Ÿ       Faulty work by OCSO technicians apparently was responsible for the FBI's inability to identify some of the dry blood specimens.  After the FBI released the disappointing serology results, Robert Eagan wrote a biting letter to the chief of the OCSO Technical Services Division, criticizing the technicians' crime scene work.  Eagan implied that some specimens had been improperly collected, resulting in insufficient quantities for typing.

Insufficient samples may have accounted for the FBI's decision to withhold testing of most of the dry samples for more than two weeks, after which subtyping would no longer be reliable.  If the samples were good, then  the decision to delay testing was the equivalent of destroying valuable—probably crucial—evidence.

The FBI serologist William Gavin was the chief examiner on the case,  responsible for distributing the evidence to other departments in the lab.  Gavin said that he made a judgment call to delay his own testing until all  the other examinations had been made, even though that would greatly diminish the potential value of the blood evidence.

However, this doesn't explain why Gavin didn't attempt to subtype the sample swabs and filter papers that contained the dry blood specimens from around the store.  These items were gathered specifically for blood typing.

The sheriff's transmittal letter to the FBI asked that blood specimens be subtyped as far as possible.  But we also know that the test of Tommy Zeigler's trousers was done under an informal verbal agreement, and that the results were never committed to paper.

 The defense was prepared to do its own tests.  But while the evidentiary potential of the police's blood specimens ebbed away in the FBI Lab, the OCSO and the state attorney retained control of the crime scene, preventing Gene Annan and Pete Ragsdale from gathering their own samples. Sheriff's deputies did not relinquish the store until after fifteen days—after the two-week limit for collecting and subtyping dry blood  evidence.

The ultimate upshot was that probably the most valuable potential evidence in the case was lost forever, for reasons which were within the control of the sheriff and the prosecutor and the crime lab of their choice.

Ÿ       The Winter Garden Inn, adjacent to the crime scene, represented a potential trove of witnesses.  Anyone at the motel might have heard shots. Furthermore, both Felton Thomas and Edward Williams described specific incidents that were supposed to have taken place in and around the fenced rear compound, within open view of more than twenty rooms in the north wing.

Knocking on doors and asking questions is one of the basic techniques of police investigation.  Incredibly, no OCSO detective or patrolman ever canvassed the staff and guests of the motel.1 Investigators did not begin

1   The Oakland chief of police, Robert Thompson, interviewed some motel guests on the evening of December 27, seventy-two hours after the murders. By that time most of the Christmas Eve guests had checked out. Nobody has ever explained why a local officer out of his jurisdiction was doing the > work of county deputies.