A 26-year-old man is charged with criminal homicide in 3rd Circuit Court, after forensic experts identified him using plaster molds of his teeth.
Christian Davis Smania faces a single first-degree felony after bite marks found on the breasts of Theresa Ann Morlock led police to believe the man played a key role in the woman's death.Morlock, 35, was found dead in her Redwood Road apartment on Feb. 24. She was severely beaten around the head. An autopsy showed the woman was strangled or smothered and died of asphyxiation.
Morlock's body was located by a maintenance worker. Police at the scene indicated the body could have been in the apartment for some time. The autopsy later placed time of death at between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Feb. 23, at least 30 hours before the body was found.
Smania was interviewed by police on Feb. 26 and told them he was a friend of Morlock and had seen the woman late Feb. 22. The man told police he tried her door the next day, but there was no response.
The Salt Lake Police Department used a search warrant to obtain samples of blood, saliva and hair from Smania, as well as a mold of the man's teeth. Officials say the saliva matched that found on the dead woman's breasts.
Steve Smith, a forensic odontologist with Northwestern University in Illinois, linked the mold of Smania's teeth to the bite marks found on Morlock by using photographs and a mold of the woman's breasts.
Smith wrote the evidence offered a match within "a high degree of dental certainty." Bail for Smania is set at $100,000.