I have to say I have a really hard time understanding the testimony by that expert.
Didn't she come across that hair inside of MM's ligature while she was analyzing knots and hitches????
Having watched Paradise Lost again it really is perplexing the way they were tied.Does anyone know of any other case where the victims were tied that way?
I don't know about the being tied like that to be carried theory.
Since it was so loose wouldn't the bodies slouch to the ground?
I don't know ,I just can't shake the horrible feeling that it was sexual type bonding.
Sex crimes in itself are more about domineering than sex anyways.
I really think the boys were made to undress,maybe even tie up each other in a sick torture of showing dominance over them
The bodies would hang down but would not drag the ground. A poster named imout2sea did an experiment in which she mimicked the manner in which the bodies were tied to see if she could move, etc. She found out that the binding allowed for movement, even for her to untie her own binding (if left alive and alone) and that the binding
did allow her to be picked up and carried for a short distance.
Here's the imout2sea video:
http://rugsville.yuku.com/topic/1062
Sorry about it being so small, but that's the best I could find. Notice that her husband was able to pick her up by the shoestrings, and she weighed 108 pounds. The boys only weighed about 45 - 60 pounds each. That's considerably less weight which would IMO allow the bodies to be carried a much further distance, especially when you consider that the boys were dead when carried to the discovery ditch and I'm sure that imout2sea's husband didn't want to hurt his wife by carrying her by the bindings.
I know of no other cases with similar tying. The closest, as I've said before, is hogs in a slaughter house. They have the same-side limbs tied together, with slack left to enable the workers to carry the carcass for a short distance.
Lisa Sakevicius' testimony can be confusing because, basically, she can't say anything with any certainty. The fibers are "microscopically similar" but can't be definitely linked to any specific garment. The knots are so similar that no conclusion can be drawn, although the prosecution tried mightily to leave the impression with the jury that the knots were three different types of knots indicating three killers. However, Sakevicius never made a statement to that effect. She just pointed out that the bodies were tied primarily with half hitches relieved with the occasional square knot, which is two half hitches tied in opposite directions.
One misperception I'd like to clear up is the location of the hair in the ligature. I had thought for a long time that it was embedded in the knot of the ligature; it wasn't. It is my understanding from all of my reading that it was
under the knot, indicating IMO that the hair (which was a beard hair) fell out right before the knot was tied, possibly right after the killer had tried to bite through the shoelace to divide it into two parts. Remember, Michael Moore was not bound with two shoelaces but with one lace cut into two pieces.
As to the sexual bondage theory, I guess it's possible that a sexual sadist would bind bodies that way. However, I don't see the positioning as being conducive to allowing sexual access unless the boys were dead when the sexual attack took place. As the video shows, the binding would allow a lot of movement from a live subject. If they were bound as a part of some sexual attack or assault, I believe that the attack would have occurred after death. I know that's a pretty sick thought. Also, remember that no semen or other indication of sexual activity was found on any of the boys' bodies. Therefore, I rule out any sexual reason for the binding.