The Wrongful Conviction of David Camm: When Forensic Evidence Tells the Wrong Story

On September 28, 2000, former Indiana State Police trooper David Camm returned home after playing basketball with friends and relatives. When he opened his garage, he discovered a horrifying scene.

His wife, Kim, was lying beside her Ford Bronco. Inside the vehicle were their two young children, seven-year-old Brad and five-year-old Jill. All three had been shot.

David believed Brad might still be alive, so he pulled his son from the vehicle and attempted CPR before calling the police. But within days, the grieving husband and father became the investigation’s primary suspect.

At the center of the case were eight microscopic drops of blood on David’s T-shirt.

Eight Tiny Bloodstains

Investigators claimed the stains were high-velocity impact spatter from Jill’s gunshot wound. According to their interpretation, David must have been standing within feet of his daughter when she was killed.

That conclusion became the foundation of the case against him.

But the original determination came from Robert “Rob” Stites, an assistant sent to photograph and document the crime scene. Stites had never completed a bloodstain-analysis course, had almost no scientific background and had never processed a homicide scene.

Still, investigators treated his opinion as forensic fact.

The defense offered another explanation: contact transfer. David had reached across Jill while attempting to remove Brad from the Bronco. Experts argued that his shirt brushed against Jill’s blood-soaked hair during that rescue attempt.

During a courtroom demonstration, defense experts brushed T-shirts against blood-covered wigs and produced stains that looked strikingly similar to those found on David’s clothing.

The same evidence prosecutors called proof of murder could also have been evidence of a father trying to save his son.

The Evidence Investigators Overlooked

While investigators focused on David’s T-shirt, several other pieces of evidence remained unexplained.

Kim’s shoes and socks had been removed and placed neatly on top of the Bronco. A gray prison-issued sweatshirt was discovered near Brad’s body with the word “BACKBONE” written inside its collar. An unidentified palm print was also found on the passenger side of the vehicle.

None of it belonged to David.

Testing performed before David’s first trial revealed an unknown male DNA profile on the sweatshirt. His attorney asked prosecutors to submit it to CODIS, the national DNA database, but that search was never completed.

David went to trial without knowing who had worn the sweatshirt or why it had been left at the murder scene.

In 2002, he was convicted of killing his family and sentenced to 195 years in prison.

A Match Hidden in Plain Sight

David’s first conviction was overturned in 2004 after an appellate court ruled that extensive testimony about his extramarital relationships had unfairly prejudiced the jury.

As the state prepared to prosecute him again, the unknown DNA from the sweatshirt was finally entered into CODIS. A match was returned within two hours.

The DNA belonged to Charles Boney, a convicted felon whose prison nickname was “Backbone.”

Investigators subsequently matched Boney’s palm print to the print found on Kim’s Bronco. His criminal history also included violent attacks against women, several of which involved taking or attempting to take their shoes.

Boney initially denied knowing David or being present at the Camm home. Once confronted with the palm-print evidence, however, his story changed. He admitted being at the scene but claimed David was the person who fired the gun.

Rather than reconsidering whether Boney had acted alone, prosecutors incorporated him into their existing theory and argued that the two men committed the murders together.

Three Trials and Thirteen Years

David was convicted again in 2006 after prosecutors introduced a new and highly inflammatory motive. That conviction was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2009, which found that the state’s theory relied on speculation unsupported by competent evidence.

Still, prosecutors tried David for a third time.

During the 2013 trial, jurors learned the truth about Stites’ qualifications and heard experts offer completely different interpretations of the blood on David’s shirt. The defense also presented additional DNA evidence pointing toward Boney, while emphasizing that no phone records, messages, witnesses or physical evidence proved that David and Boney had ever known each other.

On October 24, 2013, David Camm was found not guilty on all charges.

He had spent approximately 13 years behind bars.

When Forensics Become a Story

The David Camm case did not lack physical evidence. The problem was how that evidence was selected and interpreted.

Eight tiny bloodstains were treated as definitive proof of guilt. Meanwhile, another man’s sweatshirt, DNA, prison nickname and palm print were treated as complications to a theory investigators had already accepted.

Forensic evidence does not speak for itself. It must be collected, tested, interpreted and explained—and every one of those steps involves human judgment.

When investigators become committed to one version of events, evidence that should change their theory can instead be forced to fit it.

David Camm lost his wife, his children and 13 years of his freedom. His case remains a powerful warning about what can happen when protecting a theory becomes more important than questioning it.

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