judge next Thursday to authorize the Kentucky State Police laboratory to test the clump of hair found in a landfill near Medora, Ind., shortly after Compton, 18, disappeared in late 2010. But the “quantity and/or quality of human DNA” found was insufficient “to obtain a profile,” according to the report of a forensic laboratory examination of a tissue-like sample taken from the landfill.
Jefferson County (Kentucky) prosecutor Tom Van De Rostyne had said in February that authorities were testing what they believe to be three pieces of flesh found. No human DNA was found in any other samples tested, according to the court documents, filed last week. No blood was found. Van De Rostyne said in an interview that the hair may be destroyed during the testing, prompting the request for the judge’s permission. He said he could not comment on the human DNA found — or tell exactly what it was — and whether there was any way it could be tested against a DNA profile of Compton.
In an interview, defense attorney Amy Hannah said, “It shouldn’t be a surprise that a small amount of human DNA was located in a landfill” with tons of trash. And she noted that most of the samples tested didn’t contain any DNA. Compton, who attended Sullivan University at Louisville, Ky., has not been seen since Oct. 28, 2010. O’Bryan admitted the teen had died, saying it happened during consensual sex between the two. He also admitted he had sex with Compton’s body after the teen died, and then put the body in a garbage bin at Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital along Newburg Road in Louisville. Police tracked the contents of the garbage bin to the landfill and searched unsuccessfully for the body for 10 days. Samples of possible tissue, hair and fragments of dried skin found during the search in November 2010 were all tested to determine if they were human, according to the court documents. O’Bryan is due in court next week for a hearing on his competency, which was requested by prosecutors.
