Speaker 1: Quality diners with Joseph Scott More. There are certain individuals
Speaker 1: throughout history who, for whatever reason, have been linked to
Speaker 1: specific historic events. One such person is a gentleman that
Speaker 1: I have mentioned previously on body Backs who was the
Speaker 1: chief medical examiner for Dallas. His name was doctor Earl Rose,
Speaker 1: and for his time, he was highly educated, highly trained,
Speaker 1: and was one of the leading experts in the country
Speaker 1: on death investigation. It just so happens that his life
Speaker 1: intersected with three of the principal people involved in the
Speaker 1: JFK assassination, actually four, and three of the four had
Speaker 1: something in common. They all died as a result of gunshot.
Speaker 1: Ones today on body Bags, in a continuing effort to
Speaker 1: offer our friends out there a bit of forensic education,
Speaker 1: if you will, we're going to be talking about gunfire
Speaker 1: and gunfire related deaths because let's face that, it's part
Speaker 1: of the fabric of who we are in America. It
Speaker 1: happens every single day. There are many cases out there
Speaker 1: that are quite high profile, but there are others that
Speaker 1: go without a whisper. But the one thing they have
Speaker 1: in common is the trauma they are subjected to at
Speaker 1: the hands of someone that has fired a weapon into
Speaker 1: their body. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body backs.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to know, looking back through time, who
Speaker 1: the first victim of a gunshot wound was. And I'm
Speaker 1: not even talking about lethal. We know that the Chinese
Speaker 1: invented gunpowder, and we know that as early as the
Speaker 1: twelve hundreds they had a firearm. This is something that
Speaker 1: they would load. It's essentially a tube packed with gunpowder.
Speaker 1: They would spark this thing off and they just put
Speaker 1: all manner of trapnel down the barrel, which he turns
Speaker 1: this into a gigantic shotgun, if you will, not very aerodynamic,
Speaker 1: but for its time, I'm sure that it was quite
Speaker 1: frightful for those that were on the business end of
Speaker 1: the weapon. If you will, to have these items flying
Speaker 1: through the air at you and slamming into your body.
Speaker 1: Things that in the past maybe you wore armor for,
Speaker 1: like to defeat a sword or a spear blow, were
Speaker 1: insufficient to the task. And suddenly a whole new world
Speaker 1: opened up in warfare and then eventually trickles down to
Speaker 1: the civilian world. But we do know that there was
Speaker 1: one gentleman that is the first recorded assassination victim by
Speaker 1: someone that had fired a weapon. And this gent's name
Speaker 1: and he's rather fashma. I'm looking at the image of
Speaker 1: him right now. Was a guy named James Stewart, first
Speaker 1: Earl of Moray, and back in I don't know, about
Speaker 1: fifteen seventy he was summoned up north to a castle
Speaker 1: in Scotland and there was another gentleman who was displeased
Speaker 1: with Moray, or Stewart rather, and from an open window
Speaker 1: fired a matchlock weapon at him matchlock carbine as it's
Speaker 1: referred to as, and struck him down and killed him.
Speaker 1: This guy's name was James Hamilton. Now, over a period
Speaker 1: of tom I think much has been forgotten about that case.
Speaker 1: But every single day, Dave in the news, we hear
Speaker 1: about people that die as a result of gunfire. It's
Speaker 1: part and parcel of who we are in America. A
Speaker 1: reality whether regardless of how you think about or feel
Speaker 1: feel about weapons farms specifically, it's the reality that we
Speaker 1: have to deal with in forensics and all the remains
Speaker 1: of individuals who have in fact been shot dead.
Speaker 2: When I look at gunshow, my fear is when people
Speaker 2: don't respect them properly, and when because you see the
Speaker 2: damage that can be done when you see it up
Speaker 2: close and personally, it's shocking. I look back at our history,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think about you mentioned JFK, and
Speaker 2: I think about the weapon used with that and all
Speaker 2: of the experts that came into play about that shooting
Speaker 2: of JFK and what they had to say about that
Speaker 2: man liquor Carcano. I don't know that's how you pronounced it.
Speaker 2: I've heard it some different ways. But you've got a
Speaker 2: cheap twelve dollars mail order rife that supposedly took down
Speaker 2: the leader of the Free world from the third floor
Speaker 2: of the school at Texas school book depository, from a
Speaker 2: shot that couldn't be made by experts, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: even a you know, he was not a good shot.
Speaker 2: And I think about those types of things, and I
Speaker 2: think about how you, as an expert, have to figure out,
Speaker 2: I mean, where did it come from, how did it happen?
Speaker 2: Is it even possible that this gun fired that projectile
Speaker 2: and hit this victim? You have to figure that out
Speaker 2: based on what's left. And I have trouble figuring that
Speaker 2: out when I see the whole thing on film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you do, and think about it is what's very
Speaker 1: interesting about the assassination of Kennedy is that Kennedy's gunshot
Speaker 1: ones that he sustained were a typical in this sense.
Speaker 1: Most of the time in America, we don't have, like
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, farms related deaths that
Speaker 1: come about as a result of a rifled weapon being fired,
Speaker 1: or let me rephrase that, a long arm being fired.
Speaker 1: And when I say that, like a shoulder fired weapon.
Speaker 1: Pistols are rifled, but you know the term rifle. When
Speaker 1: people hear the term rifle, they think a long arm
Speaker 1: or shoulder fired arm, and those are the exception and
Speaker 1: not the norm. The line share of people that meet
Speaker 1: their end in America as a result of gunplay does
Speaker 1: a result of handgun.
Speaker 2: And isn't it odd that every time we have a
Speaker 2: shooting of any type, the two things they want to
Speaker 2: ban assault rifles that aren't used in the crime and
Speaker 2: other military style weapons that oftentimes are not used in
Speaker 2: the crime. It's usually a handgun. And yet you never
Speaker 2: get a battle over handguns. That's never because it just
Speaker 2: doesn't make any kind of political sense. But that's a
Speaker 2: different discussion for a different let me ask you this show. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but if I if somebody were to be creating hell
Speaker 2: on Earth with a firearm taking out the leader of
Speaker 2: the free world, would it better be Would it be
Speaker 2: better to use a rifle that is made to shoot
Speaker 2: if you're shooting from a long distance, a hunting type
Speaker 2: rifle or military type rifle.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. The genesis for most civilian hunting weapons,
Speaker 1: the genesis is military military application. That's where as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, for years in my grandfather he fired.
