Ronald Bruce Bigger, accused in the murder of Dr. David Stidham, listens to closing arguments in his trial.

Dean Knuth / Arizona Daily Star

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If Ronald Bruce Bigger didn't conspire to kill Dr. David Brian Stidham and then carry out the slaying, then he has got to be an incredibly unlucky person, prosecutor Sylvia Lafferty told jurors Wednesday.

Bigger's luck was so bad that on the very day Stidham died, Bigger just happened to visit the office of the man who wanted Stidham dead, he just happened to visit a convenience store near the murder scene, and he just happens to have the same DNA profile as the profile found in Stidham's car — a one in 3 million possibility, Lafferty said.

Wednesday was the last day of Bigger's trial in Superior Court on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. He's facing up to two life sentences.

Jurors in Judge Nanette Warner's courtroom spent the day listening to Lafferty and defense attorney Jill Thorpe sum up two months worth of witness testimony and physical evidence.

Because one juror has a funeral to attend today, jurors are expected to begin deliberating Friday.

Bigger, 41, is accused of stabbing Stidham, 37, to death in the parking lot of Stidham's medical complex on Oct. 5, 2004. Lafferty and fellow prosecutor Richard Platt told jurors Stidham's former boss, Dr. Bradley Schwartz, paid Bigger $10,000 to carry out the murder and steal Stidham's car.

The pair believe Schwartz was furious Stidham had abandoned their joint practice while Schwartz was in a drug-rehabilitation program, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thorpe told jurors Schwartz plunged the knife into Stidham 15 times that night, then attempted to frame Bigger for it.

Schwartz was convicted of conspiracy to commit first- degree murder last May and is serving a life sentence with parole possible after 25 years. Jurors couldn't reach a unanimous decision on a first- degree murder charge.

Bigger didn't have time to commit the murder within the 20-minute time frame provided by the prosecutors, Thorpe said. She also accused detectives of sloppiness, questioned the reliability of the state's DNA evidence and attempted to prove Schwartz's guilt.

The sheer brutality of the attack points to someone who hated Stidham, and clearly Schwartz despised Stidham, Thorpe said.

Thorpe said the detectives' gaffes included:

● Collecting DNA evidence from Stidham's Lexus instead of dusting for fingerprints.

● Making no attempt to find surveillance footage from businesses along the route the murderer may have taken in Stidham's car.

● Failing to make a daylight inspection of the crime scene.

● Failing to interview medical-complex witnesses until two months after the slaying.

● Not searching specific trash bins to look for the murder weapon or murderer's clothing.

● Making no attempt to get surveillance video from the Las Vegas casinos Bigger visited in the days following the killing.

● Not obtaining the bank records of Schwartz's former wife, Joan, to prove or disprove Schwartz's contention he gave her $10,000 cash the day after Stidham died.

If any of them has reasonable doubt as to Bigger's guilt, Thorpe told the jurors, "don't surrender your honest belief for the sake of reaching a verdict."

Lafferty acknowledged no investigation is perfect, but said much of what Thorpe pointed out is either irrelevant or impossible to do.

The prosecutor methodically went over the evidence she said proves Bigger is the only person who could have carried out the crime.

The prosecutors contend Schwartz devised a plan to have Stidham killed, told numerous girlfriends about it and then paid Bigger to carry it out.

Lafferty's theory is that Schwartz gave Bigger a pair of medical scrubs and told him to attack Stidham after Stidham left the office for the evening.

Unfortunately for Bigger and Schwartz, they didn't know Stidham was hosting a training seminar for medical students that night, Lafferty said.

Unsure what to do and not having a cell phone, Lafferty said, Bigger went to a nearby convenience store to call Schwartz for instructions.

Lafferty reminded jurors Jennifer Dainty, the convenience store clerk, positively identified Bigger as the scrubs-wearing man who visited her store approximately 75 minutes before Stidham's death.

Dainty testified Bigger told her he had just come from a meeting where pizza was being served and he didn't like pizza. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Stidham had pizzas delivered to his students that night, Lafferty said.

In addition, Dainty testified she overheard Bigger on the telephone saying, "Where are you? I can't believe you're not answering your phone tonight of all nights."

Phone records show that just a few minutes after Bigger left the store, Schwartz called the store asking for the man who had just called, Lafferty said.

Schwartz's date later that night, Lisa Goldberg, also testified that Schwartz asked Bigger, "How did those scrubs work out?"

The explanation Bigger gave Goldberg — that he'd borrowed a pair of scrubs to go horseback riding — is absolutely "absurd," Lafferty said.

Further proof of Bigger's involvement, she said, is that on the day of Stidham's slaying he had to scrounge for change to buy a bottle of water at Dainty's store, and yet a few days later he was giving relative strangers hundreds of dollars for their rent and taking two others on an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas, Lafferty said.

Moreover, multiple DNA experts testified Bigger could not be excluded as the source of DNA found on a knob inside Stidham's stolen Lexus, Lafferty said.

One expert testified you would have to pull 3 million people off the street before you could find another person with the same DNA profile as was found on the knob along with Stidham's DNA, she said.

Lafferty found the idea of Schwartz's framing Bigger so laughable, she sarcastically suggested Schwartz should have dabbed the knob in Stidham's car with more of Bigger's DNA to make the job of convicting him easier.