Appeals court grants new DNA tests in 1987 murder

An appeals court has ruled that a man serving two life sentences for two murders can have DNA testing done on blood, fingernail clippings and other material that was not previously tested in one of the cases — the 1987 murder of an Arlington woman.

The state plans to contest the ruling, according to an official with the Tarrant County district attorney’s office.

According to police, Roger Fain Jr., now 60, had a long history of kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault against women across Florida and Texas.

Fain was serving a life sentence in the Eastham Prison Unit in Lovelady, about 200 miles southeast of Fort Worth, for an unrelated murder in 2006 when authorities linked his semen to the slaying of the Arlington woman, Linda Donahew, who was 41.

In 2007 in state District Judge Scott Wisch’s court, a jury convicted Fain of killing her, and his new life sentence was stacked on top of the previous one.

“He’s professed his innocence from the beginning,” said Barry Alford, Fain’s appellate attorney. “Fain wanted a chance to get the evidence tested. Now, I’m just waiting to see what the state will do.”

The Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth said in an opinion earlier this month that Fain can have biological material found on Donahew’s clothing tested.

Steven Conder, chief of post-conviction writs for the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, said he plans to challenge the appeals court ruling to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

“We’re still early in the process,” he said.

Any findings from the DNA tests would have to be considered in conjunction with the evidence produced at trial and prior DNA testing, Conder said. Tarrant County has only had two cases overturned on the basis of DNA testing since 2001, Conder said.

Appellate judges had rejected an initial 2012 request from Fain to retest DNA evidence presented at trial. But when Fain submitted a new request in April 2013, the law had changed.

DNA from three different men was found at the scene of the murder and inside Donahew’s body and there was no way to tell when or in what order the DNA was deposited, according to the appeal’s court ruling.

The ruling states that the jury probably would not have convicted Fain if evidence from hair found in Donahew’s hand or blood on a faucet at the scene had excluded him.

Donahew’s sister, Bonnie Bishop, found her nude, blood-covered body on the floor of the bedroom closet in her southwest Arlington home on June 1, 1987, according to court records.

She had been stabbed and strangled. It appeared that her killer had cut her clothes off, raped her and then painted on her with her own blood, police said at the time.

Witnesses in 1987 told police that they saw an older-model white pickup parked at Donahew’s house on the day she was killed. Fain was driving a 1976 pickup at the time, police said. His mug shot also closely matched a sketch investigators released based on witnesses’ descriptions of a man they saw with Donahew in the pickup, police said.

Fain was also a suspect in the 1994 death of Darlene Anderson, a Round Rock woman he knew, police said. Anderson, 38, and Fain’s ex-girlfriend, Sandra Dumont, 39, went missing a month apart from each other.

Fain participated in a search for Anderson’s body that summer in a field where both women’s bodies would later be found. Their clothes appeared to have been cut from their bodies, as Donahew’s had been, police said. Fain was convicted in 1995 of Dumont’s slaying, but police did not have enough evidence to charge him with Anderson’s death.

Fain is serving his two life sentences in the McConnell Unit in Beeville, about 90 miles southeast of San Antonio, and began his prison time in 1995, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records.

This report includes information from the Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published December 31, 2014 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Appeals court grants new DNA tests in 1987 murder."