The Evidence Gaps: Day 4 Showed the Jury What Was Never Collected, and a Shape Nobody Wrote Down

Paitin Fields was five years old. In November 2017 she was taken from her grandparents' home in Pender County to the emergency room, then on to the children's hospital in Wilmington, and four days later a pathologist at East Carolina University performed her autopsy. Her uncle, David Prevatte, was 19 that month. He was named a suspect in 2018. He was charged in 2022. And on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, almost nine years after that week, a jury in Burgaw spent the fourth day of his trial on two questions that sit underneath everything else in this case: what did investigators collect, and what did they never collect at all?

The answer, by the end of the day, came from the State's own witnesses. The lieutenant in charge of the crime scene told the jury the clothing Paitin wore into the emergency room never reached a lab, because the hospital threw it out before police came for it. The trainee who worked under him told them that the blinds and the stains the family pointed to in 2020 were collected more than two years after the fact, from a house nobody had ever sealed. And the pathologist whose opinion links a pair of red earbuds to the mark on Paitin's neck told them that the opinion began with photographs she was first sent years after the autopsy, and that the horseshoe shape she now relies on is not in the injury findings of her own 2017 report.

That is Day 4. The evidence gaps. And I am going to walk you through each one, in the order the jury met them, because the State spent the day building its case on how Paitin died, and the defense spent the day showing the jury what was never gathered to prove who was responsible.

First, the ground rules, and on a day like this they are the most important paragraph in the piece. David Prevatte has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and the other charges in this case. He is presumed innocent, and the State carries the entire burden of proving otherwise, beyond a reasonable doubt. The State gave notice on Feb. 9 that it will not seek the death penalty, as the StarNews reported. Nothing I write here is a finding. I am going to question how this investigation was run, in both directions, and every question I raise is anchored to something said in that courtroom. When it is my opinion, I will tell you it is my opinion.

Two searches of the same house

Day 4 opened where Day 3 ended: Lt. Daniel Wells of the Pender County Sheriff's Office on the stand, still on the State's direct examination. Wells runs crime scene investigation and the evidence room. In November 2017 he was the man with the camera, the evidence bags and the property sheet, and the State used him to put almost every physical item in this case into the record.

He walked the jury back through the first search of the family home on Nov. 13, 2017, the morning Paitin was taken to the hospital. The Christmas lights on the headboard in the northeast bedroom, the room where David was staying, "appeared to be affixed to the bedpost," he said, not laid out like someone had been handling them. Asked whether he wore shoe covers inside the house that day, he answered plainly: "No, sir, I didn't that day."

Then the days after. On Nov. 14 he took a second cheek swab from David Prevatte and scrapings from under his nails. On Nov. 15 Detective John Leatherwood, the original investigating officer who testified on Day 3, handed him Paitin's nail clippings and a pink blanket that, by her grandmother Lisa Hunt's account, came from the couch. And on Nov. 17 the sheriff's office went back into the house under a second warrant.

What Wells told the jury about that second search is the line the State's own direct examination could not avoid. When the team went back in, he said, "somebody had been inside the house and moved some things around. It was not in the exact same situation it was when we left on the 13th."

Sit with that for a second, because it matters for every photograph the jury will see from Nov. 17. The house was released back to the family after the first search. Four days later it was a different scene. The second search took a pair of red men's underwear from the floorboard of a car outside, two couch sheets, the headboard lights, three children's tops from the northeast bedroom, a hot glue gun, a camo rope bracelet from the yard, a pillow and a pillowcase. When the prosecutor asked whether he collected any other possible instrument, Wells said: "Uh other than the hot glue gun, no, sir."

And the cords that stayed behind stayed behind because his team did not believe they were involved. "If we had found anything secreted or hid for some kind of reason," he said, "we would have probably seized that."

That is a reasonable answer from a crime scene investigator. It is also an answer that depends entirely on what the team believed it was looking for, and on when it learned what it was looking for. Hold that thought, because the defense built its whole cross on it.

