David Dooley Retrial: Verdict, Sentence, and Appeal

The David Dooley retrial ended in March 2019 with a Boone County, Kentucky jury again convicting the former janitor of murdering his coworker Michelle Mockbee at a Thermo Fisher Scientific warehouse in 2012. Judge James R. Schrand sentenced him to 43 years in prison, and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on February 18, 2021.¹ Dooley is serving his sentence at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex.

Why Dooley Was Tried a Second Time

A Boone County jury convicted Dooley in 2014 and sentenced him to life. Two years later, a fired clerk from the Commonwealth’s Attorney office turned over a thumb drive to the Kentucky Attorney General containing messages and documents that showed prosecutor Linda Tally Smith and lead detective Bruce McVay had been in a romantic relationship during the investigation and prosecution.²

The review that followed uncovered surveillance video from the Thermo Fisher facility showing an unidentified man approaching a door at 8:11 p.m. on May 28, 2012, roughly ten hours before Mockbee was found dead. Dooley’s original defense team said they had never been shown the footage. Detective Everett Stahl testified that the man had been identified as an out-of-state truck driver based on a phone interview, and acknowledged that investigators had decided on their own that some evidence was “insignificant” and never turned it over to the prosecutor.³ Tally Smith and McVay gave contradictory accounts at the postconviction hearing about whether the prosecutor had known about the video before trial.⁴

In May 2017, Judge Schrand ruled that enough evidence had been withheld to warrant a new trial and vacated the conviction.⁵ McVay had already resigned from the sheriff’s office in October 2016.⁶ The Kentucky Attorney General’s office took Tally Smith off the case and prosecuted the retrial itself.⁷ Tally Smith lost her Republican primary in May 2018, ending an 18-year tenure.²

The Prosecution’s Case at the 2019 Retrial

The retrial opened in February 2019, again before Judge Schrand. The case remained largely circumstantial. Prosecutors built it around motive, timeline, forensic findings, and shifting statements from Dooley himself.

The motive theory was timecard fraud. For several weeks before the killing, and on the morning it occurred, Dooley had been clocking in for both himself and his wife Janet, who was home sick, collecting pay for hours neither had fully worked. Prosecutors called it “triple dipping.”⁸ Michelle Mockbee handled payroll and timesheets at the warehouse and had arrived early that Tuesday morning after the Memorial Day holiday to work on them. The theory: she caught Dooley breaking into her office, and he killed her to keep the fraud hidden.⁹

Timeline evidence placed Dooley alone in leaving the property. Of nine people at the warehouse that morning, he was the only one who left for roughly 30 minutes around the time of the murder.¹⁰ Dooley told investigators he had gone home to check on his wife, kissed her on the couch, and pet the cat. McVay, called again by prosecutors despite his resignation, testified that Janet Dooley told police her husband never came home that morning. Recordings of Dooley’s own interviews showed him contradicting his earlier statements.¹¹

Medical examiner Dr. Gregory Wanger testified that Mockbee had suffered four skull fractures from blunt force trauma and did not die instantly. He identified an industrial tape gun as the likely weapon.¹⁰ Operations manager Ed Yuska, who had discovered the body after Dooley alerted him to blood in the hallway, testified that one of his tape guns went missing after the killing.¹²

On the forensic side, independent lab analyst Britton Morin testified that DNA extracted from the plastic bag placed over Mockbee’s head likely contained contributions from two males, and that it was “more likely” that DNA came from Dooley and one unidentified person. Dooley could not be excluded as a minor contributor to DNA on Mockbee’s shirt, though roughly one in seven Caucasian American men would also match that profile.¹³ Prosecutors argued the absence of Dooley’s DNA on the tape binding the victim’s wrists was consistent with his use of janitorial gloves or a tape dispenser.¹⁴

The previously withheld surveillance footage of the unidentified man was played in open court at the retrial.¹⁵

The Defense’s Case

Dooley’s attorneys attacked the physical evidence and offered an alternative suspect. On DNA, they pressed Morin on cross-examination to confirm that she had never been given other trash bags from the facility for comparison; testing them could have shown whether Dooley’s DNA routinely appeared on bags he handled as a janitor.¹³ Defense DNA expert Dr. Karl Reich testified that the amount of biological material was so small it amounted to “scraping the bottom of the barrel,” and that Dooley’s DNA on the bag could be an “innocent fact of his work.”¹⁴

Biomechanical engineer Roger Haut testified for the defense that a tape gun could not have produced four skull fractures and that the injuries were consistent with a heavier instrument such as a hammer. The defense used that opinion to argue the killing looked premeditated rather than a spur-of-the-moment workplace confrontation.¹⁶

