The prosecution rested its case yesterday against John Bradley Crawford, accused of killing a Highland Springs Elementary School first-grader more than 27 years ago.

The case is to resume at 9:30 this morning when the defense will present evidence. At least one expert is expected to testify for Crawford. Crawford was tried a year ago in connection with the same crimes, but the jury deadlocked.

Crawford, 46, is being tried in Hanover County in the abduction and murder of Alexander Paul Glanz, 6, who disappeared from his home after school on Dec. 3, 1980. His partially clothed body was discovered four days later along Cold Harbor Road.

The youngster was sexually assaulted. His wrists and ankles were bound and he was stripped to his socks and underwear and left in the woods. He managed to hop hundreds of feet, making it to just a few yards from Cold Harbor Road before dying of exposure.

A jury has heard two days of testimony against the former pest control worker, who was a suspect at the time but was not charged until 2006 as his prison term for the abduction of two Mechanicsville-area girls in 1981 was nearing its end.

No eyewitnesses or DNA or fingerprint evidence link Crawford to the crime. However, the jury heard scientific evidence yesterday -- not from a forensic scientist, but from a chemist who once tested agricultural products.

Kevin Miller testified that carefully controlled testing in 1981 identified two chemicals used in a pesticide found on bindings used on the Glanz boy, on one of the abducted girls, on Glanz's clothing and on what is alleged to have been Crawford's clothing.

Miller, who worked in Virginia's pesticide residue laboratory until 1982, said the amount of the chemicals found indicated it got on the items through direct contact. The same chemicals were also found in barrels on the back of Crawford's pickup truck.

Crawford's father, John C. Crawford, a pesticide expert who owned the business where his son worked, was called as the prosecution's last witness. He confirmed that a pesticide containing those chemicals was used by his son.

Much of yesterday's testimony concerned the so-called "chain of evidence," detailing who found what, where and how it was kept. The case is so old that some potential witnesses have died and at least one is in a nursing home.

At one point yesterday, former Hanover County investigator Rodney D. Davis, a solidly built man over 6 feet tall, stood and held up items found near the boy's body -- a blue "Yankees" jacket, T-shirt, blue jeans and a turtleneck shirt.

In Davis' hands, the clothing looked made for dolls. Glanz was 3 feet, 9 inches tall and weighed just 43 pounds.

Miller testified that the boy's jacket did not present the same testing problem posed by larger adult clothes he examined. "It was small enough that I could put it in a beaker," he said.

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com.