The former boyfriend of a College Park woman was found guilty of her murder late Wednesday after a three-day trial, nearly 24 years after her body was found in the trunk of her car outside a drug store in Sanford.<\/p>\n
Demorris Hunter was accused of strangling 38-year-old Teresa Green in May 2002 shortly after a party with their neighbors allegedly ended in a drunken altercation. Found guilty of first-degree murder, he now faces the death penalty.<\/a><\/p>\n Hunter, who went by \u201cMike\u201d at the time, is already serving a lifelong prison sentence for an unrelated murder in California that occurred about two months before Green was killed. He was extradited to Florida in 2015 and has been held in the local jail since then.<\/p>\n In closing arguments, prosecutors relied on testimony by Green\u2019s neighbors, who claimed Hunter and Green tumbled down the stairs during the argument.<\/p>\n The next morning, Hunter enlisted those neighbors to help him take Green\u2019s car to a Walgreens in Sanford. One neighbor alleged that Hunter told him, \u201cI messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n The prosecutors also relied\u00a0physical evidence on Green\u2019s body, with her battered and bloated face shown repeatedly to jurors, to conclude she had been strangled. Her other injuries, which came from a slap at the party and from the fall down the stairs, could not have been fatal, according to expert testimony.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the evidence in this case points to one person, and that\u2019s the defendant,\u201d Assistant State Attorney Rich Buxman told the jury.<\/p>\n The jury returned a verdict after seven hours of deliberation. The panel will return Monday morning to hear arguments to decide Hunter\u2019s sentence.<\/p>\n Green, a labor nurse at the then-Florida Hospital \u2014 now AdventHealth Orlando \u2014 was living with her 14-year-old son at the time, but the teenager was staying with a friend the night of the party.<\/p>\n When her family called police the next day to report her missing, her son noticed a hole in the drywall that he told investigators was not there the night before. Her car, with her body inside, was found later that night.<\/p>\n After she was killed, prosecutors said Hunter fled Florida in a van stolen from another neighbor, which was found scorched in Texas around the summer before his arrest.<\/a> More than a decade later Hunter was returned to Florida.<\/a><\/p>\n His attorneys, led in closing arguments by Teodoro Marrero, called the prosecution\u2019s case \u201ca complete white-washing\u201d of the facts, pointing to a lack of DNA evidence on Green\u2019s body, in the apartment and in the car demonstrating Hunter\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n Two forensic analysts disagreed somewhat as to how Green died, with one concluding she was strangled based on the circumstances while another said it was possible but inconclusive.<\/p>\n Marrero also questioned inconsistencies in the testimony of Green\u2019s neighbors, including one who declined to provide DNA and fingerprints to exclude him as a suspect. Mainly, he sought to undercut their testimony by asking the jury why they did not call the police when he noticed Green\u2019s car was left in a parking lot with Green nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no shred of evidence that any of this happened; you just have to take their word for it \u2014 or not,\u201d Marrero said. \u201cWithout their testimony,\u201d he later added, \u201call they\u2019ve got is a car in a parking lot with no connection to Mr. Hunter.\u201d<\/p>\n He also went as far as to suggest the neighbors may have been involved in Green\u2019s killing, though no one other than Hunter has ever been accused. Prior to closing arguments, Hunter\u2019s other lawyer, Eben Self, motioned for an acquittal by arguing there was no evidence Green was even killed in Orange County, which Chief Circuit Judge Lisa Munyon quickly denied.<\/p>\n During his time as a fugitive, Hunter was the subject of a segment on the TV show \u201cAmerica\u2019s Most Wanted.\u201d He was captured by the FBI about a year after Green was killed.<\/p>\n But Hunter was not immediately extradited to Florida while he faced justice in California.<\/p>\n