The alternative-suspect theory pointed at the victim’s husband, Dan Mockbee. The defense highlighted a $10,000 payment Dan Mockbee made to Chris Black, a former Thermo Fisher employee and family friend, after the killing, and a $700,000 life insurance policy on Michelle. They also presented evidence that Michelle had been accessing dating websites before her death.¹⁶ Both men testified. Black said his wife had asked Mockbee for financial help because of the couple’s difficult finances in 2012.¹¹ Yuska also testified to a discrepancy between what he saw at the scene and what police photographs later showed, suggesting someone may have returned to the body after it was initially found.¹²

Verdict and Sentence

In March 2019, the jury found Dooley guilty of murder and of tampering with physical evidence. It recommended 38 years for the murder and 5 years for the tampering count, to run consecutively, for 43 years total.⁹ On April 11, 2019, Judge Schrand followed the recommendation and imposed the 43-year sentence.⁸

The Kentucky Supreme Court Appeal

Dooley appealed. On February 18, 2021, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in full, ruling on each issue his defense raised.¹

A Husky flip-blade knife and latex gloves had been found in Dooley’s truck four months after the murder and admitted at trial, though no forensic testing linked them to the crime. The court agreed the trial court erred in admitting them because the state had not established a specific connection to the killing, but ruled the error harmless because the defense had cross-examined witnesses about the lack of any forensic link.

Investigators had cut the plastic bag from the victim’s head into pieces and discarded the bloodier fragment without DNA testing. The defense asked for a jury instruction letting jurors infer the lost piece would have helped Dooley. The court denied it, finding no evidence of bad faith by the state and holding that the “hypothetical exculpating potential” of the missing fragment did not amount to a due-process violation.

The court also rejected the defense argument that the timecard-fraud motive theory was “too extensive, presumptive, and attenuated,” leaving the plausibility of the motive to the jury. And it upheld the trial court’s decision to allow Chris Black’s testimony over defense claims that prosecutors had contaminated it by telling Black during trial that Dooley had accused him of murder for hire.¹

Separate Child Exploitation Charges

While awaiting the retrial, Dooley was indicted in August 2018 on charges related to child sexual exploitation material, including use of a minor in a sexual performance and possession of material depicting a sexual performance by a minor.¹⁷ In October 2020, he pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful transaction with a minor in the second degree and was sentenced in November 2020 to five years on each count. That ten-year total runs concurrently with the 43-year murder sentence.¹⁸

Where Dooley Is Now

Dooley is housed at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. Kentucky Department of Corrections records list his parole eligibility date as September 17, 2032. His earliest projected release with good-time credit is July 2051, and his maximum sentence expiration date is September 2055.¹⁹

1
FindLaw. Dooley v. Commonwealth
2
FOX19. NKY Prosecutor Linda Tally Smith Loses Election in Wake of David Dooley Murder Trial Scandal
3
NKY Tribune. Defense Hammers Home Argument That Withholding of Video Evidence Warrants New Trial for Dooley
4
The Appeal. Illicit Affair of Kentucky Prosecutor Leads to Murder Conviction Being Thrown Out
5
Cincinnati Enquirer. What You Need to Know as David Dooley Murder Retrial Begins Monday
6
WLWT. Lead Detective in High-Profile NKY Murder Case Resigns
7
WCPO. Special Prosecutor Investigating Commonwealth Attorney Who Tried David Dooley Case
8
Cincinnati Enquirer. David Dooley Sentenced in Warehouse Killing of Michelle Mockbee
9
NKY Tribune. David Dooley Convicted of Murder in the Killing of Michelle Mockbee
10
FOX19. David Dooley Murder Retrial May Be Winding Down
11
Cincinnati Enquirer. Investigator Testifies David Dooley Left Work, Didn’t Go Home
12
WLWT. David Dooley Retrial: Witness Who Discovered Michelle Mockbee’s Body Testifies
13
Cincinnati Enquirer. David Dooley Retrial: Autopsy and DNA Evidence Dominate Monday Testimony
14
WCPO. DNA Expert Testifies in David Dooley Retrial
15
Cincinnati Enquirer. Trial of David Dooley Featured on Dateline
16
WLWT. David Dooley Retrial: The Jury Begins to Deliberate
17
Cincinnati Enquirer. David Dooley Faces New Child Porn Charges
18
WCPO. David Dooley Sentenced in Child Pornography Case
19
Kentucky Department of Corrections. Offender Details – David Wayne Dooley