Patsy's Fiber Evidence

FedX and all,

Some sleuths are surmising that the presence of blood on the cord, along with Patsy's fibers, may indicate a different order of events. Some are saying the head blow had to come first, with bleeding, indicating JonBenet was not strangled to death first.
Others are supposing the blood from the molestation with the paintbrush was still on Patsy's hands when she put the garrote around her baby's neck and pulled it tight.

Any thoughts on this?

 

I seem to recall

That there was no external head scalp injury at all (doctors were surprised when they discovered the massive crack during autposy). Thus no blood from head wound.

Where did you hear that there's blood on the cord? Was it in the original tab report and I missed seeing it?

I hope BobC didn't disappear from here because of pressure to tell what he does or doesn't know here on a public forum. If he does know something important and it's not provable, losing his job would be the least of his worries -- he could very well land himself a libel suit of his very own if he writes it here. In this economy, I wouldn't even want to cost him his job -- I'm in a creative tech field and I've been looking for something suitable (to no avail) for close to two years now. My curiosity isn't worth that much.

My two cents,
Ayeka

 

Ayeka

Wah! I can't remember which forum it was--they posted a picture of the garotte around JB's neck, (autopsy photo) and you could see the blood on the cord. I think it was Lurid Pigeon's site. I'll look for it and get back to you.

 

Lurker

Ahhh. Okay! I'd forgotten about that.

Ayeka

 

Yeah, I noticed that too

Weird. The head blow didn't have an external opening. Remember how surprised Meyer and Arndt were to find the massive fracture? But whether it alters the order of business, I'm inclined to think not.

 

Garroting and Head Blows...it's been done before....

There's a new movie premiering about the Bob Crane murder called "Auto Focus" with Greg Kinnear...loosely based on the book "The Murder of Bob Crane" by Robert Graysmith (former San Francisco Chronicle editorial cartoonist best known for his books "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked.")

In Graysmith's book on Crane (published in 1993,) he quotes a detective on the scene describing the state of the body (pgs. 64-5, hc):<ol>"[Bob Crane's] face," [Lieutenant Ron] Dean noted, "wasn't so much swolen as brused when I saw it. Mainly, what sticks in my mind was the blood. There were a few killings in Scottsdale, [Arizona] but even so, nothing like this. Bludgeonings and stranglings are almost unheard of, and I doubt if the city had ever had one like that ever at all. A city like Phoenix never had one, and they have a lot of homicides."

Inwardly Dean winced. The left side of the victim's head had been struck twice and caved in with some blunt object, possibly an iron bar, a pipe, or a lug wrench. There was no way of knowing at this point. Apparently to make doubly sure that the man was dead, the assailant had wrapped some sort of black cord around his neck and tied it.

The detective fought to stay aloof and objective, but he was shocked by the damage to the victim. It was so severe, it was difficult to determine the means of death. The cord was "tied around the neck with a single right-handed twist. The knot was at the left, the rear of the man's neck, " the official report would read. "The other end of the cord had been cut off with a knife."

<b>{snip}</b>

"The cord around his neck was from the VCR machine area," said Dean, "but I could tell it wasn't the cause of death because there was so much damage to the head, and although it was very tight, the way it was around the neck didn't really look like it could have caused strangulation."

"You sometimes have what we call an 'overkill,'" Dean said later. "Anybody should have known two blows to the head were enough. But this person was in such a state of mind or a frenzy of sorts that he went out and cut that cord off and tied it around Crane's neck.</ol>Later on pg. 80, the Scottsdale ME, Dr. Karnitschnig arrived, and chose to perform an on-the-scene "pre-autopsy."<ol>"The victim is cold, and rigor is well established," said the doctor. Carefully he cut the middle of the black electrical cord from around the victim's neck to preserve the knot. The cord was then taped back together at the point of the cut.

<b>{snip}</b>

Karnitschnig told the men that there were a minimum of two blows to the temple on the left side of Crane's head and that teh ligature was applied just prior to or at the time of death. "He must have been murdered in the early morning," said Dr. K, and noted how little the apartment had been damaged. "Mistreatment of the body, however, is considerable," he continued. "The murder was apparently well planned."

<b>{snip}</b>

The wounds were deep, explained the examiner, and the skull was crushed by a very strong man who not only took his time, but noting that the assailant had carefully wiped off the murder weapon and methodically tied a cord around Crane's neck. "The person who did this," said Dr. K, "knew that the skull was crushed, that the person was essentially dead."

<b>{snip}</b>

Dean told [his superior, Captain] Pratt that the killer could have been someone that Bob [Crane] knew since there were no signs of a strugle and no signs of forced entry. "There were no defense injuries,"</ol>Bludgeoning followed by strangulation (when the brute force of the head blow was insufficient to kill instantly) is not that uncommon of a murder method.

Ted Bundy was known to disable his victims by a blow to the head, and then to use a ligature to strangle the half-alive victims to death.

Strangulation following upon non-lethal bludgeoning may show that the perp is aware that the victim is still in a twilight perimortem state brought on by the head blow(s), and at some point decides to make certain that the victim is fully dead, or to finish off the victim in a misguided "mercy killing."

(A sidenote about stun guns and maglights: Remember the Rodney King beating by police caught on videotape? It was apparent in that tape that multiple stun gun zappings could not bring a man of King's size down sufficiently so that the ring of police felt confident to put the cuffs on him...which is still one of the more ugly events in the history of U.S. law enforcement.


It was after the stun guns did not completely subdue Mr. King, that the officers defaulted to using their maglights to bring King to complete surrender.)