Judge calls bite marks 'junk science' grants man new trial for 1985 slaying

Charles McCrory was convicted and sentenced to life in an Alabama prison for the May 1985 slaying of his wife, Julie Bonds McCrory. The case rested predominately on two small marks on Julie’s arm, which the state and its expert said were bite marks that Charles McCrory made in a rageful, brutal killing, reported AL.com

Today, the technique of matching bite marks to a person’s teeth is considered junk science. And the dentist who long ago testified against him has recanted, saying he can’t even be sure the mark was made by teeth at all — much less McCrory’s teeth.

“The bitemark evidence clearly prejudiced the outcome of McCrory’s trial, especially in light of the other evidence presented at trial,” wrote Chief U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker Jr. in his Monday order.

“The non-bitemark evidence from which the jury could convict McCrory was thin.”

Huffaker’s order said the Alabama Attorney General’s Office has 180 days to begin a new trial for McCrory or release him from prison.

The state did not respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon. The office could appeal the decision.

McCrory, a 26-year-old tech worker and volunteer paramedic, was always the main suspect in his wife’s murder. There was no DNA implicating McCrory, no confessions or clear motive. No blood was ever found on his clothes or in his apartment.

But Dr. Richard Souviron, a forensic dentist in Florida who matched a victim’s wounds to Ted Bundy’s crooked teeth in Bundy’s 1979 trial, testified at McCroy’s trial that the two small marks on Julie’s arm matched McCrory’s teeth.

That testimony was the sole physical evidence against McCrory, and Huffaker said it “resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial.”

The judge said on Monday that the state court’s decision in 2022, which denied McCrory’s request for a new trial, was “both an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law and was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.”

McCrory lived in a small apartment down the street from his wife and toddler son in Andalusia, in Covington County. He and Julie McCrory, then 24, were in the middle of a divorce. But McCrory said he was at the family home on the night of May 30, 1985. The two went to couple’s therapy, spent time with their son, and had sex before McCrory went back to his apartment, he said. The two were often together, and Julie’s date book showed the possibility of her husband moving back in.

McCrory heard about the murder the next morning, when his paramedic radio signaled a call for help at his wife’s home and he responded to the scene.

Julie was found laying in the front doorway of her home. She had been severely beaten with five “chop” wounds to her head, 11 puncture wounds to her chest, fractures of her jaw bones, various bruises and two small marks on the back of her upper right arm.

No one ever confirmed what made the puncture marks that riddled her body.

At trial in October 1985, the case hinged on circumstantial evidence like McCrory’s behavior and disputed witness statements as to cars at the family home. The two small marks that Souviron said were made by McCrory’s upper teeth were the only physical evidence.

The lack of physical evidence didn’t matter. McCrory was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

But, in the years after the conviction, bite mark evidence was questioned. By 2022, national groups called the technique “junk science” and said bite mark analysis isn’t supported by data.

And in 2019, Souviron took back his testimony.

“I no longer believe the individualized teeth marks comparison testimony I offered in his case was reliable or proper,” he said in an affidavit. He added that he “would not” and “could not” give the same testimony today in McCrory’s case.

The dentist fully recanted his statements from 40 years ago, adding that he no longer believes there is a scientific basis for saying the injury— “assuming that the injury is in fact teeth marks” — could be matched to McCrory. He also said he never actually examined Julie’s body, and relied on photographs.

“My experience has taught me that human dentition is not totally unique,” he said. “I also believe that only in certain, very limited circumstances — not present in Mr. McCrory’s case — can the features of human dentition accurately be recorded in human skin.”

The evolving science and the expert’s recantation didn’t persuade Alabama. When McCrory’s team of lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Innocence Project asked for a new trial in the state courts in 2020, it was shot down.

Huffaker, the federal judge, called the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruling ambiguous and unreasonable, and said the state prosecutors’ arguments were not persuasive. Neither side disputes that the original 1985 testimony was unreliable and could not come into court today, he wrote.

Bite mark identification methods are “grossly unreliable and unsupported by relevant scientific bodies,” the judge added.

“It amounts to nothing more than rank speculation.”

Prosecutors from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office argued in 2021 that, even without Souviron’s testimony, jurors could have looked at the photographs of Julie’s body and matched the markings themselves. The Alabama Criminal Court of Appeals agreed.

McCrory’s team found the suggestion preposterous. Huffaker did, too.

“This finding blinks reality in light of the evidence,” wrote Huffaker. “If an expert could not testify about bitemark identification because it is junk science, a jury should not have been allowed to consider it either.”

Huffaker added the dentist’s recantation was not rebutted by prosecutors and the state didn’t identify anyone who could say that the marks matched McCrory’s teeth.

“It makes little sense that a lay jury could permissibly form a conclusion that no forensic expert could... There is also no evidence that the two markings on (Julie’s) body are a human bitemark.”

Huffaker also noted other rulings across the country where people who were incarcerated solely on bite mark evidence have been exonerated.

McCrory’s lawyers cited 39 known wrongful convictions and indictments from bite mark forensics. Souviron’s past testimonies alone have led to at least two documented wrongful convictions, they added.

In those cases, the dentist said the suspects’ teeth matched marks on the victims. Each man — one in Massachusetts and one in Florida — was later exonerated after DNA proved who the killer was. Each served more than 30 years in prison.

AL.com reported on the case in depth, and the state’s reluctance to accept evolving scientific methods, in the 2025 series, Alabama Vs. Science.

Six years ago, the state offered McCrory a deal: If he said he killed his wife, he could walk out of prison.

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