Speaker 1: He had a thirty out six rifle. He had a
Speaker 1: thirty thirty rifle, and they were lever action rifles, you know,
Speaker 1: like old cowboy, but you know, the thirty out six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like the rifleman from the sixties. Oh yeah, Chuck
Speaker 1: Conners man. But baseball. Yeah. And I think you played
Speaker 1: basketball too, didn't he for the sixers? I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: bless his heart. You know, with rifles in particular, our
Speaker 1: troops came back from World War One, and the cartridge
Speaker 1: that those soldiers and marines were familiar with when they
Speaker 1: got back home was referred to as the thirty out six,
Speaker 1: and thirty out six became the gold Center. Still by
Speaker 1: some measure today it is for hunting, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of mid sized game like individuals that can go out
Speaker 1: and hunt deer and maybe wild hog or you know
Speaker 1: things like this. Well, that cartridge itself had its origin
Speaker 1: with a nineteen oh three rifle. It's a bolt action
Speaker 1: rifle that we had that all of our troops were issued.
Speaker 1: Now you talk about if someone is plotting an assassination,
Speaker 1: first off, there are examples of people that have walked
Speaker 1: up on the individuals and shot them, you know, at
Speaker 1: very close range. To presidents in particular, I can think
Speaker 1: of well, actually three if you count Lincoln, but Garfield
Speaker 1: who died and he was shot at a train station.
Speaker 1: You had Teddy Roosevelt who was shot with a pistol
Speaker 1: and the only thing that saved his life was he
Speaker 1: had a I think it was a silver cigar case
Speaker 1: that was in his pocket and it deflected the round.
Speaker 1: He still caught shrapnel and still kept Hey. That's why
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt's one of my favorite presidents. He kept on
Speaker 1: giving the speech. Yeah that I mean, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you take whoever you want. I'm going with Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: every time. I love Teddy. And and then of course
Speaker 1: you have you have Lincoln, who was famously assassinated, you know,
Speaker 1: with with a pistol an old darringer. So if but
Speaker 1: if you're looking for precision, and that's what a long
Speaker 1: arm gives individuals, that's generally where your mind is going
Speaker 1: to drift to. You know, somebody in a sniper's nest.
Speaker 1: You know, our troopers that are deployed all around the world,
Speaker 1: we have people that are snipers. In fact, it's actually
Speaker 1: a term that comes from from Scotland sniper. Those were
Speaker 1: people that were game wardens and hunters out there and
Speaker 1: they invented like the gilly suit, you know, where they're
Speaker 1: wearing all the rags all over their body and they
Speaker 1: can low crawl and approach. Well, we adopted that in
Speaker 1: the military, and the military uses it for military applications.
Speaker 1: But when you're wanting to reach out a great distance,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to use a long arm as
Speaker 1: it choose to.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the pistols there, and I didn't realize,
Speaker 2: I A, I had forgot about Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most people do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But when I was thinking about assassination, you know,
Speaker 2: we're talking about JFK. I was thinking about how Lincoln McKinley.
Speaker 1: McKinley, I forgot him.
Speaker 2: And Garfield and Garfield and Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1: And Bobby Kennedy, we're all shot with handguns.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Now all right, is it a different term
Speaker 2: pistol and handgun or.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's not. It's they're essentially interchangeable.
Speaker 2: But a pistol isn't necessarily a revolver, right, No, it's not.
Speaker 1: So you have let's break this down kind of logically
Speaker 1: so everybody can follow. So weapons generally fall into two categories.
Speaker 1: So firearms, that is in the modern sense. So we're
Speaker 1: going to have long arms, which are rifled weapons that
Speaker 1: fire a projectile that spins down the barrel because the
Speaker 1: grooves in the barrel. Okay, it's kind of like and
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. And that's actually called rifling. Now
Speaker 1: i'll tell you why it was developed. It was developed
Speaker 1: around about the same time as the Civil War occurred
Speaker 1: in America, and before that we were firing smooth bore muskets.
Speaker 1: And that means that you've got this huge chunk of
Speaker 1: lead that's traveling down a smooth boar barrel and it's
Speaker 1: kind of bouncing along as it goes through the barrel,
Speaker 1: and it's not making the most out of the energy
Speaker 1: that's provided by the explosion in the rear, so its
Speaker 1: ability to travel a great distance and bring power on
Speaker 1: target drops precipitously. But if you escalate up to say,
Speaker 1: for instance, the rifled round of you know, like that
Speaker 1: fired the mini ball, You've got a fifty eight caliber round,
Speaker 1: huge chunk of metal going down range in one of
Speaker 1: these in one of these civil war weapons. That thing's
Speaker 1: rifle and it's spinning. So if you think about somebody
Speaker 1: that has taken a football, for instance, you ever see
Speaker 1: anybody and I've done it, You've probably done it. Throw
Speaker 1: football and it comes out of your hand as a
Speaker 1: wounded duck. You've ever seen that, and it kind of
Speaker 1: flops through the air. You don't get a tight spiral
Speaker 1: on it. It's the same principle with a bullet. If
Speaker 1: you take a football and you can throw a tight spiral,
Speaker 1: it preserves energy and it gives you more distance any
Speaker 1: more accurate with it. Same thing. So if you compare
Speaker 1: a wounded duck football throw with a musket, okay, smooth bore,
Speaker 1: and then you take a rifled weapon with a tight spiral,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a simplistic way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: And so we have long arms. And also following in
Speaker 1: the category of long arms, many times there are shotguns. And
Speaker 1: so shotguns are smooth bore, okay, but they're meant for close,
Speaker 1: close engagements, but further away than say a pistol would
Speaker 1: be usedful and they bring they put a lot of
Speaker 1: power and a lot of energy on target. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, you've got those two groups of long arms.
Speaker 1: So the other group of weapons that we commonly encounter,
Speaker 1: particularly in investigations out on the streets, are handguns, and
Speaker 1: they break out in a modern sense. And again I'm
Speaker 1: qualifying these things in the modern sense. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about like the weapon that President Lincoln was assassinated with,
Speaker 1: which was a muzzle loading muzzle loading derringer that you
Speaker 1: had to use a ramrod to press the you know,
Speaker 1: to get the projectile down the barrel that had to
Speaker 1: be primed and then it was fired. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: now multi shot weapons that we encounter on the streets
Speaker 1: in investigations, and with handguns, those are generally going to
Speaker 1: fall into two categories. So you're going to have revolvers,
Speaker 1: which old guys call them wheel guns as well, and
Speaker 1: you've seen you've seen, you know, revolvers in all manner
Speaker 1: of television shows over the years, old Westerns, you know,
Speaker 1: even detective programs from back in as late as the eighties,
Speaker 1: because it's what cops carried. Cops had classically, they had
Speaker 1: the six inch Smith and Western thirty eight special revolver
Speaker 1: with ann iron sight and so the cylinder that the
Speaker 1: bullets and most of the time most revolvers hold six rounds.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll find them a whole five, and you have
Speaker 1: others that will hold more, but those are kind of outlayers.