The State closed its direct on the known standards, the reference samples a lab compares against: swabs from four people in the family's circle, a tan canvas belt collected from one of them, the filter from a machine run on that belt, and reference samples from Lisa Hunt, from Paitin's sister Savannah Fields, and from Paitin's father, Robert Fields. A chain of custody is the paper trail that shows an item went from the scene to the lab without anyone changing it, and by the end of the direct the State had that trail on the record for almost everything. What it had not done, and could not do with this witness, is connect any of it to David Prevatte. That waits on the lab witnesses, and on Day 4 the jury had not heard a single lab result.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 17, THE TWO SEARCHES AND THE START OF THE CROSS, LIVE 10:30 PM ET TUESDAY, OCT 6 Crime Scene Lt. Tells Uncle on Trial Jury Someone Moved Things Before the Second Search

What the searchers knew, and when they knew it

Luther Johnson Britt III, David Prevatte's lawyer, started his cross-examination about an hour into the morning, and he went straight at the question I just asked you to hold. What did the men searching that house on Nov. 13 actually know?

Wells agreed that Detective Leatherwood had called him that morning, before Paitin was declared dead, and described what the injury looked like. Britt put it to him that "it really didn't start off as a murder investigation." I am not going to tell you how Wells answered that, because the answer is not clear on the recording, and I do not put words in a witness's mouth. But the next exchange was clear. Wells did not recall being told that the mark was about a quarter of an inch wide. And he agreed that knowing the width would have told him what size of object to look for.

Think about what that means in practice. A team searches a home for an instrument without knowing how wide the instrument has to be. It takes some cords and leaves others. Four days later it comes back to a house somebody has rearranged.

Wells agreed the house was cluttered and that the search was focused rather than exhaustive. "We didn't search under every single little piece of everything there," he said. He said David's nails "had already been cut," so he could only take scrapings, not clippings. The pink blanket came to him in a paper bag, and he was "Not sure if it was sealed at that point." The pillow and pillowcase were bagged together and separated later.

And then the glue gun, the one item he said he collected as a possible instrument. It came out of the house on the second search. Britt asked whether it had been there on the first. "I don't specifically remember seeing it there on the 13th," Wells said.

None of that is evidence that David Prevatte is innocent, and I want to be careful here, because a defense cross that lands is not the same thing as a defense that has proven anything. What it is, is evidence about the investigation. The core question in this case, the one I have been asking since Day 1, is whether investigators fixed on a 19-year-old early. A search done without the mark's width, in a cluttered house, with no shoe covers, followed by a second search of a scene somebody changed, is exactly the kind of record that question lives on. The State is going to have to answer it with lab results, because it cannot answer it with this search.

The letters on the photograph, and the record fixed after the jury left

The last minutes of the morning session ran on a single photograph, State's 24, a picture of the living room. Someone had drawn letters on it to mark where the girls slept on the couch. Wells confirmed the letters were not part of the original photograph.

Then Britt told the jury who drew them. "Those, I will tell you, were made by Savannah Fields," he said, referring to Paitin's sister's testimony the day before, as to "the section she was on and the section that Paitin was on."

That was wrong. The jury went out for the morning break at about 1:29 into the day's recording, and the moment they were gone, Judge Ricardo Jensen put the correction on the record: "those marks were made by Lisa Hunt." He said he would give the jury a quick correction when they came back. And he did. When the jury returned twenty minutes later, the first thing he told them was: "The marks on exhibit 24 were made by Lisa Hunt and not Savannah Fields."

I want to give the judge his due here. He caught it, he fixed it on the record outside the jury's presence so the lawyers could hear it, and then he told the jury directly instead of leaving a wrong fact standing in front of them. That is how a correction is supposed to work.

But think about why it mattered enough to fix. Savannah Fields was seven years old in 2017 and slept on that couch beside her sister. On Day 3 the court ruled that her testimony would carry no voice and no video on the broadcast, so the public never saw her, but the jury did. A mark on a photograph drawn by the child who was there carries one kind of weight. A mark drawn by the grandmother, who by Wells' account slept in the main bedroom, carries another. For about twenty minutes the jury had the wrong one in their heads. The judge's correction put it right. What I would like to know, and what the record has not yet told us, is why a photograph with somebody's handwriting on it was being used to place two children on a couch at all, and who decided which version the jury would see.

The clothing that never reached the lab

When the jury came back, Britt resumed, and the next hour is where Day 4 turned.

