Fred Cooper is on trial in the Gateway murder case.

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Steve and Michelle Andrews, the couple that was killed in December 2005 in the Gateway community in Fort Myers.

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BONITA SPRINGS — Fred Cooper quickly became a suspect in the murder of a couple in Gateway in late 2005, but he wasn’t placed under arrest based on the words of neighbors who said they saw a man who looked like him pass by their homes before the bodies of Michelle and Steven Andrews were found.

That arrest happened after the results from DNA testing reached law enforcement: that Cooper’s DNA matched the samples taken from the fingernails of one of the victims.

The expert who ran those tests took the witness stand Friday afternoon in Cooper’s trial to explain how she reached those conclusions.

Julie Heinig, who manages the forensics department at a private laboratory in Ohio, testified that testing on the fingernails of Michelle Andrews’ right hand showed that enough of a match with both Steven Andrews and Cooper, so that “both Steven and Fred cannot be excluded as contributors.”

She explained that the testing technique used on the fingernails was a technique that sifts through a mixture of DNA to focus on 17 markers on the Y chromosome.

“We can use this method to specifically hone in on male DNA,” Heinig said, explaining the technique is helpful when female DNA would otherwise overshadow a smaller, male sample in the mixture.

Using the same kind of test, a similar partial mixed DNA profile showed up on a sample from Michelle Andrews’ blue nightgown. Again, neither Cooper nor Steven Andrews could be excluded, Heinig said.

Michelle Andrews was wearing the bloodied nightgown when she was found dead in her bedroom two days after Christmas in 2005. Her husband’s body was found across the room.

Cooper, 30, is on trial charged with two counts of first degree murder in their deaths.

Not all the DNA tests showed a link to Cooper, though.

For swabs taken from Michelle Andrews’ left hand, for instance, Cooper could be excluded, Heinig said, and Cooper was also excluded from contributing DNA to a second sample taken from Michelle Andrews’ right hand.

Beatriz Taquechel, one of Cooper’s defense attorneys, called attention to the instances of “no signal” from the testing, and she raised the possibility that there could have been the presence of a third man’s DNA in the sample. In turn, prosecutors suggested that any other male DNA could have been from one of the relatives visiting the Andrewses’ home that Christmas.

Another DNA expert, Robyn Ragsdale, a crime lab analyst in Tampa with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, analyzed some of DNA samples collected in the Gateway case using a different technique. On the Andrewses’ home phone — the one the 911 call came from on Dec. 27, 2005 — there was evidence of a mixture of DNA, but Ragsdale couldn’t determine whose it was.

She also tested clothing that the couple’s toddler son, Lucasz, was wearing at the time.

On a tiny pair of boy’s socks, which Ragsdale held up for the jury to see, the DNA in the blood on them matched Michelle Andrews.

The DNA from the blood on the knees of a pair of boy’s pants, which Ragsdale held up next, also matched Michelle Andrews.

Steven Andrews and Cooper “were included as possible contributors” at several points tested on the inside of the nightgown, Ragsdale said, and elsewhere on the nightgown, Michelle and Steven Andrews were possible contributors to the DNA sample found, and Kellie Ballew — Cooper’s girlfriend and the woman Steven Andrews was having an affair with — could not be excluded.

In DNA testing, Ragsdale was comparing samples that Cooper and Ballew gave voluntarily along with blood samples from Michelle and Steven Andrews taken after the deaths. Those four profiles were the ones Ragsdale used to compare against samples law enforcement gave her.

For a pair of black men’s Adidas tennis shoes with blood on them, Ragsdale said the DNA profile was female, but she couldn’t determine more than that. The shoes were found in Cooper’s Bonita Springs home.

On the camouflage jacket that Cooper’s boss reported seeing him scrub with strong cleaning solvents, Ragsdale could not find any indication of blood. Nor could she find any blood on mesh lining Cooper’s boss recalled seeing him cut out of the jacket and throw away.

Not every item and sample tested gave results, and tests on portions of the carpet from the Andrewses’ master bedroom, for instance, ruled out Fred Cooper’s DNA profile as a possible match. During cross examination, Garber’s questions to Ragsdale focused on all those areas.

In other testimony on Friday, jurors heard more about Cooper’s arrest.

They heard from Sean Ramsey, an investigator with the major crimes unit for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office who sat next to a handcuffed Cooper in the backseat of an SUV for the three-hour ride from the Orlando area back to Lee County.

On the witness stand, Ramsey recounted the conversation he had with Cooper had about new evidence.

“I think at that time I explained to him that DNA doesn’t lie,” Ramsey said. In response, “the defendant told me that the DNA would have been on the scene because he had consensual sex with Michelle Andrews the night prior to the bodies being found.”

Cooper said Michelle Andrews had contacted him “a couple weeks prior” and had told Cooper about the affair between her husband and Ballew. When Cooper asked to make a phone call, Ramsey said Cooper called Ballew and told her the same thing: that he had known about the affair, that he had been untruthful with her, and that he had consensual sex with Michelle Andrews.

A DNA test of a vaginal swab from Michelle Andrews, however, showed only matches with Steven Andrews.

The defense is expected to rest when the trial resumes on Monday.