ROCKLAND – DNA tests requested by convicted murderer Dennis Dechaine in his bid for a new trial uncovered no smoking gun, according to documents filed Tuesday in Knox County Superior Court.

Tests conducted by the state police crime laboratory failed to detect the presence of DNA from Dennis Dechaine or anyone else other than Sarah Cherry on items recovered from scene of the girl’s murder.

Dechaine, who’s serving a life sentence for the 1988 murder, hopes the tests by the state along with additional DNA tests by an independent laboratory will prompt a judge to order a new trial.

The test results filed Tuesday found the victim’s DNA on several items. Those included the scarf used to strangle the 12-year-old girl and a stick used in a sexual assault, as well as fingernail clippings.

Dechaine’s DNA was found on only one item that was tested: a bloodstain on a tissue recovered from his pickup truck. Neither his DNA nor DNA from any alternative suspect was discovered on items from the crime scene.

William Stokes, director of the criminal division for the state Attorney General’s Office, declined to characterize the findings.

“We should do our talking in the courtroom when the matter is before the judge,” Stokes said from Augusta.

A judge ultimately will have to decide whether the new evidence is enough to order a new trial for a man already found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by jurors in 1989, Stokes said.

Michaela Murphy, Dechaine’s lawyer, said she and the Attorney General’s Office had agreed to defer comment on the findings until the testing has been completed.

Dechaine and his supporters have contended the DNA tests could clear Dechaine of the brutal crime. Cherry, who was from Bowdoin, was found strangled, stabbed and raped with sticks in some woods in July 1988.

When he went to trial in 1989, DNA testing was newly available but was not nearly as advanced as it is today.

Items that were tested included Cherry’s fingernails, a cigarette butt, a knife and an ice cream wrapper found in the truck, rope used to tie the victim’s hands, and various pieces of her clothing.

More tests are scheduled to be conducted by Cellmark, an independent laboratory in Maryland.

Don Dechaine, who is Dennis Dechaine’s brother, said he hopes the additional tests will find some DNA from an alternative suspect that the state crime laboratory might have overlooked.

“The positive thing was that DNA tests show it was not Dennis. But it shows no one else, either,” he said from Madawaska.

Although Stokes agreed to the DNA tests, he said previously that the tests don’t make the other evidence go away.

During the initial investigation, police found papers bearing Dechaine’s name outside the house where Cherry was last seen alive. Her body was bound with rope cut from a piece of rope in his truck, which had been spotted parked across the street from where her body was found.