CHICORA — Police say blood samples taken from inside James S. Martin's house were a match for the man accused of stabbing him to death in December.

Homicide and robbery charges against Christopher M. Cannon, 27, of Butler were held for court Tuesday by District Judge Lewis Stoughton at a preliminary hearing.

At the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Mark Lope called five witnesses who gave testimony about the circumstances surrounding Martin's death. Investigators discussed DNA test results, e-mails and other evidence in the case.

Cannon, who is being held in Butler County Prison without bail, did not testify at the hearing and his attorney, Al Lindsay, declined to comment about the case against his client.

Cannon is accused of stabbing Martin to death in his East Butler home on Dec. 30. Police say the victim had made a post on Craigslist the day of his death and that he and the killer had arranged a meeting at his house via e-mail.

Cannon and Raheem R. Archer, 23, of Butler Township were arrested by police in January for allegedly attempting to use two bank cards bearing Martin's name to make purchases at Giant Eagle in Center Township and other stores. Homicide charges were filed by state police against Cannon on March 3. Archer, who waived his hearing two weeks ago on drug and fraud charges, will not face charges in connection with Martin's death, according to District Attorney Richard Goldinger.

Pamela Raible and Judy Osche both testified. Osche said she stopped by his house in East Butler and saw his vehicle in the driveway. After being told the security code to unlock the front door by Raible over the phone, she entered the house and found his body in the kitchen, she said.

“It was a mess. I saw him lying on the floor with a lot of blood on him,” Osche said.

She said she left the house without touching anything in the kitchen and called Raible. Both then called 911 and gave statements to police later that morning.

Raible said she and Martin had been friends since the 1970s. A former dog show judge, he was involved with multiple kennel clubs in the area.

They had breakfast together almost every Saturday and frequently talked on the phone, though he kept some parts of life private.

Raible said Tuesday that he never mentioned to her that his house had been burglarized on Thanksgiving.

“There were a lot of things I guess he just didn't share,” she said.

Martin's cause of death, according to an autopsy, was stab wounds to the head, neck and torso. The county coroner ruled the death a homicide.

Cpl. Emily Page of the state police was the lead investigator in the case and testified about the police's evidence against Cannon.

The state police crime lab in Greensburg had analyzed blood samples taken from different locations inside Martin's house and also from a pair of jeans that were taken when officers executed a search warrant at Cannon's home on Mercer Street, Page said.

Reading from the report, Page said that crime lab technicians allegedly found that DNA belonging to both Martin and Cannon was found on a desk in Martin's house and also on a paper towel holder in the kitchen. A sample of blood taken from the pair of jeans was a match for Cannon, Martin and a third, unknown, person, she said.

E-mails exchanged between Martin and another account, who police allege belonged to Cannon, on the day of the killing indicated that the two may have met previously.

Police executed search warrants of several e-mail accounts that belonged to Martin and found that he had made a posting on Craigslist on Dec. 30.

A user, identified only as “j hamtpon,” responded to the posting with a lewd photograph and the two users went on to arrange a meeting at Martin's house. In one of the messages, j hamtpon, wrote “we have met before,” Page said.

Cannon's girlfriend positively identified the man in the lewd photo as Cannon to police and also identified a coffee table in the background as the table in their shared house. Troopers who had previously executed a search warrant at that address also recognized the coffee table, Page said.

Police were unable to connect the e-mail account behind j hamtpon to Cannon, though Page said that investigators are looking into the IP address behind the messages, which would give a location from where the e-mails were sent.

By looking at cell phone records, investigators learned that Cannon's cell phone was in the East Butler area at 4:28 p.m. Dec. 30 when he made a call that used the Lick Hill cell tower.

Martin's home did have a security system that included surveillance cameras in multiple rooms and the garage. The cameras were set up to only record when Martin was not in the home, meaning no footage was captured of his killing, Page said.

During their investigation, police did find that several of the cameras had been moved or damaged, she said.

Martin's house was broken into on Thanksgiving and police charged a Slippery Rock man with burglary from that incident. He was not considered a suspect in the homicide. Police took a sample of the man's DNA to compare to blood samples from the crime scene and did not get any matches, Page said.

Cannon is scheduled for a formal arraignment May 9 in county court.