A Prince George's County man who sat in jail for more than eight months awaiting trial on charges of murdering his estranged wife has been freed after DNA tests implicated another man now in custody in the District on a sexual assault charge.
In an unusual move, a county Circuit Court judge ordered Keith Anthony Longtin's release, saying it was his responsibility to do so because it appeared that the county did not have a case.
Longtin, 44, was charged Oct. 6 with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Donna A. Zinetti, 36, of Laurel, after police questioned him for more than 36 hours.
Although police said Longtin was not a suspect when they began questioning him, charging documents said that during the course of the interrogation, Longtin exhibited knowledge about the crime "that had not been released to the media and that only the perpetrator would have known."
Longtin, whose last known address was in Crofton, was released June 12 on personal recognizance, though police said the charges against him were not dropped and he remains a suspect.
Meanwhile, an arrest warrant has been obtained for the suspect whose DNA was found on Zinetti, according to Royce Holloway, a spokesman for Prince George's police.
That man, whom Holloway declined to identify, citing the ongoing investigation, is being held in the District in an unrelated sexual assault that occurred in the city.
If sufficient evidence is developed against the second suspect, charges against Longtin could be dropped, Holloway said.
Samuel L. Serio, Longtin's attorney, said the release of his client was long overdue, given that Serio had been pressing police for months to perform DNA tests that he believed would exonerate Longtin. Serio said he was rebuffed by police until earlier this year, when they turned up information suggesting that Longtin might not be the culprit.
"I didn't even know this was coming until they called me," Serio said.
While investigating two sexual assaults earlier this year, Holloway said, a Prince George's detective noticed similarities--including the location of the assaults--between her cases and one in the District.
The detective obtained DNA samples from the suspect in the District case and found that they matched samples in her two cases. Recalling the Zinetti slaying, which had similarities to the three assault cases, the detective called for testing of DNA found on Zinetti, Holloway said. That, too, matched the DNA in the other cases.
Holloway said the detective's DNA information was sent to the office of Prince George's State's Attorney Jack B. Johnson, who reviewed it and asked Circuit Court Judge Larnzell Martin Jr. to release Longtin.
Johnson was out of town and could not be reached yesterday, spokeswoman Paula Burr said. But Martin explained why he ordered Longtin's release. Though not unheard of, such a release is unusual for a defendant who had spent so much time in jail.
"My sense of everything was that there is not a case against Longtin," Martin said. " . . . The prosecutor had information suggesting that [Longtin] was not the right person charged with this crime."
Longtin could not be reached yesterday. His wife's body was discovered in early October by someone walking a dog in a wooded area near Larchdale Road, where she lived. She was apparently killed while out for her morning jog.
At first, police insisted that Longtin was not a suspect and that he voluntarily agreed to answer questions in his wife's death after he appeared at the site where her body was found.
"There was sufficient evidence that implicated him" during the interrogation, Holloway said. "We can't say what that information was, but it was enough to lead to an indictment."
Meanwhile, some homicide detectives who worked on the Zinetti case yesterday criticized the state's attorney for moving to release Longtin.
"We think it's a deliberate attempt to undermine and discredit the homicide detectives," said John Bartlett Jr., president of the Prince George's Fraternal Order of Police. "There is a case against [Longtin], and there's still a case against him."