Prosecutors continued to call witnesses Wednesday in the trial of 43-year old homicide suspect Kris Zocco.
Zocco faces three felony charges in connection with the death of Kelly Dwyer.
He also faces one felony charge for alleged witness intimidation. Prosecutors accuse Zocco of trying to arrange a hit on an ex-girlfriend who he believed could testify at his trial.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney alleges Zocco killed Dwyer during a sex act in October 2013.
He's accused of dumping her body in a rural area of Jefferson County, where a civilian stumbled upon it in May 2015.
Wednesday morning, former Milwaukee Police Detective Erik Villarreal testified about the department’s investigations into Zocco in the immediate days after Dwyer disappeared.
Villarreal said he and other investigators obtained Zocco’s personal laptop and looked over his internet history.
“I was able to determine websites Mr. Zocco had visited, and one of them was he was searching for DNA, and whether he had to give it to police if the police requested that,” Villarreal said.
Villarreal said the time of that search would have been immediately after Zocco was questioned by police in connection with Dwyer’s disappearance.
But Zocco’s defense attorneys argued the search proves no wrongdoing.
“It was about whether he was required to give police a DNA sample, right?” asked defense lawyer Craig Mastantuono.
“That’s correct,” Villarreal responded.
“Not how to cleanse DNA?” Mastantuono asked.
“Correct,” Villarreal said.
“Or how to get rid of DNA?” the defense attorney asked.
“That is correct,” the former detective answered.
Later in the day, Milwaukee Police Detective Sean Lips described four violent pornography videos discovered on one of Zocco's hard drives.
Some of them showed the actors engaging in sexual activity made to look like rape.
In one video, "a woman was tied up with a rope, suspended, and dunked into a water tank," said Lips.
"It was to the point where she was barely able to breathe," he testified.
Jurors also heard testimony from Dwyer's friend, Stephanie Shapiro, who said Zocco and Dwyer had been seeing each other for roughly 10 months.
Shapiro said, while her friend was dating Zocco, she noticed "bruises on (Dwyer's) arms in multiple places."
"It looked like hands - like there were spots from a thumb and from fingers," Shapiro recalled.
During cross-examination, Zocco's attorney asked Shapiro if Dwyer was also dating other men at the same time.
"They were not exclusive, right?" Zocco's lawyer asked.
"No," Shapiro replied.
Zocco is already serving a 19-year prison sentence for unrelated drug and child pornography convictions.