He started with the dogs. There were dogs in the house on the 13th, "more than one," Wells said, though he did not remember how many. He did not remember seeing a collar, a leash or dog food in the living room or either bedroom. Britt walked him through the cords and earbuds on the nightstand in the northeast bedroom, each packaged in its own envelope inside one larger envelope. The first search, Wells estimated, took "probably about two hours." The second, an hour or two.

On which items were sent for testing, Wells was candid: "the lead investigator has final say of what they want tested." He carried most of the reference standards to the lab in March 2018. One set went in March 2021. A pair of work pants and blue boxer shorts had been sealed in a single paper bag and "at some point" separated, and he agreed that sealing items individually protects them from transferring evidence onto each other.

Then the M-Vac. It is a wet vacuum that pulls DNA out of fabric, and in this case it was run on exactly one item, the belt. Wells described its filter system in some detail. Then Britt asked whether he had ever run one himself. "I've seen seen them, but I've never run one myself."

And then the stretch I keep coming back to. Britt established that there was no full suspect examination of David Prevatte, only the cheek swabs, the scrapings and one further swab. He asked whether anyone asked David if he had showered since the early hours of Nov. 13. Wells said no, and gave his reason: "whether he said yes or no, it wouldn't have made any difference." They would have collected anyway, "because he could have lied to us."

Maybe so. But the question is not only about whether he might lie. The answer to whether a person showered tells a lab what it should and should not expect to find. Nobody asked.

Then Britt asked about the only clothing Paitin wore into the Pender emergency room, her underwear. Was it collected?

"I know they didn't," Wells said, "because we did go back trying to get them and the hospital staff had already disposed of them before we were able to pick them up."

Britt pinned it down. Because the hospital had disposed of them, "they were never collected." And then: "And so all of that potential evidence was lost."

"Yes, sir."

Now here is why that is the watchdog moment of the day, and it is a contradiction that is sitting in this trial's own record. On Day 1, the jury heard from Krystal Beck, a nurse in that emergency room. She was asked what, if anything, happened to that underwear. Her answer: "I believe we bagged it and sent it with her to New Hanover."

Bagged it. Sent it with her. To the children's hospital in Wilmington.

On Day 4, the lieutenant in charge of collecting the evidence told the same jury that the hospital disposed of it before police could pick it up, and that it was never collected.

Both of those things cannot be fully true. Either the clothing left the Pender ER in a bag with Paitin and was lost somewhere between that bag and the sheriff's office, or it never left the Pender ER at all. Those are two very different failures. One is a hospital that threw out evidence. The other is a bag that traveled with a five-year-old to a second hospital and then disappeared from the record. Neither side asked either witness to reconcile the two accounts in front of the jury, at least not yet. And the jury is entitled to know which one happened, because the clothing a child wore when she was found is exactly the kind of evidence that can point toward someone or away from someone.

I am not going to tell you what was on it, because nobody can. That is the point. The State will argue that what it did collect is enough. The defense will argue the jury can never know what was lost. On Day 4, only one of those arguments was made out loud, and it was made through the State's own lieutenant.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 18, THE LOST CLOTHING, LIVE 11:00 PM ET TUESDAY, OCT 6 CSI Tells Uncle on Trial Jury Paitin Fields' Clothing Was Thrown Out Before Police Got It

What the State took back on redirect

A redirect examination is the side that called the witness getting a second turn after the cross, to repair what the cross damaged. The State's redirect of Wells was short and it was efficient, and it is only fair to give it the same attention I gave the cross.

Wells told the jury he found no rope in the house. He said the pillowcase was already on the pillow, and the boxers were already inside the work pants, when he separated them later, which takes some of the sting out of the packaging points. And he explained why the search centered on the northeast bedroom: it was where David was staying, it had a door that closed, the Hunts slept together in the main bedroom, Savannah slept on the sofa beside Paitin, and what was alleged is not generally done in front of other people.

That last reason is the State's theory of the investigation in one sentence. It is a logical reason to look hard at that room. It is also, if you have followed this case, a reason that assumes the answer to the question the defense keeps asking: whether the investigation looked at that room first because of the evidence, or looked for evidence in that room because of a conclusion it had already reached.

