DALTON, Ga. -- Sitting in the Whitfield County Jail on a murder charge last year, Skyy Raven Marie Mims chatted with a friend in a video conference.
"I found the picture of somebody," Arian Lane told her.
"Let me see," Mims said.
Lane pressed his cellphone to his webcam, showing a photo of Keisha Jones, a rapper from Detroit, Mims' hometown. Though she's 7 inches shorter and 11 years older, Jones looks similar to Mims. They're both thin. Sometimes, they both sport Afros.
Looking at the picture of Jones for the first time last year, Mims smiled: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Throughout Mims' trial in Whitfield County Superior Court this week, Jones' presence has hung like a specter. The jury has heard all about Jones from defense attorney Carla Marable. She says Jones is a "dead ringer" for Mims -- and the actual killer.
But the real-life Jones has been absent. Conasauga Judicial Circuit District Attorney Bert Poston has not called her to testify. Instead, he showed the jury on Thursday the video of Mims and Lane's conversation last year, showed them how Mims didn't know who Jones was until a month after Mims' arrest for murder.
During the video conference, recorded by the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office, Lane told Mims who Jones was, how they had a mutual friend.
"It took a while," Lane told Mims of his online search. "I looked through hundreds of people."
After playing the video Thursday, Poston continued to methodically present crime scene evidence, hoping to debunk the defense's argument that others framed Mims for the killing.
Mims, 22, is on trial for the murder of Dahyabhai Kalidas Chaudhari, a convenience store clerk who was stabbed to death on March 11, 2014, in his Kanku's Express on Airport Road in Dalton. When the store was empty of customers, security footage shows, the killer chased Chaudhari into the kitchen, beat him, stabbed him and smothered him.
The killer's face is hidden on the security footage by sunglasses and a white hoodie.
On Thursday, Whitfield County Deputy Josh Davis testified that he found what looks like those items two days after Chaudhari's death, when an anonymous caller told the sheriff's office that Mims was living in Cartersville, Ga.
After police arrested Mims, Davis said, he searched a stolen Kia Soul she had been driving. In addition to a white hoodie and sunglasses, Davis said he found a black backpack, like the one the killer wore in the security footage.
And in the backpack, he found a pellet gun, a filet knife and red duct tape, the type the killer used to cover Chaudhari's eyes and mouth.
Investigators sent the tape and knife to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's crime lab. On Thursday, GBI forensic biologist Terri George said swabs of both items had DNA on them.
The samples from the tape came from Mims and Chaudhari, she said. The knife, meanwhile, was stained with Chaudhari's dried blood.
George also analyzed swabs from another important piece of evidence. Investigators gave the GBI a pair of latex gloves they found when they arrested Mims. On the outside of the gloves, George said she found Chaudhari's blood.
On the inside of the gloves, she found Mims' skin cells.
Marable, Mims' attorney, said George's analysis is flawed. There were two other people's DNA inside, though George could not say whose it was.
George testified that she couldn't measure the other DNA because its samples were so small. The amount of DNA from Mims overwhelmed the presence of the others.
Most likely, George said, this came from secondhand DNA. If Mims touched another person, then put on the gloves, she could put that person's DNA inside.
But, Marable said, you have to wonder whose it is.
"It could be anybody's DNA," she said. "It could be my DNA. It could be Mr. Poston's DNA."
She did not mention Jones' DNA.
The trial resumes this morning.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.comor 423-757-6476.