Speaker 1: The as the hammer is actuated and pulled back, you'll
Speaker 1: see the cylinder kind of spin and it puts it
Speaker 1: on a fresh round and you've only got six, okay,
Speaker 1: six times to fire this thing, and then you have
Speaker 1: to reload. It's kind of cumbersome. And that's the way,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of saw this change happened back
Speaker 1: in the eighties with service weapons that police acers were carrying,
Speaker 1: and they went from revolvers, which they had carried for
Speaker 1: years and years, to semi automatic handguns. Top of the
Speaker 1: list probably to begin with some of the ones you saw.
Speaker 1: There were two groups that you saw being employed by
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies. To begin with, those were glocks, which
Speaker 1: everybody's heard of now it's an Austrian made weapon. It's
Speaker 1: got a polymer frame. And then there were Barrettas, which
Speaker 1: is an Italian weapon. And the reason that Barretta was
Speaker 1: very popular was because it's what our military troops carried
Speaker 1: in all branches, because they had carried the forty five
Speaker 1: for years and years, and forty five ACP has a
Speaker 1: storied history. But again it could only hold up to
Speaker 1: seven rounds, not sufficient to the task. Weapons now the
Speaker 1: semi automatic weapon that police officers carry. If you're watching
Speaker 1: these videos you know that are that are on YouTube
Speaker 1: and these sorts of things, and you're watching them, uh,
Speaker 1: these live shooting instances, you'll see the cop fire multiple
Speaker 1: times and it seems like it's never going to end.
Speaker 1: And that's because the magazines which hold these rounds are
Speaker 1: you know, in the double digits, these rounds and so
Speaker 1: and then they've got multiple magazines on their belts. So
Speaker 1: when you see a cop wearing wearing their utility gear,
Speaker 1: you'll see, you know, magazine holders and you'll see them.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the skills you have to develop.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to drop drop a magazine,
Speaker 1: reload and get back into the fight. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that's taught in military as well. So
Speaker 1: we've got long arms, rifles and shotguns. Then we've got handguns,
Speaker 1: which are generally gonna be revolvers. They're still revolvers that
Speaker 1: people carry. I know people that prefer for revolvers over
Speaker 1: semi automatics. And then you've got the semi automatics, your glocks,
Speaker 1: Bretta sixth hour, which I think is what the military
Speaker 1: has gone to now hk's and some of these can
Speaker 1: cost into the thousands and thousands of dollars, and they
Speaker 1: come in a variety of calibers as well. You know, Dave,
Speaker 1: I've made mention of the first autopsy I ever participated in,
Speaker 1: which was a bludgeoning death. God had been beaten to
Speaker 1: death with a baseball bat at the hand of his
Speaker 1: brother something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a horrible shot, but I'm excellent with the
Speaker 2: Louisville slugger.
Speaker 1: And there you go.
Speaker 2: Tasted it all at my doors and I've all it
Speaker 2: out the barrel and put my area. If you come
Speaker 2: into my house, you're not You're not walking out just
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: When I get to our blunt force blunt blunt force
Speaker 1: drama lecture, I'm going to rely heavily upon you with
Speaker 1: that because we will talk about baseball paths. Uh. The
Speaker 1: first homicide or the first death I was ever involved
Speaker 1: in as an autopsy technician was actually a bludgeoning. A
Speaker 1: god had been beaten to death by baseball with a
Speaker 1: baseball bat. The first scene that ever went on where
Speaker 1: I was the primary investigator was actually a gunshot wound.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, I know people might think, well,
Speaker 1: that's not unusual, Morgan. Well yet it is. Because you
Speaker 1: work for the corner. You handle all manners of death,
Speaker 1: and generally firearms related deaths are the least of what
Speaker 1: you handle. You handle the fewest of those.
Speaker 2: You told me that, Joe watching the news and politics, Yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody in America had a gun loaded and cocked and
Speaker 2: ready to take something.
Speaker 1: And that everybody's dying on a gun. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: Well the news.
Speaker 2: That's what we did. We got a cup of coffee,
Speaker 2: shot somebody.
Speaker 1: And yeah, most our will get you fished in by that.
Speaker 1: The line's share of deaths that you work as an investigator,
Speaker 1: even going out on the field. In my field, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about it as a homicide detective. I'm talking
Speaker 1: as medical legal death investigator. Are going to be naturals,
Speaker 1: but it just so happened. The first one, the first
Speaker 1: case that ever worked by myself in the field, was
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound and it was with kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting weapon. It was a twenty two magnum revolver, which
Speaker 1: is actually a very powerful You think of a twenty two,
Speaker 1: which is that's an imperial measurement, and we can talk
Speaker 1: about calibers. Twenty two is essentially zero point two inches
Speaker 1: in circumference around the actual projectile, and that's where you
Speaker 1: get that number. But that's an imperial measurement which was
Speaker 1: given to us by the British and we adopted that.
Speaker 1: So anytime you hear caliber, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: That's an imperial measurement. But other so called measurements for
Speaker 1: weapons are done metric. That's why you hear and you
Speaker 1: hear it in a lot of songs that are out
Speaker 1: there that popularly talking about a nine millimeter nine millimeter glock,
Speaker 1: you know, and so nine millimeter is probably the most
Speaker 1: popular round, but that measurement is done in millimeters, so
Speaker 1: and you've got ten milimeter pistols or handguns, but you know,
Speaker 1: you have rifle rounds that one of the most popular
Speaker 1: to the most popular for hunting are six millimeter and
Speaker 1: seven millimeter. So and it's hard. There's no like, there's
Speaker 1: no debt one match for these. When you compare the
Speaker 1: imperial system, which is rooted in Great Britain, to the
Speaker 1: metric system or you know, the millimeter system, if you will,
Speaker 1: for measuring measuring rounds even you know, look, even in
Speaker 1: the mill terry, you have to learn the metric measurement
Speaker 1: for firearms. So you know, like the standard round for
Speaker 1: years and years in the military has been a five
Speaker 1: point five to six millimeters round. That's what goes into
Speaker 1: the rifle. And it's roughly about the size believe it
Speaker 1: or not, Dave, The diameter of the circumference of the
Speaker 1: actual round itself is about roughly the size of a
Speaker 1: twenty two round. It's not that big. It's just the
Speaker 1: amount of powder or propellant that's placed into that particular round,
Speaker 1: and then the weight of the bullet is it's larger.
