DNA links accused to murder of Scarborough grandmother, jury hears

Nearly four years after Stella Tetsos was found dead in the basement of her Scarborough bungalow, a jury heard the man accused of killing her is linked to the crime scene through DNA.

Sinbad King Simba Marshall, the 24-year-old accused, sat quietly at day one of his first-degree murder trial while crown prosecutor David Steinberg laid out the case for the jury.

“Stella Tetsos was a proud and vibrant 82-year-old grandma. Her husband Sam died 15 years ago and Stella lived alone for the last ten years,” said Steinberg, painting a picture to the jury of a woman who was very content with her life.

“She walked to the store, she gardened, she lived life. In November 2015, her life was taken from her in that house.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "She walked to the store, she gardened, she lived life. In November 2015, her life was taken from her in that house."

Zuzanna Machura, who worked as Tetsos’s personal support worker, testified that she visited her client three times a week to help her get in and out of the bathtub and to check her blood sugar readings because Tetsos was a diabetic. Machura described the 82-year-old as an independent woman who was still very active.

“She still shoveled the snow during the winter,” explained Machura.

On Nov. 11, 2015, Machura arrived at Tetsos’s home near Birchmount Road and St. Clair Avenue East at around 4:15 p.m. and noticed the front blinds were down, which was unusual. Machura said she rang the doorbell and no one answered, so she tried calling Tetsos but there was still no answer.

She explained that no one from the Tetsos family had cancelled her visit, so she decided to check the backyard. That’s when she noticed Tetsos’s TV was in the driveway beside the home and said she started to feel nervous.

“I knew something was wrong, but not so bad,” she testified.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I knew something was wrong, but not so bad," she testified.

But then Machura said she noticed a broken basement window and started to feel scared. She also saw the side door to the house slightly open and went in. Machura described seeing the bedroom where Tetsos slept.

“The bed was pushed to the window. The sheets were taken off, partially. All the drawers from the nightstand and dressers were upside down,” she said, adding she surveyed the kitchen, living room and bathroom and noticed everything was in disarray.

Machura said she went outside and called Tetsos’s daughter, who lived nearby. She told her she was too scared to go downstairs in the home and waited in the middle of the driveway where she was visible until Tetsos’s son-in-law, Chris, arrived.

She said Chris went downstairs and she went back upstairs to check each room and then she could hear Chris saying, “She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s dead,” adding he was crying and on his knees.

Machura described how Testos was lying on her right side.

“We put her in a flat position. I checked for vital signs and started compressions. She felt like a sofa, she was soft,” she told the jury.

When asked if she thought Tetsos was dead, Machura answered, ‘Yes,’ noting Tetsos’s body still felt warm.

She also described how the elderly woman was still in her pajamas and had blood coming from her mouth. Machura said she could see that Tetsos was not wearing her dentures. She told the jury it was odd because it was the afternoon and Tetsos always got dressed every morning.

The jury heard that when police later arrived, they discovered a little book in the kitchen where Tetsos recorded her blood sugar readings. Every day, someone had written a reading in the book but the last recorded reading was Nov. 9, two days before Tetsos was discovered.

Investigators also found a single earring in her bed and a number of items of jewelry missing, including a gold band with a turquoise stone she wore on her finger and a cross on a chain. They also found the wire on the phone in the kitchen had been sliced and all the cordless phones on the cradles were taken, never to be seen again.

Steinberg told jurors an autopsy found Tetsos had small tears, rips and bleedings in her brain and had numerous joint force injuries on her body. Discarded pop cans were also found just a foot away from Tetsos’s dead body.

He told the jury that the very next day two officers were doing surveillance on Marshallnear Woodbine Avenue and O’Connor Drive and took a picture of him smoking a cigarette.

Steinberg said in the picture, Marshall could be seen wearing a gold ban with a turquoise stone matching the one Tetsos wore and later that day, police arrested Marshall and found a gold chain with a cross on it. The chain matched the one missing from Tetsos’s home and had a snapped latch.

When Marshall was searched at the police station, Steinberg said, “A single earring fell out of Marshall’s coat matching a single earring found in Tetsos’s bed.”

One of the officers doing surveillance also seized the cigarette butt Marshall left behind, the jury heard. It was sent to the Centre for Forensic Science and police retrieved Marshall’s DNA. Investigators also swabbed the pop cans found near Tetsos’ body and formed a DNA profile.

Steinberg told the jury the odds of the DNA on the pop cans being from anybody other than Marshall are one in 100 trillion.

The jurors have been told the trial could last six weeks.