Latisha Furch couldn't hold in her tears, telling jurors she knows why she hasn't heard from her mother, Glenda Furch, in more than a year.
"I believe she's dead", Furch told jurors.
Investigators still haven't found her body, but prosecutors say the 51-year-old grandmother was killed inside her Woodhaven apartment where they found a large bleach stain in the bedroom.
Crime scene investigators also found clothes and other items from the apartment in a nearby dumpster.
Prosecutors said a former neighbor, Rodney Owens, cleaned up after committing the murder. But only two fingerprints found on items in the trash match Owens, and without a body, his defense attorney said there's no evidence of a murder.
A woman who dated Owens, Nekisha Baldwin, told jurors her once threatened her, telling jurors he left a message on her answering machine saying it would be easy to sneak up on her, tie her up and "watch me suffocate."
Furch was last seen in late September of 2007 when she left work at the GM plant in Arlington.
