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On February 12, 1981, 16-year-old Sherry Parsons returned home from high school in the small town of Norwalk, Ohio, and found a strangely quiet house. [qh]
1981年2月12日，16岁的雪莉·帕森斯从俄亥俄州诺沃克小镇的高中回到家中，发现房子里静得出奇。 [qh]
She called out for her mother, Barbara; hearing no response, she climbed the stairs and walked into her parents’ bedroom. [qh]
她大声呼喊她的母亲芭芭拉；没有听到回应，她爬上楼梯，走进了她父母的卧室。[qh]
“Then my eyes focused on the blood on the bed,” she recalled when I spoke with her recently. “I saw my mother on the floor, bludgeoned to death. I dropped my schoolbooks and started screaming.”[qh]
“我的眼睛盯着床上的血，”我最近和她交谈时，她回忆道。“我看到我的母亲躺在地上，被棍棒打死了。我扔掉了课本，开始尖叫起来。”[qh]
Blood soaked her mother’s nightgown and the bedsheets, and covered the walls and the ceiling. [qh]
鲜血浸透了她母亲的睡衣和床单，墙壁和天花板也沾上了血迹。[qh]
The police in Norwalk interviewed James Parsons, Barbara’s husband and Sherry’s father. [qh]
诺沃克的警察询问了芭芭拉的丈夫、雪莉的父亲詹姆斯·帕森斯。[qh]
There had been marital problems, but Parsons had a strong alibi: He had picked up breakfast at a coffee shop on the way to work at his auto-repair shop, where he saw customers throughout the morning. [qh]
他们有婚姻问题，但帕森斯有一个充分的不在场证明：他在去汽车修理店上班的路上在一家咖啡店买了早餐，整个上午他都在汽车修理店里接待顾客。 [qh]
Police did not seriously investigate any other suspects.[qh]
警方没有认真调查任何其他嫌疑人。[qh]
The case was cold for about a decade, until Sergeant Mike White, in Norwalk, began looking into the murder. [qh]
这个案子被搁置了大约十年，直到诺沃克的迈克·怀特警官开始调查这起谋杀案。 [qh]
White wondered if he could connect the bedsheets to what he believed might have been the murder weapon: a Craftsman breaker bar—a heavy tool with a long handle, used to unscrew tight bolts—that had been found in a car that James Parsons had once owned. [qh]
怀特想知道他是否能把床单和他认为可能是凶器的东西联系起来:一个Craftsman牌的加力杆——一种带有长柄的重型工具，用来拧开紧固的螺钉——这是在詹姆斯·帕森斯曾经的一辆车里发现的。 [qh]
White approached the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office, in Cleveland. [qh]
怀特来到克利夫兰市凯霍加县验尸官办公室。 [qh]
The technicians there examined the bedsheets and the tool, which had no traces of blood on it, and said they could not conclusively rule out the breaker bar as the murder weapon or connect it to the crime.[qh]
那里的技术人员检验了床单和工具，上面没有血迹，他们说，他们不能排除加力杆是凶器的可能性，也不能将这个工具与犯罪联系起来。 [qh]
White then brought the matter to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where the case was assigned to a forensic scientist named G. Michele Yezzo, a bloodstain specialist. [qh]
怀特随后将此事提交给了俄亥俄州刑事调查局，该案件被分配给了法医科学家、血迹专家·米歇尔·耶佐，她是一名血迹专家。[qh]
Yezzo proved to be more helpful. [qh]
事实证明，耶佐更能帮上这个忙。[qh]
She believed she could make out a letter N, consistent with the appearance of the same letter in the word Craftsman on the breaker bar, imprinted on a bedsheet. [qh]
她认为自己能辨认出一个字母N，这个字母与印在床单上的加力杆上的“Craftsman”一词中的字母N外观一致。 [qh]
She also believed that some stains on the victim’s nightgown—which are not easy to decipher—appeared to be similar in shape to the head area of the bar. [qh]
她还认为，受害者睡衣上的一些血迹——不容易辨认——似乎与加力杆头部区域的形状相似。 [qh]
She sprayed a chemical on the bedsheet and the nightgown to enhance the stains and raise any other impressions. [qh]
她在床单和睡衣上喷洒了一种化学物质，以增强血迹、增加其他印记。 [qh]
As she watched, more detail emerged. [qh]
随着观察的推进，更多的细节浮出水面。 [qh]
She later testified that she was able to see “individualizing characteristics”—marks seemingly unique to that breaker bar—on the nightgown. [qh]
她后来作证说，她能够在睡衣上观察到“个性化特征”——似乎是那个加力杆独有的标记。 [qh]
She also testified that the letter S rose to the surface of the bedsheet—likewise consistent with the appearance of that letter in the word Craftsman. [qh]
她还作证说，字母S出现在床单的表面上，这与单词“Craftsman”中字母的外形是一致的。 [qh]
But Yezzo failed to photograph the newly visible image, and it faded. [qh]
但耶佐未能拍摄到这张新出现的图像，它褪色了。 [qh]
Moreover, the chemical process used to bring out the bloodstain markings—all of them, on both the bedsheet and the nightgown—made replication by the defense impossible. [qh]
此外，用于显现血迹的化学过程--所有这些痕迹都出现在床单和睡衣上--使得辩方不可能复制这些痕迹。[qh]
When asked, years later, why she had failed to photograph what she said she’d seen on the enhanced bedsheet, Yezzo replied, “This is one time that I didn’t manage to get it soon enough.” [qh]
几年后，当被问及为什么她没有拍下她在血迹显现增强的床单上看到的东西时，耶佐回答说：“那一次我没能及时拍下来。”[qh]
She added: “Operator error.”[qh]
她补充道：“操作员失误。”[qh]