The State also put two photographs from Nov. 17 into evidence, State's 70 and 71, and Wells agreed the living room "was different than the pictures we saw on the 13th." He did not say who moved anything. The State's point was that the Nov. 17 photographs cannot be used to reconstruct the morning of Nov. 13. That is a fair point. It cuts both ways, because it also means the second search was of a different scene.

On recross, Britt pointed to a dark object running up onto the bookshelf in State's 70. Wells had not noticed it until Britt pointed it out. Asked whether it resembled a dog leash, Wells could not tell. "I can't tell from here," he said. That is all the record says about it, and that is all I am going to say about it. Wells was released, subject to recall, and court broke for lunch.

Two years with the doors open

After lunch the State called Det. Sgt. Roy Brandenburg. Today he runs the sheriff's office's digital forensics lab. In November 2017 he was a crime scene trainee under Wells.

On Nov. 14, 2017, after David Prevatte was interviewed at the sheriff's office, Brandenburg took a swab from him and recorded their conversation on his phone. That recording, State's 73, was admitted and published to the jury. I am not quoting from it. It plays badly, it is not clear on the recording what is said in much of it, and I will not put a word in anyone's mouth that the record cannot settle.

Then the State took Brandenburg forward to Jan. 27, 2020. Detective Leatherwood sent him back to the family home because, in Brandenburg's words, the family "had an alternative uh theory on what had happened to Paitin." It involved the cord of the window blinds. He collected the blinds, and swabs of one stain on a wall and another on the couch.

Let that land. In 2020, more than two years in, the family Paitin lived with, which is also David's family, brought detectives another explanation of what happened to her. The detectives went and collected what the family pointed to. That came from the State's own witness, on the State's own direct examination.

The family's theory is not evidence that it is true, and later in the afternoon the pathologist addressed it head on. But the fact that it existed, and that the sheriff's office took it seriously enough to collect, is part of this record now, and it is the subject of the hot clip we put out today.

WATCH: THE HOT CLIP, THE FAMILY'S 2020 CALL Uncle on Trial: His Family Called Detectives Back in 2020 With Another Theory on Paitin Fields

Britt's cross of Brandenburg was short and it did one job. No crime scene tape went up on Nov. 13. The house went back to the family after both searches with no restrictions. The 2020 collection was a consent search, with no new warrant. And it came "Almost over two years since the alleged date of the incident," Brandenburg agreed. He said he personally noticed no stains on Nov. 14. And asked whether he saw a dog collar or leash in the house on Nov. 13: "Not that I recall."

So whatever the blinds and those stains show, and the jury has not been told yet, they were not preserved. They sat in a home that was lived in for more than two years before anyone took them. That cuts against the family's theory as much as it cuts against the State's. It is the same point the morning made in a different form: this scene was never held.

The camera stays on the witness

The State called Dr. Karen L. Kelly a little before 4:45 into the day's recording. She is a forensic and cardiovascular pathologist, 16 years at East Carolina University, with an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 autopsies. She performed Paitin's on Nov. 17, 2017. Her CV and her autopsy report came in, and the court accepted her as an expert in forensic pathology.

When the State moved to publish the autopsy photographs, State's 80, to the jury, Judge Jensen ruled: "You may publish state's exhibit 80, and they should be restricted from the broadcast." The courtroom feed stayed on the witness and the bench for the whole stretch of photo testimony, and none of those photographs appears in any video we make, ever.

I support that ruling without reservation. Paitin Fields was a five-year-old child, and the jury needs those photographs to do its job. The public does not. You can follow every word of Dr. Kelly's testimony without them, and I am going to walk you through it the same way, without describing her injuries in more detail than the questions require.

What the pathologist told them on direct

Dr. Kelly's direct examination was the State's strongest stretch of the trial so far. She described what she found above a line on Paitin's neck, and what she did not find below it. She gave the jury her cause of death, which I am not going to spell out here, and she did not move off it once all day.

Then the State went at the family's 2020 theory, without naming it. Did the pneumonia Paitin had in the hospital cause what Dr. Kelly saw? "Absolutely not." Could illness? "No, absolutely not." If there had been an illness, she explained, "typically we would see changes all over the body, not just in a localized fashion above a specific line."

The mark itself measured about a quarter of an inch. Was there any sign of a rope? "Absolutely not." And asked about a belt, she said it "would have to be a quarter of an inch or less."

