Boston Herald; Boston, Mass.; Sep 24, 2000; KAY LAZAR

He had the chance to walk out of prison on parole after spending nearly half of his life there. All he had to do was admit to committing the murder. He refused.  Now, Robert Breest, once a Lowell carpenter and now a prison lifer, is about to make New Hampshire state history.  Breest, 62, and a grandfather of five, is the first New Hampshire state inmate to request DNA testing of the evidence used to convict him.

New Hampshire's attorney general is fighting that request, saying the state put the right guy behind bars, and that allowing Breest's petition could open the floodgates to frivolous inmate petitions.

The historic DNA faceoff is scheduled for this Friday in Concord.

"I just can't bring myself to believe that a judge is going to deny DNA testing," said Breest, his pale blue eyes peering out from bifocals during an interview last week at MCI-Shirley. "This was not an open-and-shut case. This was a very iffy case and it warrants the use of further review."

Arguing for Breest will be New Bedford attorney Donald Brisson, who volunteered to take the case for free after reading about it, digging through a thousand pages of trial transcripts and coming to the conclusion that Breest may very well be innocent.

"There are too many people incarcerated too many years, wrongly, only to have DNA prove their innocence," Brisson said. "If it comes back that it's Robert Breest's DNA, that's the end. Breest will spend the rest of his life behind bars."

But if the evidence does not contain Breest's DNA, Brisson said, then the state will have the DNA of the real killer of Susan Randall. "Maybe this guy is still killing people," Brisson said. "Who knows?"

Susan Randall, the 18-year-old woman Breest was convicted of killing, had been living in Manchester and working two jobs, trying to save money to fulfill her dream of becoming a fashion designer. She was murdered on Feb. 28, 1971, and her body was discovered several days later - half naked and hurled from a bridge into the icy waters of the Merrimack River in Concord, N.H.

Breest was a 34-year-old carpenter, who had just moved from Lowell to Dunstable with his wife and their five children, when he was arrested and imprisoned for the murder in 1972. Breest acknowledged that he had been in Manchester collecting furniture from his mother's house the night Randall disappeared.

He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1973 and has appealed more than a dozen times. Today, Randall's 80-year-old mother says enough is enough. "I don't want him to even have an inkling that he might ever get out," said Paula Randall. She said she doesn't completely understand how DNA might prove someone's guilt or innocence. But she said she clearly understood what she heard at the trial 27 years ago.

"I went to the trial every day," Randall said "The jury was convinced he was guilty. There was a lot of evidence there."

That also is the position of the state's attorney general, who is fighting Breest's DNA request.

"Even if the DNA testing came out that someone else's blood was involved, it might mean someone else was involved in the murder. It doesn't mean Robert Breest didn't do it," said William Delker, a New Hampshire assistant attorney general.

That is the crux of this DNA fight.At trial in 1973, prosecutors contended that Randall had clawed her assailant "to the bone," that Breest was that lone assailant and that the blood under Randall's fingernails matched Breest's blood type.

Breest is now asking for Randall's fingernails, which were saved, to be tested for his DNA.

Prosecutors say that even if Breest's DNA is not on those fingernails, they had plenty of other evidence that linked him to the crime, including:

Testimony of another prisoner in the place where Breest was held after his arrest, who said Breest told him he did the murder. That prisoner, David Carita, died two years after Breest's trial - from a shotgun blast, while breaking into a home.

Randall's coat. Experts testified at trial that there was a "high degree of probability" that paint particles and fiber found on the victim's coat matched those found in Breest's car. Randall's coat is not available for DNA testing because it has been lost, according to prosecutors.

Testimony from four restaurant customers, who said they remembered looking out the window around midnight and seeing a woman who matched Randall's description getting into a car that roughly matched the description of Breest's vehicle.

"To re-open a case like this causes immense emotional trauma to the victims' family," said Delker, who cited the Randall family's need for "closure" as one reason for fighting Breest's request.

For Breest's family, closure means clearing his name and bringing him home to Ayer, Mass. They visit him weekly, and talk by phone just about every night.

Snapshots of Breest, the inmate, are tacked to his wife's refrigerator, side-by-side with those of the children, and grandchildren. "You end up walking a fine line between getting your hopes up and being disappointed by legal issues," said Carol Breest, 56, who married Robert Breest just three weeks before the 1971 murder.

When Breest was arrested in 1972, the couple had a 9-month-old son. Today that son, Manuel Breest, 29, has a daughter of his own. The things I do with my daughter now I never got to do with my father," said Manuel Breest, a master electrician, who proudly describes how his toddler already knows the proper names for work and yard tools.

Robert Breest was offered parole in 1996 if he admitted to killing Susan Randall. Breest refused.

"I didn't do it, and I find it repugnant to admit to what I did not do," said Breest, flashing a rare instance of emotion during last week's prison interview.

While Breest admits to being in Randall's Manchester neighborhood the night of the murder - to move furniture from his mother's home - he contends that he was home in Lowell with his new wife at the time of the slaying.

As both sides prepare for Friday's showdown, one other issue hangs like a cloud above: the case of Luella Blakeslee.

In 1969 - two years before the Randall murder - Blakeslee, 29, a popular French teacher at the Deerfield School in Manchester, mysteriously disappeared. At the time, Blakeslee and Breest were engaged to be married.

Police repeatedly questioned Breest but he was never charged. Nor was anyone else. Yet investigators in the past have privately said that Breest was their prime suspect. Two years ago, Blakeslee's remains were found in a pit in Hopkinton, N.H., which is near Concord. The case remains open.

Asked if it would now help to have Breest's DNA, to rule him in or out in the Blakeslee case, New Hampshire's Senior Assistant Attorney General Charles Putnam declined comment.

Breest adamantly denied he had anything to do with Blakeslee's murder and said investigators never had any evidence linking him to the crime.

As for this Friday's hearing, Breest is not getting his hopes too high.

"I'm getting older and wiser. I don't get as excited as I used to," said Breest, his once-brown hair now gray, his carpenter's hands showing age spots. "I have unfinished business. To spend 28 years in jail and die is a total waste," said Breest. "I think I have bigger and better things in my life, with my family."