WESTMORELAND — Former Topeka Police Department detective Richard Volle described police efforts to uncover evidence of a 2002 double murder during his testimony Monday in the Dana Chandler trial.

Chandler is charged with murder for the 2002 deaths of her ex-husband Michael Sisco and his fiancée, Karen Harkness.

The gallery was close to full Monday morning when Volle took the witness stand for a third day. Shawnee County Chief Deputy District Attorney Charles Kitt conducted cross-examination of Volle, asking questions about his two days of testimony under questioning by Chandler.

Chandler elected to represent herself in the trial, dismissing her defense attorneys before opening statements began Feb. 7. She is being tried in Shawnee County District Court, but the judge moved the proceedings to Pottawatomie County.

Volle said he followed the case in the news after he was no longer involved in it and testified that when Chandler’s guilty verdict was overturned in 2018 by the Kansas Supreme Court, it was because of false arguments by former Shawnee County prosecutor Jacqie Spradling and not because of inaccurate evidence.

The Kansas Supreme Court in 2022 disbarred Spradling for her conduct on the case.

Specifically, Volle said, there was no footage of Sisco and Harkness being followed in a casino they were at on July 6, 2002, before their murders. Volle said all family and friends of the victims who could have plausibly been involved were questioned and found to have sound alibis.

He said it was true Chandler showed up in Sisco’s breezeway while the children weren’t home and said she wanted to get back together, but Sisco told her he and Harkness were getting married.

Volle also said Chandler’s original alibi was that she ran errands and went home, seeing no one else on July 6. However she later changed her story in a recorded phone call with her daughter, Hailey Seel, saying she went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and purchased gas cans to help someone in attendance, and ultimately left the Denver, Colorado, area to drive into the Rocky Mountains.

Jeff Bailey, an acquaintance of Chandler’s, reportedly said to Volle about a conversation he’d had with her after the murders, “she told me she lied to the police” about her alibi for the time in question.

Volle said the CBS “48 Hours” episode about the case was part of an effort to find out wether anyone had new information about any possible component of the Sisco-Harkness murders. He also attested there was no biological evidence at the scene of the crime to indicate anyone besides the victims were there, including Chandler.

Volle described part of the initial investigation in the week after the murders, saying a detective was sent to Interstate Highway 70, the most direct route between Topeka and Denver, to inquire at gas stations along the way if anyone had seen Chandler.

The detective brought a picture of Chandler, and at a gas station in WaKeeney an employee who has since died did recognize her, saying she came in and looked at a religious or spiritual book. Volle reportedly then went out to the same gas station and conducted a photo lineup with a different and recent picture of Chandler along with photos of five other women with similar physical traits. The witness identified with 70 percent surety that Chandler was the woman she saw on the weekend in question.