Man faces retrial for 1994 Woodbridge murder Suspect had been incarcerated for previous assault charge in Maine BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer The capital murder retrial for the man who is accused of the robbery, sexual assault and strangulation death of a woman in 1994 began Oct. 30 in state Superior Court in Middlesex County. Steven Fortin, who is now 43 years old, was indicted on Sept. 6, 1995, and charged with first-degree murder of Melissa Padilla, 25, on Aug. 11, 1994, after she picked up food for her four young children [ages 2-5] around 11 p.m. from the Quick Chek on Route 1 in the Avenel section of Woodbridge. Padilla was walking back from Quick Chek to the Gem Motel on Route 1, where she resided with her children and boyfriend Hector Fernandez. The motel is about a sixminute walking distance from Quick Chek. Padilla's body was discovered naked from the waist down in a concrete pipe alongside Route 1. Her face and head were brutally beaten resulting in a broken nose; she was sexually assaulted and had bite marks on her chin and left breast, and she was strangled to death. Police had exhausted all of their leads and the case remained unsolved until the Maine State Police contacted Woodbridge Township police inquiring about Fortin in April 1995 because he was a township resident at the time. He was under investigation for the assault of a Maine state trooper. Fortin pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced in November 1995 to 20 years in a Maine prison. Police in New Jersey had learned that Fortin had been living at the Douglas Motel near the Quick Chek with Dawn Archer, his girlfriend of five months at the time, and had made a purchase at the convenience store the day of Padilla's murder. Archer, who dated Fortin until the end of January 1995 and now lives in South Carolina, testified that she had an argument and physical altercation with Fortin the night of Padilla's murder in the parking lot of Bud's Hut, which is within five minutes of the crime scene. "I saw him [Fortin] running away [after she ran into Bud's Hut and asked for people to call 911]," she said. Archer testified that she saw Fortin that Saturday (Aug. 13) and observed "deep and noticeable" scratch marks on Fortin's face, neck and arm. "I asked him where he got the scratches and he told me that he got them running through the woods and he slept in the woods because he was afraid the police would find him because he assaulted me," said Archer, who said she did not give the scratches to Fortin during their altercation. In light of the similarities between the Maine state trooper assault and Padilla's murder - alleged sexual assault, beating about the face resulting in a broken nose, and bite marks to the chin and left breast - Woodbridge police traveled to Maine to question Fortin. Joseph Joraskie, who was a detective in the Woodbridge Police Department at the time and is now retired, testified that toward the end of their questioning with Fortin, which lasted for two hours, it was "going in circles." During questioning, Joraskie told Fortin that they sent his bite marks to a forensic odontologist and the doctor told them that "the bite marks on Padilla were found to be a 99 percent match to Fortin." "He was saying, 'If the evidence shows that I did it, then I must have done it, but I don't remember doing it,'" testified Joraskie, who questioned Fortin with Lt. Lawrence Nagle, an investigator with the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office. "He continued to say that, and I felt at that time that the conversation was going in circles." Their questioning ceased after Fortin asked for an attorney. The officers left Maine without a taped statement. Police did not uncover any forensic evidence linking Fortin to the Padilla murder. Fortin was found guilty of Padilla's murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2000. The N.J. Supreme Court in a 4-2 decision overturned the conviction and death sentence of Fortin in February 2004. The court cited that the testimony at the original trial of former FBI agent Robert Hazelwood concerning linkage analysis lacked sufficient scientific reliability to establish that the same perpetrator committed the Maine and New Jersey crimes. Since then, the state and defense attorneys for Fortin have battled in court on what testimony should be allowed and not allowed. The latest state Supreme Court hearing in March of this year allows the bite mark evidence from the Maine assault, which in turn allows prosecutors to argue that both assaults were "signature crimes"; however, the other similarities of the crimes would not be permitted to be testified to the jury. Defense attorneys for Fortin, Michael Priarone and Cathy Waldor, argued that numerous people frequented the strip along Route 1 where Padilla's body was found and inmates released from East Jersey State Prison and the state Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center for sex offenders, which are in Avenel, resided in the area. Joraskie testified that during their investigation they questioned many sex offenders that were living in the area at the time of Padilla's murder. The state Assistant Prosecutors Christie Bevacqua and Keith Warburton showed photographs of Padilla's injuries and the area of the crime scene to the 11- man and five-woman jury as well as the actual grocery items that were found at the crime scene and Padilla's clothes. Fortin is currently being held at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.