The stench from a feces-covered air mattress caused jurors in Denver District Court on Wednesday to pull back, fan their faces or cover their noses with their shirts as testimony in the Chandler Grafner murder case grew more graphic.
The air mattress allegedly was Chandler’s bed in the bottom of a linen closet where his guardian, Jon Phillips, forced him to eat, sleep and defecate for long periods of time.
Phillips was charged with first-degree murder when 7-year-old Chandler died May 6, 2007, from what the coroner ruled was starvation and dehydration. Phillips’ attorneys claim he died of complications of undetected diabetes.
Police homicide Detective David Naysmith unboxed the air mattress within a few feet of the jury. He also exhibited the carpeting from the closet, the feces-covered bottom shelf from the closet and other items they retrieved, some from the dump after they chased down a trash truck that had just emptied the apartment complex’s trash containers.
Shawn O’Toole, a police forensic DNA analyst, testified that presumptive tests confirmed the brown matter covering much of the items was human feces and urine. At the end of the trial’s eighth day, O’Toole testified he had found DNA in the material but didn’t identify whose it was.
Earlier in the day, Dr. Nancy Krebs, director of nutrition at Children’s Hospital, testified that the severity of Chandler’s dehydration would have taken one to two weeks without drinking any or very little fluids.
Krebs said Chandler showed all the classic signs of dehydration and starvation, including a severe deficiency of vitamin C, or scurvy, which caused his fingernail beds to bleed before he died.
Chandler also suffered from a severe deficiency of niacin, or vitamin B3, which caused his skin to flake off or develop lesions.
“It is quite apparent that he was quite ill,” she said. “I can’t say if he was able to walk or not, but if he could, it wouldn’t be very fast or very far because of the loss of muscle in his legs.
“His hands and feet would have been cold because his body was trying to conserve energy. He would have had very little desire to move around.”
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
