Neighbor Is Found Guilty In Slaying Of College Student -- Case Focused On Enhanced Palm Print

Eric Hayden was found guilty today of the murder of 27-year-old Dawn Fehring, a Bible-college student and former missionary from Kirkland.

It took a jurors less than two hours of deliberation, yesterday and today, to reach their verdict on the 32-year-old millworker.

Fehring, a student at Issaquah's Lutheran Bible Institute, was found dead in her Kirkland condominium last Mother's Day. She died of strangulation.

Although Fehring lived one floor below Hayden, the two were not acquainted.

After the verdict was read today in King County Superior Court, Dotty Fehring, the victim's mother, said the family would try to find peace.

Her daughter's middle name was Rene, which means peace, she told reporters.

"Anger is not what you do when life creates problems," she said. "You need to create peace; there's no help in striking out again."

Investigators relied on a computer-enhanced image of a bloody palm print, one of five found on Fehring's bedsheet. Detectives didn't find the prints until they soaked the sheet in a chemical that reacts with the protein in blood. But because of the weave of the fabric, they couldn't make out details.

A Tacoma police specialist took pictures of the blood splotches and used a computer to blur the weave of the fabric, leaving a clear palm print visible against a solid background. Prosecutors said the print matched Hayden's, which were on file after a previous, unrelated charge.

During closing arguments yesterday, defense attorney Andrew Dimmock questioned the reliability of the evidence. He said the technology used to match the print had been used very few times before and never on woven fabric.

"There's no other evidence to suggest Eric Hayden had ever been there," Dimmock said.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor James Konat said the method used to enhance the print could have been duplicated with computer programs available in any software store.

"You can enhance the fingerprints of anyone who is drunk enough or stupid enough to leave their fingerprints in the victim's blood," Konat told the jury.