Too many people handled a household rubber mallet used to kill a Winfield nurse to identify a single DNA profile, an expert testified Wednesday.

Indiana State Police Forensic Pathologist Alexis Coburn told jurors the only place where Raju Rawal’s DNA was found was on Haley Losinski’s belly button ring.

Rawal, 67, of Merrillville, is charged with murder in the Feb. 23, 2023, death of Haley Losinski, 36. He has pleaded not guilty.

Rawal admitted later to police they had a sexual relationship. Court records indicate he may have been jealous Losinski was also seeing other men. They first met years earlier at her local Marathon gas station in Winfield where he worked and she was a customer, according to the affidavit.

DNA from an exam kit from her body was “inconclusive,” Coburn told Deputy Prosecutor Arturo Balcazar.

On cross-examination, she told defense lawyer Kevin Milner it was hypothetically possible that Rawal’s DNA could have gotten there as if he gave the ring as a gift.

Typically, sterilized body piercings are purchased at a shop just before it’s done, rather than handled like jewelry from a department store.

When Rawal went to India in December 2022 for a month, Losinski started another relationship with a man who worked at the same gas station. His DNA was not found at the scene, Coburn said.

Security video facing Losinski’s townhome showed Rawal’s white Toyota Rav4 arriving and leaving several times before and after his 4 a.m. gas station shift from Feb. 19 to 23, a detective from the Northwest Indiana Major Crimes Task Force told jurors.

Her ex-husband, Steven Sendejas, stopped by during that period.

However, Rawal was the last person at the home on Feb. 23, the detective said. He left around 4 a.m. and “within minutes” pulled up to his job at the Marathon gas station a few blocks away, he said, citing video footage.

Sendejas testified Tuesday he last saw Losinski around 9:30 a.m. Feb. 22. Their relationship was “amicable” after they split over a decade earlier, he said.

He went to see if their son’s laptop was at their house. He later texted her Feb. 27 to say their son made a basketball team. There was no response.

mcolias@post-trib.com