TOLEDO, Ohio — Detectives investigating a nun's brutal murder 26 years ago in a hospital chapel were convinced a priest was the culprit, but did not have sufficient evidence to press charges, a retired police lieutenant testified Monday at the cleric's trial.

The officer recounted a host of promising early clues pointing toward the hospital chaplain, Rev. Gerald Robinson, in the 1980 slaying, including a potential murder weapon, witnesses and a strange lie by the priest.

But when the officer, William Kina, took the case to the local prosecutor, he testified, "The prosecutor said he didn't think we didn't have enough evidence at the time."

The murder was consigned to the cold-case file until 2004 when detectives used new forensic techniques to link wounds on Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl's body and stains on an altar cloth to a letter opener found in Robinson's quarters at the hospital.

The 68-year-old priest faces a possible life sentence if convicted. He maintains his innocence.

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Kina and two nuns who found the 71-year-old's body were the first witnesses to take the stand in the trial, which is expected to last about a month. The trio described how the bizarre killing shattered the peace of the small Catholic hospital's insular community in the most sacred days of the church calendar and frustrated authorities.

Sr. Margaret Ann was strangled and stabbed to death on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, as she prepared the hospital chapel for services. Her body was found in the sacristy where the Eucharist is kept in the solemn period between Good Friday and Easter.

"It was very terribly strange and sad and horrifying," Sr. Phyllis Ann Gerold, a hospital administrator and nurse, testified. The nuns, members of the Sisters of Mercy order, lived in a convent on the hospital premises, took their meals in the dining room and worked on the wards as nurses.

She said that when she rushed to the chapel after hearing another nun screaming, she was struck first by "the horror of it and the weirdness of it."

"And then that she needed to be saved. And afterwards, it was the 'Why?'" Gerold said.

She was found with her blue jumper rolled up high above her waist and her girdle and underpants pulled down around her. Prosecutors say that she had been stabbed in the shape of an inverted cross.

The nun who found her, Sr. Madelyn Marie Gordon, said it appeared the killer had posed the body.

"She was in a very straight position. Her legs were together. Her arms were down at the side, her head was in alignment. It looked like someone had placed her in that position," she said.

Gerold said she told a detective that she believed the killing was some type of ritual. Prosecutors have shied away from that term and Gerold testified that the officer she told brushed off the idea.