As prosecutors see it, Opal Weil’s final act was to fight back.
The 82-year-old widow was found dead on the bedroom floor of her Lealman home in 1987. Below her bruised and bloody face, markings indicated she had been bound at the neck. A clear plastic belt lay near her left foot.
Long brown hairs sprinkled Weil’s pink nightgown, her satin pink pillows and an electric blanket spread over her bed.
“That’s why we’re here today,” Assistant State Attorney Molly Goodwill told a jury at the Pinellas County Justice Center on Tuesday. “It’s exactly what led us to one person, one man, the person in the courtroom sitting here today: Michael Lapniewski.”
Five years ago, detectives with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office used DNA forensics to link the hairs from the crime scene to Lapniewski, now 58, after the case had gone cold.
Now, Lapniewski is standing trial on one count of first-degree murder. If convicted, he faces a sentence of life in prison.
On Tuesday, he entered the courtroom in a suit and tie, his hair trimmed close to his head.
His defense attorney, Philip Dragonetti, told the jury that prosecutors had limited evidence.
“It’s not that, whoever’s hair that is equals first-degree murder. It’s not as simple as that,” Dragonetti said in opening statements.
Goodwill argued the hairs show evidence of being forcibly removed because many had roots still attached.
“Opal Weil fought back,” she said.
The suspect rummaged through drawers
Weil lived alone in a modest two-bedroom home on 56th Avenue North. Her brother Walter Giles and his wife, Freida Giles, lived just down the road, according to an arrest warrant for Lapniewski. Around 7:45 a.m. on Feb. 9, 1987, Freida Giles called Weil. When Weil didn’t answer, she kept calling every five minutes, to no avail.
At 8:10 a.m., Giles walked to her sister-in-law’s house, the arrest warrant states. The front door was locked. Someone had removed glass and a screen from a back-door window and propped it against the house.
Giles entered the home and found Weil dead.
Drawers in the home “appeared to have been hastily searched,” the arrest warrant states. In one, a jewelry box was left open with the felt lining sticking out.
Crime scene technicians later found someone had cut the ground wire for Weil’s telephone line, the warrant states. They found leather or cloth glove marks and no fingerprints.
The defense argued the crime was too sophisticated for Lapniewski to have committed. The window glass would be extremely difficult to remove from the outside without breaking it, Dragonetti said.
He pointed to the cut phone line and the gloves.
“Does this really look like the work of a 19-year-old impulsive kid?” he asked.
Police revived a cold case
In 2021, investigators forensically tested the hairs collected from the crime scene. The results pointed to three brothers, the arrest warrant states.
The first brother was eliminated because his DNA did not match that of the hairs, Goodwill said. The second brother was dead, so investigators could not collect his DNA, she said.
That left Michael Lapniewski, who was 19 at the time of Weil’s death and lived less than half a mile away, according to the warrant. Lapniewski later moved to Waveland, Mississippi.
To collect additional evidence, Pinellas detectives and Waveland police staged a ruse. They lured Lapniewski to a restaurant with a free meal, then seized the spoon and fork he used. DNA from the utensils, plus a red straw Lapniewski used at a gas station, matched DNA from the hairs collected in Weil’s home.
Lapniewski was arrested in Mississippi and booked in Pinellas County Jail in 2023.
Victim’s rings were missing, investigators say
On Tuesday, jurors heard testimony from retired law enforcement officers who worked the case.
Bonnie Henry, a former forensic technician with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, collected evidence at the crime scene. In court, prosecutors asked her about photos she had taken at the scene.
Someone had opened a drawer in Weil’s spare bedroom and rummaged through its contents, Henry said. Two knives were found near Weil’s body — one on the floor, and another on the bed, she said.
Henry pointed to a photograph of a single brown hair on Weil’s nightgown and photos of more hair on the bed. Weil’s hair, she said, was short and white.
Retired medical examiner Edward Corcoran, who performed the autopsy on Weil, walked jurors through photos of bruises and lesions on her neck and face. He also explained that he found bruises on her ring finger and left wrist.
The white gold wedding band and a white gold ring with a solitaire diamond were missing when Weil was found dead. Neither prosecutors nor investigators who testified Tuesday said whether they found jewelry in Lapniewski’s possession.
Traci Crawford, Weil’s great-niece, grabbed a tissue when Goodwill asked about Weil’s wedding rings.
“I never saw her without them,” Crawford said.
The trial is expected to last until Thursday.