Speaker 1: The projectile is actually larger than say even a twenty
Speaker 1: two long rifle, and so the amount of powder that's
Speaker 1: put behind it, the propellant. When that round hits something,
Speaker 1: it can rip it apart. And most of those rounds
Speaker 1: are what are called flangible frangible fragmenting rounds, so when
Speaker 1: they hit a target, they kind of come apart. And
Speaker 1: so you've got these tiny, little particulate rounds that are
Speaker 1: going into a body or bits of shrapnel and they're
Speaker 1: ripping things to shreds in there as well. So there's
Speaker 1: a huge variety and it takes it takes you a
Speaker 1: while to get used to this environment, you know, to
Speaker 1: try to be able to spink to lingo because it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly a it's certainly a language all and of itself.
Speaker 2: Okay, but when you're actually looking at a body on scene, yeah,
Speaker 2: are you able are you able to understand what weapon
Speaker 2: or what type of weapon was used before you get
Speaker 2: them back? I mean, can you look at a body
Speaker 2: and go, yeah, that's a twenty two? I mean do
Speaker 2: you can you do that? Or do you what happens
Speaker 2: on scene when you're dealing with somebody who is a
Speaker 2: victim of a being shot.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent question because you you will see portrayed
Speaker 1: in movies. And I've even been around colleagues that will
Speaker 1: say that looks like a twenty two or that looks
Speaker 1: like a nine, and I would I'll learned early on
Speaker 1: in my career not to say that, because I was
Speaker 1: proven wrong so many times once we got back to
Speaker 1: the Morgue. And interestingly enough, Dave when I write, or
Speaker 1: wrote when I was writing, and I still teach my
Speaker 1: students this at Jack State. When you write a report, okay,
Speaker 1: I I never say in one of my reports involving gunplay,
Speaker 1: I never say that the subject has a gunshot wound
Speaker 1: to the anterior chest, or to the posterior chest, or
Speaker 1: to the hit. I'll say that the individual has a
Speaker 1: circular or irregular shaped defect. Because if I call that,
Speaker 1: if I call that defect or that hole in the
Speaker 1: body a gunshot wound in the field, and then that
Speaker 1: body has to make it back to the morgue. Well,
Speaker 1: when the forends of pathologist gets that the body in
Speaker 1: a in perfect conditions for examination with the surgical lights
Speaker 1: and everything, first off, they might look at that and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not a gunshot wound. That person was pierced
Speaker 1: by something here that might resemble a gunshot wound, or
Speaker 1: this is the tail end of a laceration. It's not
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound. But yet I've gone ahead and put
Speaker 1: it in an official report. And then if the pathologist
Speaker 1: report comes out, those two things are conflicting. When they're subpoena,
Speaker 1: you know, and they can put you on the stand
Speaker 1: and say, well, look, you know, you're a pathologist here,
Speaker 1: made a statement that this is a gunshot wound. But
Speaker 1: yet you're saying or that you said that it's a
Speaker 1: gunshot wound, but they're saying that it's something other than that.
Speaker 1: Who should we believe? And again, that's that kernel, that
Speaker 1: seed that's planted for reasonable doubts. So you have to
Speaker 1: be real careful with your.
Speaker 2: Verbiage, evening your thinking about if this goes to trial,
Speaker 2: if I'm called. That's in the back of your head
Speaker 2: every step of the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And that's why it's so important that
Speaker 1: you remain very, very clinical. You know, when you're at
Speaker 1: a scene. First off, you're you're at a great disadvantage
Speaker 1: day in the field. And I've mentioned this before. I'm
Speaker 1: not whining about it. I'm just saying you don't have
Speaker 1: like the same advantages you do, and the more to
Speaker 1: examine a body because the lighting is insufficient. You know,
Speaker 1: you try to go out in the middle of the woods,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, on a moonless night,
Speaker 1: overcast night. You can't see your hand in front of
Speaker 1: your face, but yet you're you are going to attempt
Speaker 1: to give a detailed description of something that has got
Speaker 1: little tears in it that measure maybe one centimeter. Because
Speaker 1: of the orientation of the around when it goes through
Speaker 1: the body, You're incapable of doing that in that environment.
Speaker 1: So that's why I spoke very broadly, you know, when
Speaker 1: I would write, and I would recommend to anybody that's
Speaker 1: going into forensics that you speak very broadly about field
Speaker 1: with feeling reports, particularly when it comes to injuries, because
Speaker 1: you don't know. One of the most embarrassing things that
Speaker 1: can happen is to have some lawyer get you hip
Speaker 1: on stand and the first you know, they'll talk to
Speaker 1: you in general terms, what your background and what's your
Speaker 1: experience and all this, and they might say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I was looking here at your CV you know, your resume,
Speaker 1: and I see that you graduated with your master's degree
Speaker 1: in forensic science. But where'd you go to medical school.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to medical school. But yet you've made
Speaker 1: an assessment at the scene that this is a gunshot Once.
Speaker 1: Certainly you have to have medical training in order to
Speaker 1: be that. Are you a board certified forensic pathologist? No, sir,
Speaker 1: I'm not so, even though I might be the best
Speaker 1: investigator in the world. All the while he's asking me
Speaker 1: these questions that I have to respond negatively to. Who's listening, Well,
Speaker 1: the jury's listening. So that's why with gunshot wounds in particular,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit cagy about it because I've gotten burned.
Speaker 1: I've had friends that have really gotten burned, and I
Speaker 1: learned from forensic pathologists, you know they I had one
Speaker 1: old friends of pathologist that told me, let me bear
Speaker 1: the burden of that. You just indicate to me where
Speaker 1: you see defects in the body. It's like people will
Speaker 1: I'm amazed at when I go out on scenes, I'll
Speaker 1: have people will say, well, this is an entrance and
Speaker 1: this is an exit wound. Well, how do you know that?
