Forensic pathologist John Feczko testified in Porter Superior Court Wednesday morning that Derek Hartz, 35, of Hobart, was alive for all 28 injuries that contributed to his murder near a public access fishing spot in Portage Township on the morning of June 13, 2023.
Those injuries included a stab wound to the top of his head that still held the tip of a knife blade revealed in an x-ray during the autopsy.
“This is rare,” Feczko said of the weapon fragment, “but that’s why we do X-rays because this is evidence.”
The cataloging of the victim’s injuries was done with a heavily marked diagram of the body for the benefit of the 12 jurors and two alternates and included multiple round contusions to the head from blunt force that Feczko said could have been from an item such as a knife handle or a rock, as well as many stab wounds that included catastrophic injuries to the victim’s heart and both lungs. Feczko said Hartz bled to death and any number of the wounds could have been fatal on their own.
Domonic Brothers, the 28-year-old co-defendant from Gary, is being tried for Hartz’s murder in Judge Jeffrey Clymer’s courtroom, while co-defendant Jada Monroe will face a separate trial in October before Porter Superior Court Judge Michael Fish. Both defendants are charged with two counts of murder, a Level 1 felony, and one count of robbery resulting in serious bodily injury, a Level 2 felony.
Porter County prosecutors contend Brothers and Monroe lured Hartz on an LGBTQ dating app with the promise of sex to rob him of his car and money. While Chief Deputy Prosecutor Armando Salinas had enquired of Feczko if he could speculate on the length of the knife blade used in the murder, defense attorney Mark Chargualaf asked him to estimate its width.
Chargualaf also asked Feczko how many others were present during the autopsy on June 15, 2023, and whether Feczko switched gloves as he moved to each new area of Hartz’s body during the examinations. Feczko said he changed gloves after completing the external examination before moving on to the internal examination.
It was during the internal examination that a hair was found in the victim’s throat.
Chargualaf also asked Feczko his opinion of how many assailants could have inflicted the injuries, and a juror also asked the same question in writing when given the opportunity by the judge. Feczko reiterated what he had written in his report, that it was possible for two assailants, each wielding a different weapon, to be responsible, or for one assailant switching between a knife and perhaps its handle to act alone.
As Feczko left the rear of the courtroom following his testimony, Brothers turned to watch him and then put his interlaced hands to his face for several moments.
After a recess, Porter County Sheriff’s Detective Brian Dziedzinski testified about the Google Geofence requested by his office. The virtual four-point fence, obtainable with a warrant, allows law enforcement to see if any device actively communicated with Google applications during a specified timeframe within physical parameters.
Dziedzinski testified that Hartz’s cellphone was tagged in the Geofence, but not those of the two defendants. He also testified about the two visits he made to the house Brothers and Monroe were living in in the 4300 block of 11th Avenue in Gary to conduct interviews with housemates and neighbors and take tours and photographs.
The detective was present for a June 19, 2023, interview of Brothers by police and Salinas asked if there was any relevance between the information gathered in that interview and Dziedzinski’s visits to the house.
He said yes, both in photographs he took of bricks in the yard of the residence and evidence provided to him by the next-door neighbor. “She returned to her residence and provided me with the defendant’s cellphone,” he replied.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.