That is a firm, specific witness, and her findings line up with what the physicians told the jury on Day 1. On how Paitin died, the State had its best hour of the trial. I want to be clear about what that hour did and did not do, though. Every answer Dr. Kelly gave on direct went to how. None of it went to who. Nothing in her findings, on Day 4, pointed at David Prevatte.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 19, BRANDENBURG, THEN THE PATHOLOGIST ON DIRECT, LIVE 7:00 AM ET WEDNESDAY, OCT 7 Uncle on Trial: No Crime Scene Tape, Then Paitin Fields' Autopsy Doctor Rules Out Illness

Photographs sent years later

After the afternoon break, Mr. Smith, the prosecutor handling Dr. Kelly, asked her about the detectives who come to an autopsy. Her answer is one every juror should remember: when detectives attend, "they've already generated a theory of the crime," and her job is to see whether it fits. Detective Leatherwood attended this one.

Then the earbuds. The State's position is that a pair of red earbuds found in the northeast bedroom is the instrument. Dr. Kelly told the jury she was contacted by Detective Eric Short about possible instruments. When? "I believe it was years later."

And what she was first sent was not the earbuds. It was photographs of them. The prosecutor confirmed it with her directly: "You weren't sent the earbuds at that time, correct?" "That's correct." Based on those pictures, the size of the mark and what she knew from the autopsy, her opinion was that they were consistent.

In the courtroom on Tuesday the State then showed her the actual exhibits. The vacuum cleaner cord, State's 47, she said was not consistent: "this has um horizontal lines all the way along," which would have shown in the skin. For two other exhibits she saw nothing that could make the shape she was looking for. And when the State showed her the red earbuds, State's 43, she said they "could be consistent with the horseshoe uh pattern that we see."

That is the shape at the center of the State's link. She told the jury she relies on two features: an object a quarter of an inch or smaller, and a U, or horseshoe, shape in the mark. Remember that word. It is about to matter a great deal.

WATCH: THE HOT CLIP, THE EARBUDS AND THE PHOTOS SENT YEARS LATER Uncle on Trial: Pathologist Linked Red Earbuds to Paitin Fields' Marks From Photos Sent Years Later

The shape that is not in the report

Britt's cross of Dr. Kelly began a little after 6:22 into the day's recording, and for about twenty minutes the State's strongest witness gave the defense its sharpest material of the trial.

He started at the back of the neck. The abrasion there was similar in width to the front, more abraded, with a break in the middle. "There was a break in the mid-back," she said, "and I do not know why it was broken in that area."

He asked what she was told before the autopsy. "I believe that I had been told the family said she had an upper respiratory infection um and that she was just found seizing." The pneumonia was most likely aspiration, she said, and "her airway was not obstructed." Asked whether she told detectives anything about a rope, she said she did not recall the conversation, "it's been quite a few years, but I would tell them it wasn't consistent with a rope."

Then Britt went to the black charging cords in evidence. She said they could be consistent too, "but I don't see any element on it that could give us that horseshoe shape that we see on the left side."

And then the question that made the hour.

"Now, when you first did this autopsy, did you notice that horseshoe shape?"

"I may have, I don't recall."

"Would you have noted that in your original autopsy report?"

"Most likely, yes."

In the section on injuries? "Yes, sir."

Britt then had her read from her own 2017 report, the paragraphs on page 3 that describe the injuries. She already had the report in front of her, and he had her read from it. Then: "You did not note in either of those paragraphs this horseshoe shape."

"I did not, that's correct."

Here is that in plain English, and I am going to be precise, because precision is the whole point. Dr. Kelly's link between the earbuds and the mark on Paitin's neck began as an opinion she formed from photographs she was first sent years after the autopsy. It now leans on a horseshoe shape. That horseshoe shape is not in the injury findings of the report she wrote in 2017, the report written closest to the moment, by the person who saw Paitin. And she agreed that if she had noticed it then, she most likely would have written it down.

That does not mean the shape is not there. The photographs are in evidence and the jury has seen them. It does not mean she is wrong. It means the single most important feature behind the State's instrument theory appeared in her analysis after the detectives brought her a candidate, and not before. Remember what she told the jury an hour earlier: when detectives attend, they already have a theory, and her job is to see whether it fits. The jury is entitled to ask which came first here, the shape or the theory.