Speaker 1: How do you know that that's an entrance? Oh, because
Speaker 1: entrance is always smaller than the exit. Prove it Joe. Well,
Speaker 1: i've seen cases before. Well, I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: cases too, and I've seen cases particularly like individuals that
Speaker 1: are struck from behind in the shoulder blade, that flat bone,
Speaker 1: and it's a very nasty injury, and it might give
Speaker 1: you the appearance that it's an exit, where it's actually
Speaker 1: an entrance. People shot in the spiny process in their
Speaker 1: next many times that kind of blows out and it
Speaker 1: gives the impression of an exit very well might be
Speaker 1: an entrance. And so you can't make that determination in
Speaker 1: the field.
Speaker 2: You're right back, right back the middle of JFK. Now,
Speaker 2: because in the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, there was
Speaker 2: always a battle over the neck wound, yes, you know,
Speaker 2: and they ended up using the neck wound to actually
Speaker 2: put a track.
Speaker 1: Started an airway. Yeah, and that's hey, look, that's commonly done, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's not like that's abnormal.
Speaker 2: Right, not like they messed it up or anything.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no no. And you would still see
Speaker 1: some evidence, like, for instance, when the president was shot,
Speaker 1: and this goes into an assessment of range of fire,
Speaker 1: which is very important in what we do. When the
Speaker 1: president was shot, regardless of who fired the weapon and
Speaker 1: from where it was coming from when you examined his body,
Speaker 1: and if it had actually been examined by Earl Rose
Speaker 1: instead of those buffoons on the East coast.
Speaker 2: That went and creating to go back and listen to
Speaker 2: our body back the assassination of JFK.
Speaker 1: Please do it was the biggest clown show and face
Speaker 1: the planet. And you know, Earl Rose almost went to
Speaker 1: jail over that because he Doctor Rose was in the
Speaker 1: in the hallway at Parkland and he was fighting or
Speaker 1: he was protesting to Secret Service and he, according to him,
Speaker 1: one of the agents actually put their hand on their
Speaker 1: weapon and saying said, the presence body is leaving here.
Speaker 1: And he was like, I'm I'm the legal authority here.
Speaker 1: You know this is this is a homicide in Dallas County.
Speaker 1: And we talked about that extensively. But you know, doctor
Speaker 1: Rose was actually involved in the autopsies of Tippett who
Speaker 1: was allegedly shutting by Oswald, and he did Oswald's autopsy
Speaker 1: as well. Interestingly enough, I believe if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: you know, Dave, I think he actually did Jack Ruby's autopsy.
Speaker 2: What the same guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he died, He died in the City Jail of
Speaker 1: cancer and I think he actually did that autopsy as well,
Speaker 1: and that several years later. But you know, you think
Speaker 1: about the intersection. If only if only doctor Rose had
Speaker 1: been had been allowed to assess President's injuries, you know,
Speaker 1: because he would have probably, first off, he would have
Speaker 1: arrived at a different conclusion because that body would have
Speaker 1: been secured in his morgue and not be flown a
Speaker 1: thousand miles or highever the how far it is to Bethesda,
Speaker 1: you know, from from love Field, and he could have
Speaker 1: done that assessment appropriately incorrectly. But you know, with President
Speaker 1: Kennedy shooting, that's what we would refer to as around
Speaker 1: fired from a distance, and when you're trying to assess
Speaker 1: the range of fire, you're in to another complete level
Speaker 1: as far as forensic examinations go. Dave, I tell you
Speaker 1: JFK has always been a head scratcher. It from what
Speaker 1: I can tell at this point, it will always be
Speaker 1: a head scratcher. But you know what, we we had
Speaker 1: the advantage of always reflecting back to science, and that's
Speaker 1: what keeps us grounded.
Speaker 2: When you did the show, and I was so thankful
Speaker 2: you did it because there are so many things that
Speaker 2: the average shoe doesn't know. All we hear are the theories.
Speaker 2: Ohen you get down of the forensics of what actually happened,
Speaker 2: and you're saying, here's all the things they did to
Speaker 2: make sure we would never know the truth. That's a
Speaker 2: real problem. But you were just talking about range of fire,
Speaker 2: and I'm concerned and curious about how how can you
Speaker 2: determine I mean, you've got a bullet being fired from
Speaker 2: a weapon. Yeah, how can you determine range of fire?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I understand stiffling, so I could
Speaker 2: understand a contact wound if you're you know, touching my again,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get But beyond that, how can you
Speaker 2: really tell how far it was?
Speaker 1: Well, with the president, some people will use the term
Speaker 1: long range shot, and yeah, it is a long range shot,
Speaker 1: but scientifically that means nothing. So what does that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: it's actually an indeterminate range if you want to look
Speaker 1: at it from a purely clinical sense, because there's no
Speaker 1: way like once you get out beyond Some people will
Speaker 1: debate you about this. Some people say it's eighteen inches.
Speaker 1: I hear people say all the way after thirty six inches.
Speaker 1: Once you get beyond that our marker right there, there's
Speaker 1: no President Kennedy could have been shot from thirty Let's
Speaker 1: just say we'll be generous from thirty six inches out
Speaker 1: to infinity and there wouldn't be any evidence on the body. Okay,
Speaker 1: all you're going to have is a defect. Now, the
Speaker 1: one thing that you see with indeterminate range, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a rifled round that's passing. I encourage anybody
Speaker 1: that hasn't seen the quote unquote magic bullet. That bullet
Speaker 1: has been fired. It's got rifling on it, and you
Speaker 1: can actually see it running down the long axis. It's
Speaker 1: just that it's so intact, you know. But that's a story.
Speaker 1: That's a story I've already told. Actually, But when you
Speaker 1: see the wound that is generated traditionally, because you know,
Speaker 1: President Kennedy's body got so kind of boogered up and
Speaker 1: orientation was all off and everything else. But if you
Speaker 1: look at an indetermined range projectile or projectile that has
Speaker 1: been fired from an indeterminate range, the only thing you're
Speaker 1: going to see is what's referred to as a friction ring.
Speaker 1: And what that means is going back to my example
Speaker 1: of tight spiral on a football. It's spinning. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: think about a spinning This is painful to think about,
Speaker 1: all right, just this in and of itself, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't notice it when you're being shot. But as that
Speaker 1: bullet is spinning, and it is spinning like nobody's business,
Speaker 1: all right, when it strikes. When it strikes the skin,
Speaker 1: it actually Dave twists the skin like this. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you get this abrasion ring around a circular defect, and
Speaker 1: you'll see the little abraided area where it kind of twist.
