San Antonio businesswoman Andreen McDonald suffered “homicidal violence, including blunt-force trauma,” likely from a hammer rather than by stomping, a Bexar County medical examiner testified Friday in the murder trial of her husband, Maj. Andre McDonald.
He said he overpowered her during a fight and stomped her, went upstairs to put their young, autistic daughter to bed, and returned to find Andreen McDonald dead, after an argument over her move to drop him from co-ownership of her $1 million company that ran assisted living homes.
But his story, described in testimony and opening statements by prosecutors, didn’t mention a hammer.
Later Friday, a forensic serologist testified that Andreen McDonald’s blood was found on a claw hammer that investigators seized in a search of the couple’s home days after her disappearance.
Andreen McDonald’s burned remains were found on a ranch near Camp Bullis on July 11, 2019, and her husband, then 40, was charged with murder two days later. A cyberwarfare officer in the Air Force Reserve, he already had been charged with tampering with evidence shortly after his wife was reported missing March 1.
Dr. James Feig conducted the examination of human remains that the Bexar County crime lab would later identify as Andreen McDonald.
“I believe if you were to stomp with a regular shoe, you’re going to have a broad area of force,” Feig told the jury. “These small divots or defects are suggestive of a more focused impact.”
Before Feig testified, Chief Medical Examiner Kimberley Molina spent the morning telling the jury about the process she undertook to separate human remains from those of two dead cows, as the bones were found intermixed and scattered. Some were burned.
Using photographs and diagrams, Feig explained how he had to put the skeletal remains together to distinguish what was missing. He said the human remains weighed 18 pounds.
Feig said Andreen McDonald had “focused impact” fractures of the lower jaw, neck, and in the lower area of the ribs.
Feig said “yes” when asked by prosecutor Steven Speir if the wedge-like shapes of injuries observed on various places on the spinal column were consistent with being struck by a multi-faced tool such as a claw hammer.
When Speir asked whether those injuries could have occurred from someone stomping on Andreen, Feig said “no.”
Feig could not say how Andreen McDonald died because they only had her bones.
“We know that there is some sort of blunt trauma by the fractures. What I don’t know is if or what the real fatal injury is. We are limited,” Feig told the jury.
On ExpressNews.com: Andre McDonald was being watched by police from Day One
He could not tell if she was strangled, shot or had a sharp-force wound from a knife because there was no soft tissue left, he said.
“Even poisoning,” Feig said. “We don’t have a specimen to do toxicology testing … Those are the limitations of the examination.”
The disappearance of Andreen McDonald brought out hundreds of volunteers to help authorities conduct extensive searches in northern Bexar County.
Defense attorneys John A. Convery and John T. Hunter have argued that the case is not about murder, which requires intent, since Andre McDonald killed his wife during a struggle that erupted “in the blink of an eye.” His phone call to his in-laws on the eve of the trial was an attempt to take responsibility for his actions, they said.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, which conducted the investigation, searched the house and found an ax, two hatchets, contractor trash bags and two gas cans. An alleged attempt by McDonald to burn a receipt for some of the items was the basis of the tampering with evidence charge.
Speir, along with prosecutors Lauren Scott and Ryan Groomer, told the jury that McDonald conducted hundreds of searches on his phone about DNA, fingerprints, burned bodies and decomposition. They showed heated exchanges from the couple’s cellphones the last night Andreen was seen alive outside her house.
Testimony established that the couple, who had been together for nine years, had a troubled marriage. Andreen McDonald confided in friends that she was having an affair with a former boyfriend in Jamaica, and that she and her husband at times had physical fights.
If convicted, McDonald, 43, faces up to life in prison.
ezavala@express-news.net| Twitter: @elizabeth2863