She did hold firm where it counted for the State. Of the healing abrasions on the back of the neck, she said they were no older than the early morning of Nov. 13: "They were all part of the same event." She did not move on her cause of death, on illness, or on the airway.

Then Britt took her through the earbuds themselves. The cord of State's 43 is tangled at two points, with a rectangular piece between them. If those knots had been around a neck, would they leave a mark? "If there were the knots, I believe we would see impressions of those." The ear pieces are rubber, and fairly flexible. And she still could not explain the break at the back.

Near the end, Britt asked about a birthmark-type discoloration that used to be called by an older name. "Certainly, we no longer use that terminology because it's somewhat racist," she said, and she did not recall seeing one on Paitin; she said she would have put it on her diagram. After a short redirect, she was released.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 20, THE EARBUDS, THE HORSESHOE AND THE 2017 REPORT, LIVE 7:30 AM ET WEDNESDAY, OCT 7 Pathologist Tells Uncle on Trial Jury the Horseshoe Shape Isn't in Her 2017 Injury Findings

The promise from the defense opening

I hold both sides to what they promised this jury, and Day 4 is where a defense promise came due.

In his opening statement on Day 1, Britt told the jury to "pay particular attention to what the witnesses say about the red earbuds." Then he told them what the pathologist would say. The doctor who performed the autopsy at East Carolina, he said, had said "it was not the earbuds." She said it was more likely "a belt, a leash that had been found in the house." And then, as he put it, Detective Short "kept sending information back to the doctor, asking, could this be it? Could this be it?"

An opening statement is not evidence. It is a lawyer's promise of what the evidence will show. And on Tuesday the doctor was on the stand, under cross-examination by the lawyer who made that promise, for about twenty minutes.

On Day 4, that statement was never put to her. Nobody asked Dr. Kelly whether she ever told anyone it was not the earbuds. Nobody asked her whether she ever said a belt or a leash was more likely. What the jury heard instead, from her own mouth, was that she saw no sign of a rope, that a belt would have to be a quarter of an inch or less, and that she would have told detectives it was not consistent with a rope.

I can think of reasons a defense lawyer leaves that question alone. He may plan to prove it through Detective Short, or through a document, rather than risk a denial from the State's expert. He may have decided that the report and the horseshoe did more damage than a fight over a conversation from 2017. Those are legitimate choices. But the jury was told, on the first day, that this witness would say something, and when she left the stand on Tuesday she had not said it. If the defense is going to deliver on that promise, it has to do it with somebody else. I will be watching for it, and so should you.

The interviewer, and the recordings nobody has heard yet

The last witness of the day was Julie Ozier, a licensed clinical social worker who spent ten years at the Carousel Center as a forensic interviewer, trauma therapist and supervisor. The court qualified her as an expert in three fields of child abuse and child trauma.

She interviewed Savannah Fields three times: on Nov. 15, 2017, on Jan. 24, 2018, and on Feb. 18, 2022. Her written summaries of the three interviews came in. The unedited recordings, State's 86, were admitted at the very end of the day, and the State asked to play them when court resumes. Nothing from them was played on Tuesday.

Two things to know before Wednesday. First, the court's Day 3 order, no voice and no video for Savannah Fields on the broadcast, covers those recordings whenever they play. We will report what the record says about them, and you will not see or hear her. Second, look at the dates. A child interviewed twice within ten weeks of her sister's death, and then again more than four years later, in February 2022, the same year her uncle was charged. What changed between 2018 and 2022 is the question this case has never answered in public. Those recordings may be the closest the jury comes to an answer, and I want to hear what the State says about why a third interview happened when it did.

Where Day 4 leaves this case

Here is where I think the day landed, and it is my opinion.

On how Paitin died, the State is stronger tonight than at any point in this trial. Dr. Kelly was firm, specific and calm, she rejected illness, pneumonia and an obstructed airway in plain words, and that largely answers the theory the family brought to detectives in 2020.

On who was responsible, Day 4 added nothing that points at David Prevatte. Not one lab result has been heard. The State has spent four days building the chain of custody for evidence the jury has not yet been told the meaning of.