Speaker 1: I've actually, I could have sworn before I've actually seen
Speaker 1: on the hour marker the outer margins of one of
Speaker 1: these things, little kind of hash marks that look like
Speaker 1: indication of rifling, you know, and they're kind of at
Speaker 1: a they're kind of fan shaped. Doctor told me, I
Speaker 1: was out of my mind. I wasn't really seeing that,
Speaker 1: so I was like, oh, okay, well whatever. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it twists, It twists the skin, and that friction that's
Speaker 1: created on the skin just for that moment, you know,
Speaker 1: it it upbraids that area, it tears the skin, It
Speaker 1: in salts the skin. But beyond that, you're not going
Speaker 1: to have any powder deposition there's not going to be
Speaker 1: any debris blown out of the barrel because none of
Speaker 1: that crap is aerodynamics. So let's just say you're in
Speaker 1: that multi storied structure of the Texas school Book Suppository
Speaker 1: Depository that you're standing. You're up there, and you're in
Speaker 1: a sniper's nest, and you're firing this round. Well, by
Speaker 1: the time that round reaches the end of the muzzle, okay,
Speaker 1: which is in a twinkling of an eye, that round
Speaker 1: is going down range and it's leaving a cloud behind it.
Speaker 1: And you can see this in high speed camera slow
Speaker 1: motion on weapons. I encourage everybody to go look these
Speaker 1: up on the inner zones out there. You see this
Speaker 1: kind of cloud that rises up out of the barrel,
Speaker 1: and the projectile actually emerges from that. Well, just take
Speaker 1: a look in that slow and they're everywhere. When you
Speaker 1: see them, that slow motion cloud that's coming out doesn't
Speaker 1: go very far. As a matter of fact, really quickly
Speaker 1: you can see it begin to descend to the Earth.
Speaker 1: None of that stuff is has the aerodynamic qualities that
Speaker 1: a spinning lead core projectile has as it's going down
Speaker 1: range and it can stay on target for a protracted time.
Speaker 1: So it's not carrying any of that debris with it.
Speaker 1: So when you have an indetermined range, you know that
Speaker 1: if you're in court, you know, the attorney might say, well, gee, whiz,
Speaker 1: how far away was this round or was the shooter?
Speaker 1: You know, when I don't know, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me with all your knowledge. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, based upon a lot of scientific study over
Speaker 1: the years, that it's impossible to tell because there's there's
Speaker 1: no deposition. Now when you get into what we would
Speaker 1: refer to as we'll kind of do these backwards, it's
Speaker 1: when you're the next tier to this is going to
Speaker 1: be like an intermediate range. You look at a case
Speaker 1: of well, if you just look at, for instance, Oswald,
Speaker 1: when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby in the garage,
Speaker 1: you can see him, I mean, and there's that classic
Speaker 1: freeze frame where he's kind of hunched over and he's
Speaker 1: got this pained look on his face and Ruby is
Speaker 1: extending that snubnose thirty eight caliber revolver. He's holding a
Speaker 1: revolver here and he fires it at Ruby. Well, Ruby
Speaker 1: is in kind of a and this goes to what
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out. Also with trajectory. Ruby is
Speaker 1: kind of tilted down like this when he shot, he
Speaker 1: kind of hunches like this. You know that round actually
Speaker 1: traveled downward in his body. I mean it passed through
Speaker 1: several several organ systems. He didn't have a he didn't
Speaker 1: have a shot, no pun intended of surviving. But that's
Speaker 1: an inner immediate round with him intermediate range, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to determine from because you're seeing it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of like, uh, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: Ruby's POV, but you're behind Ruby, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: gauge distance in depth from that range. But I would
Speaker 1: say that based upon the muzzle position relative to Ruby,
Speaker 1: I mean relative to Oswald when that weapon was fired,
Speaker 1: you might see some deposition. Now, do you remember, Dave,
Speaker 1: what color sweater Ruby was wearing when he was shot?
Speaker 2: No, well, when Ruby was shot, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, when Oswald was shot, I keep now.
Speaker 2: I just I can remember as the picture that was
Speaker 2: in the newspaper that you know, basically shows him like
Speaker 2: you were, just you know, bent over and the pained
Speaker 2: look on his face.
Speaker 1: I don't remember much else he's wearing. He's wearing a
Speaker 1: black sweater and a white shirt. The collar is kind
Speaker 1: of popping up out of it, and you know, if
Speaker 1: we were to look at his body, you know he
Speaker 1: was actually taken to Parkland. He died in the same
Speaker 1: area that the President died in. No, he did, he did.
Speaker 1: I think it tipp It was taken to Parkland too,
Speaker 1: Uh but yeah, so yeah, I mean they were if
Speaker 1: I remember this, some of this might be Lord, that's
Speaker 1: coming back up in my mind. I think they were
Speaker 1: in adjacent trauma rooms. He was adjacent to the room
Speaker 1: that the president had been brought into when they started
Speaker 1: running the code on it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it makes sense that. I mean, you've
Speaker 2: got it spell and you bring certain victims into certain rooms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a level of whatever it's called, level one
Speaker 1: trauma center.
Speaker 2: I think I would imagine that that that actually, as
Speaker 2: weird as it is, makes perfectly good sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you imagine being a nurse on duty that
Speaker 1: day and you had handled the president and now you
Speaker 1: got the guy who's been on the news. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he's wearing a black sweater. So I got to tell you, Dave,
Speaker 1: this is where our testing comes in, because if you
Speaker 1: just try to eyeball that sweater to get an idea
Speaker 1: of any kind of debris that's on that sweater. You're
Speaker 1: not going to see it with the unaided eye. That sweater.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they saved it. You know, hospital emergency rooms have
Speaker 1: a bad habit of cutting things off. You know, you
Speaker 1: see that portrayed many times, and it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: If they preserve that sweater, and the sweater would be
Speaker 1: taken to the crime lab and they could analyze it,
Speaker 1: and they could actually use alternative lighting and chemical testing
Speaker 1: to give you the deposition of the gunshot residue that's
Speaker 1: on the outside of that sweater, and it'll give you
Speaker 1: a range fire. So just imagine this. You're if you're
Speaker 1: firing an intermediate range, the deposition of the powder that
Speaker 1: is embedded either on an article of clothing or on skin,
Speaker 1: is going to be greatly spread out. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a water hose, you know, when you put it
Speaker 1: on spray mode, and it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: fountain coming out out of its spreading. For the closer
Speaker 1: you get to the nozzle, the tighter it gets. So
Speaker 1: with that, if he's within let's just say it's eighteen inches,
Speaker 1: it might be I don't know, the deposition could be
Speaker 1: I'm just spitballing here, maybe twelve inches by twelve inches.
