ORLANDO, Fla. — Prosecutors are continuing to call witnesses Wednesday in the murder trial of a man accused of raping and killing a 27-year-old woman at her downtown Orlando apartment.
Police said Stephen Duxbury strangled Sasha Samsudean in October 2015 at the Uptown Place apartments after she returned from a night out.
Duxbury worked as a security guard at the apartment building at the time.
Defense attorneys on Wednesday discussed at length Samsudean's sex life and the possibility that another man killed her.
However, many who took the stand testified that they never visited her apartment.
Investigators said surveillance footage shows Duxbury walking with an intoxicated Samsudean. Her body was found wrapped in a comforter on her bed after friends began to wonder where she was.
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Duxbury cried as he told his supervisor that he was the last person to see Samsudean alive, the supervisor testified.
Police said DNA evidence was discovered on Samsudean's body and her bedsheets, and Duxury's fingerprints were found on her toilet and her nightstand.
Duxbury's attorneys have tried to get evidence excluded from the trial, including statements he made during a lie-detector test and a pair of shoes that police said matched shoe prints at the crime scene.
His attorneys claim that investigators botched the case and that the true killer remains at large.
Anthony Roper, Samsudean's friend, said Tuesday that it was uncharacteristic of her to bring a stranger home.
"She never explicitly took a guy home from the bar in front of me," Roper said. "She never did that."
Duxbury faces life in prison if convicted in Samsudean’s death.
Cox Media Group