And on the investigation itself, the defense had its best day. The State's own lieutenant conceded the clothing Paitin wore into the ER was never collected, that nobody asked the suspect whether he had showered, that there was no full suspect examination, that the search was selective, that the scene changed between searches, and that he has never run the machine used on the one item it touched. The State's own trainee conceded the house was never taped and stayed open to the family for more than two years before the blinds and stains were taken. And the State's own pathologist conceded that the horseshoe shape behind her earbuds opinion is not in the injury findings of her 2017 report, and that her opinion began from photographs she was first sent years later.

None of that clears him. Missing evidence is not proof of innocence, and a contestable expert link is still a link the jury may accept. But it is exactly the record the central question of this case lives on. The State named a 19-year-old as a suspect in 2018 and charged him four years later without ever saying publicly what changed. On Day 4, the jury got a long look at the evidence that was never gathered, and at an instrument theory whose key feature arrived after the instrument did.

And the contradiction about the clothing is still sitting there. One witness says it was bagged and sent with Paitin to New Hanover. Another says the hospital disposed of it before police could collect it. Somebody in this courtroom should ask the question that settles it, before this jury is asked to decide anything.

Court resumes Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, with Julie Ozier still on direct and the State's 86 recordings ready to play. We will be live from the start.

WATCH LIVE: DAY 5, WEDNESDAY, OCT 7, 9:30 AM ET The Uncle on Trial, Day 5: live coverage from Burgaw

Watch all of Day 4, and catch up on Day 3

If you want the whole day with nothing cut, the No Breaks Edition runs every minute of Tuesday's court. If you want the day in its sharpest moments, Top Moments premieres Wednesday morning, about an hour before Day 5 goes live. And the full live broadcast is on the channel with Tuesday's chat beside it.

WATCH: DAY 4 NO BREAKS EDITION The Uncle on Trial Day 4, No Breaks Edition: Lt. Wells Cross-Examined, Pathologist Takes the Stand WATCH: DAY 4 TOP MOMENTS, PREMIERES 8:30 AM ET WEDNESDAY, OCT 7 The Uncle on Trial: David Prevatte Day 4 Top Moments / The Evidence Gaps and the Horseshoe Shape WATCH: THE DAY 4 LIVE BROADCAST LIVE: The Uncle on Trial, NC v. David Prevatte, Day 4

The full testimonies of Lt. Wells, Det. Sgt. Brandenburg and Dr. Kelly, start to finish with nothing else in between, are still being built, along with more clips from Tuesday. They will be on the channel soon.

And if you missed what came out of Day 3 after our last write-up, the two detectives' full testimonies and five clips from Monday are up or on their way. Detective John Leatherwood, the original investigator, retired in 2020 with nobody charged, and Det. Mark Lobel questioned David twice. Their testimony is the foundation for everything Wells, Brandenburg and Dr. Kelly built on Tuesday.

WATCH: DAY 3 FULL TESTIMONY, DET. JOHN LEATHERWOOD The Uncle on Trial: Lead Detective Retired in 2020 With No One Charged, Full Testimony WATCH: DAY 3 FULL TESTIMONY, DET. MARK LOBEL The Uncle on Trial: Detective Who Questioned David Prevatte Twice, Full Testimony WATCH: DAY 3 CLIP, THE MEMORY DIAGNOSIS AND THE JUDGE'S LIMIT ON THE TAPES Uncle on Trial: Lead Detective Confirms a Memory Diagnosis Then the Judge Limits the 2017 Tapes WATCH: DAY 3 CLIP, WAS DAVID CRYING? Uncle on Trial: Defense Presses Paitin Fields' Lead Detective on Whether David Was Crying WATCH: DAY 3 CLIP, HIS STEPFATHER ON THE 2017 TAPE Uncle on Trial: Jury Hears His Stepfather on 2017 Tape Say 'I Can't See Him Hurt His Nieces' WATCH: DAY 3 CLIP, HIS MOTHER ON THE 2017 TAPE Uncle on Trial: His Mother Tells Detectives on 2017 Tape She Can't Say if He Was Awake WATCH: DAY 3 CLIP, THE JURORS AND THE RED EARBUDS, LIVE 12:00 PM ET WEDNESDAY, OCT 7 Uncle on Trial: Jurors Glove Up to Hold the Red Earbuds Both Sides Flagged in Paitin Fields' Case