Batavia Police Department detectives' court testimony on Thursday attempted to connect the bludgeoning death of 47-year-old Raymond L. Morgan to Richard D. Hanes, the man accused of murdering Morgan in his Liberty Street residence last July.
District Attorney Lawrence Friedman called detectives Eric Hill and Thad Mart to testify about their recollections of the events surrounding the July 24, 2018, murder.
The investigators said lab tests detected Hanes’s DNA on a baseball cap found below Morgan’s bedroom window. Detectives reportedly also found a green shirt and gray pants — similar to descriptions of the unknown perpetrator’s clothes — in Hanes’s blood-covered closet at his former Thorpe Street, Batavia, home.
The detectives explained to jurors that Morgan’s DNA began to be collected throughout the city following his death. Batavia PD found Morgan’s blood on both the exterior of his bedroom window and the house siding below the room in the hours after the attack.
Morgan’s DNA was also swabbed from a handlebar grip of Hanes’s bicycle and a hammer on the roof of an Ellicott Street house. Detectives suspect Hanes may have thrown the alleged murder weapon before pedaling back to Thorpe Street.
Jurors listened as Hill reassembled a text conversation between Morgan and Hanes from the fatal night last July. Although Morgan’s contact information and the text messages did not appear on Hanes’s phone, they were later found in a phone records search by police.
Hanes apparently texted Morgan “I owe you $395. Imma pay you” around 10:50 p.m. and “Here” at 11:09 p.m, minutes before Batavia PD was called to 111 Liberty St.
Mart told the jury that he had heard loud sirens from emergency responders as he was driving on Main Street before being dispatched to the scene of Morgan's death.
Mart questioned why Hanes said in a July 26, 2018, interview that he did not hear or see responders while traveling on his bicycle in the vicinity of the crime scene.
“For him to be in the area where he said he was, I find it hard to believe that he would not at least hear the sirens,” Mart said.
Hanes faces life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. Defense attorney Frederick Rarick will have the opportunity to cross-examine Mart when the trial continues at 2 p.m. today in Genesee County Court.