Speaker 1: That's the deposition that you're talking about high and low
Speaker 1: or high and wide, and that deposition is going to dictate. Now,
Speaker 1: what they would have done is they will take that
Speaker 1: same pistol that Ruby used and go to the state
Speaker 1: crime Lab and they will fire. And this is something
Speaker 1: we have to have done by the crime lab. You
Speaker 1: turn that over to the Ballistic Section firearms examination, and
Speaker 1: they have an indoor range where they'll go and they'll
Speaker 1: take a white T shirt and it's really impressive if
Speaker 1: you've never seen this done. White T shirt, hang it
Speaker 1: up and they will fire at various ranges into fresh
Speaker 1: white T shirts. And as they get closer and closer,
Speaker 1: that deposition tightens up and tightens up. And there's always
Speaker 1: that the defect in the sweater. This always constant. You know,
Speaker 1: it's right there, but as you're getting closer and closer,
Speaker 1: it's tightening down.
Speaker 2: Do they have to put the shirt on something else
Speaker 2: that actually can simulate.
Speaker 1: The No, No, no, they'll they'll hang it. They generally
Speaker 1: hang it and do it. Now, that's different types of
Speaker 1: testing than say in a ballistic slab where they go
Speaker 1: and they fire into a tank filled with cotton strips
Speaker 1: of cotton, or they fire into a water tank that's
Speaker 1: got a catch basin in the bottom, and that way
Speaker 1: they can Let's say we take a projectile out at autopsy.
Speaker 1: All right, let's say they'll removed the projectile out of
Speaker 1: out of Oswle's body, fired from Ruby's gun. Well, that
Speaker 1: that projectile more than likely that thirty eight special round
Speaker 1: is going to be deformed in some way. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be pristine. Oh exactly.
Speaker 2: Last it goes to the President of the United States
Speaker 2: and ends up on the and.
Speaker 1: Makes a left hand turn it. Yeah, it goes through
Speaker 1: the other guy's wrist, and yeah, where you go to do.
Speaker 2: Break seven bones and stelling it Christine, you know what
Speaker 2: that was the That's the metal that was used in
Speaker 2: Iron Man. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding. And one of the things, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things you're looking for is to try
Speaker 1: to compare the question weapon, which would be the projectile
Speaker 1: or the question projectile that you recover from the body
Speaker 1: with the round that's fired out of Ruby's gun. And
Speaker 1: you compare the two and people will say, well, you
Speaker 1: know what it was on TV. It's his weapon that
Speaker 1: doesn't stand TV, doesn't stand up in sorry to I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to burst your bubble. That has to be tested
Speaker 1: and scientifically, they have to do a comparison if thing
Speaker 1: were to go to trial. Of course, Uh, you know
Speaker 1: it is what it is. Uh, and you try to
Speaker 1: compare it. Now, the closer you get to where you're
Speaker 1: in a circumstance where you've got a a round that's fired,
Speaker 1: let's say, how can I say it. You've got a
Speaker 1: round that is fired at an individual, say it what
Speaker 1: would be called close range. Close range. You're going to
Speaker 1: be within a couple of inches of the target. And buddy,
Speaker 1: when you see, when you see the damage that's done,
Speaker 1: that powder, the unburned powder in particular, rages out of
Speaker 1: that weapon, and say, if it strikes skin, you're going
Speaker 1: to have it's going to look like this is kind
Speaker 1: of disgusting. It's going to look like a huge collection
Speaker 1: of blackheads to most people the first time they see it,
Speaker 1: like a huge concentrate you're looking at you're thinking, this
Speaker 1: is really bizarre. But of course you've got a defect
Speaker 1: right in a hole, right in the center of it,
Speaker 1: but it's surrounded by all this kind of unburned powder,
Speaker 1: and that unburned powder actually gets beneath the skin. It's there.
Speaker 1: So if you took a section of that skin and
Speaker 1: you cut it and you put it on microscopic slide,
Speaker 1: guess what When you look at that section microscopically, you
Speaker 1: can actually see the powder. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that the unburned powder. Powder comes in different shapes depended
Speaker 1: upon the actual granules of powder. You can have disc shape,
Speaker 1: cylindrical shape, you can have pyramidial shaped powder. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the individual grains of powder that come from
Speaker 1: a particular company. So that's kind of an identifier that
Speaker 1: can be used by ballistics.
Speaker 2: Experts that come from a specific company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because each manufacturer might make a powder where
Speaker 1: the individual grains of powder are in a particular shape
Speaker 1: and that shape is unique to them. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we try to find all of these components that we
Speaker 1: can in addition to doing regular gunshot residue testing where
Speaker 1: we're looking for chemical chemical evidence, you know, where we're
Speaker 1: looking for barium, antimony, and lead, which are components of
Speaker 1: of actual gunpowder or propelling I prefer to use the
Speaker 1: term propell and as opposed to gunpowder.
Speaker 2: When they do the test to see if I fired
Speaker 2: a gun. Yeah, if I have fired a weapon, is
Speaker 2: that that was it?
Speaker 1: The GSR Yeah, GSR gunshot rose do testing, okay.
Speaker 2: And that's where you're going to be able to tell
Speaker 2: if I wash my hands, I shoot a weapon, wash
Speaker 2: my hands, scrub them down her Are you still going
Speaker 2: to build test me?
Speaker 1: No? Probably not that quick you can me gone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, there's even evidence that people
Speaker 1: put that put their hands in their pockets after firing
Speaker 1: a weapon. Uh, you know, compromise the concentration of it,
Speaker 1: right and listen, just because you have it on your
Speaker 1: hands doesn't mean you fire a weapon, right, and you
Speaker 1: may have held a weapon, it means that you were
Speaker 1: in proximity to a weapon. They did one study Dave
Speaker 1: years ago, uh, testing people that worked in an ammunition factory,
Speaker 1: and they were testing them every day as they were
Speaker 1: leaving and they're actually putting together components of large, large projectiles,
Speaker 1: and they were getting they were getting like forty five
Speaker 1: percent negatives on these individuals and even worse than even
Speaker 1: worse than that is back and this existed before I
Speaker 1: came into the field, they used to paraffine tests, which
Speaker 1: were where you would have a suspect place their hand
Speaker 1: into warm wax and they would peel the wax off
Speaker 1: of the hands and whatever it captured. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing as doing a tape lift. So you're looking for
Speaker 1: that residue that's contained within you know this. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you want to call it a medium or resin,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, but it's called a paraffine test. So
Speaker 1: after you get past close range, then you have what's
Speaker 1: referred to as press contact or hard contact. Dependent upon
Speaker 1: where you are and where you studied, you'll and what
Speaker 1: pathologists you've worked around. In my field, they'll call it
Speaker 1: different things. I've heard hard contact, press contact, and most
Speaker 1: of the time you see press and hard contact wounds
Speaker 1: with self inflicted wounds. And it's most of the time
Speaker 1: I've always felt it's because the individual is purposed. They
Speaker 1: want to assure or insure rather that they are going
Speaker 1: to get the job done. Now, when you have this occur,
Speaker 1: that round that is being initiated, when it travels out
Speaker 1: of the musle, that weapon, it's creating a cavity in
Speaker 1: the head. Okay, let's just say it's a self inflicted
Speaker 1: to the head, or you could use a sterm as well,
Speaker 1: because that happens too, and it's pressed and it's like
Speaker 1: pressed hard against the skin and it creates a seal.
Speaker 1: You know, when that weapon is discharged, it's not just
Speaker 1: the projectile coming out. We've already talked about unburned powder.
Speaker 1: You've got smoke that's coming out. But the other thing
Speaker 1: you've got that's coming out, and the reason press gun
Speaker 1: top press contact gunshot ones are so destructive is that
Speaker 1: you've got heated gas coming out. And we all know
Speaker 1: from eighth grade physical science class that heated gas expands,
Speaker 1: and it expands at a rapid rate, so you'll get
Speaker 1: these grotesque injuries to the head. And it's not just
Speaker 1: the projectile doing it. It's also that gas expanding inside
Speaker 1: the cranial vault and you'll see fractures that run along
Speaker 1: the suture lines. If you know what a suture line is,
Speaker 1: it's when you look at a human skull. You've got
Speaker 1: these wavy lines. We've talked about this before where the
Speaker 1: skull kind of interlocks with one another and you'll many
Speaker 1: times you'll see it literally fracture along the suture lines,
Speaker 1: both posteriorly anteriorly laterally, and it's devastating. And then the
Speaker 1: bone after it passes through bone, those bits of bone
Speaker 1: become trapnel.
Speaker 2: There's that guy in Philadelphia that did the shot himself
Speaker 2: during the city council meeting. Remember that was on tea.
Speaker 1: Yea, yeah it was. It was actually Bud Dwire it
Speaker 1: was he was actually he was the former treasurer of
Speaker 1: the State of Pennsylvania. I actually got to see that
Speaker 1: raw footage. You could see his head expand well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can you can see if you look very carefully,
Speaker 1: he uses I think that's a cult python. I think
Speaker 1: it's a three point fifty seven that he's using, and
Speaker 1: it's an inter oral gunshot one. So it's a great
Speaker 1: example of the expansion of gas because when he fires.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, when we got that tape, we
Speaker 1: put it on uh and we got it at the
Speaker 1: coroner's office. We had that tape on like the most
Speaker 1: high end VCR that there was at the time. It
Speaker 1: had and I don't understand about the technology. I think
Speaker 1: multiple heads in it and so it could slow things down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could see a flash inside of his mouth
Speaker 1: and I've seen these. I've had cases where people videotape
Speaker 1: themselves and you see the cheeks expand like a chipmunk,
Speaker 1: and you'll get what a refer to as striya, which
Speaker 1: are the same as stretch marks. You'll get striya on
Speaker 1: the cheeks because it expands so fast, because the rapid
Speaker 1: expansion of the gas that it creates these these curvelinear
Speaker 1: lines that are called striya and their stretch marks essentially.
Speaker 1: But it's an acute stretch mark. It's not like somebody's
Speaker 1: getting heavier or whatever in life and you know their
Speaker 1: limbs are beginning or the diameter of their legs are
Speaker 1: beginning to expand, or they're tummy or whatever. It's different
Speaker 1: than that. It's a real unique feature that you see.
Speaker 1: And then not to mention the damage that the round
Speaker 1: is creating as it's traveling through the body.
Speaker 2: That's just amazing. I remember that video of his head
Speaker 2: that the one thing I remember is that it stretched.
Speaker 2: It was almost cartoonish. Yeah, very quick, but it was
Speaker 2: so shocking that I've only seen it once or twice
Speaker 2: and I remember it and it was many years ago
Speaker 2: in a newsroom when I saw and I just this
Speaker 2: is when you were explaining that, I was wondering.
Speaker 1: No, I actually I'm glad you brought that up. I
Speaker 1: actually showed that video in every year when I do
Speaker 1: my lecture of medical legal death Investigation on firearms related
Speaker 1: death because and it's a great example of the camera
Speaker 1: never blinks. I don't know who the camera operator was,
Speaker 1: but they stayed on him as he kind of slides
Speaker 1: down the wall, and you can appreciate the volume of
Speaker 1: blood that issues forth from the nose in the mouth,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that has to do with how
Speaker 1: thin the floor is of the hard palette is, you know,
Speaker 1: leading up into the skull. It's almost eggshell like in
Speaker 1: thickness or thinness, I guess, and so it kind of
Speaker 1: it shatters like that, and the brain is so vascular,
Speaker 1: you know, you have this copious amount of blood that's
Speaker 1: coming out, and you if you listen very carefully on
Speaker 1: that tape, Dave, you can actually hear the blood flowing,
Speaker 1: which is something I've never encountered before, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, from a practitioner standpoint, I was
Speaker 1: fascinated by that. But it's a great teaching tool because
Speaker 1: you really begin to kind of understand the power and
Speaker 1: the destructive nature of firearms. And for those of us
Speaker 1: that work in forensics, that teach forensics, or that formerly
Speaker 1: worked in our field, an understanding of firearms and their
Speaker 1: function their purpose is essential to being a successful investigator.
Speaker 1: To understand the science and the mechanism of modern firearms,
Speaker 1: because if you don't understand these things that you're encountering
Speaker 1: out on the street, there's no telling what kind of
Speaker 1: interpretation you'll wind up making. So it's important that we
Speaker 1: always say that we're studied up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
Speaker 1: and this is Bodybacks