(WARNING: Graphic photos included within this post.)
Posted by
cynic on the first part of this thread which is now closed (
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...et-Ramsey-CBS-Sept-18&p=12814762#post12814762):
Spitz has done so much to mislead investigators and those of us who follow the case. From another of
cynics posts, the following is an artists rendering of what Spitz said he had someone draw for him:
But this sketch does NOT match the actual depressed fracture that can be seen on one of the autopsy photos. Dr. Meyers use of the phrase
roughly rectangular shaped displaced fragment of skull to describe the hole was inaccurate, but it probably looked like that at the time he first peeled back the scalp. But not having first-hand knowledge of the actual shape of the hole, Spitz had a drawing made showing an almost exact rectangle representing it. Even if a perfect rectangle were correct, as
cynic points out from his own experiments and as an understanding of the geometry of all this would suggest, the end of a Maglite doesnt
fit perfectly as Spitz so often repeats.
During the segment on this in the CBS documentary, they also showed another sketch which more accurately depicts the actual fractures. They showed it without giving an explanation or telling us where it came from. But it appears to be another artists rendering of the actual autopsy photo that was released by Smit (even down to the coroners label that was in the photo showing below the skull). I screen capped that sketch:
Notice that this sketch is apparently made from the photo and not something concocted in Spitzs imagination.
What I can tell by this photo and the representing sketch above it is the same thing I had posted a few years ago here (
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...ll-Fractures-The-Weapon&p=8660364#post8660364).
The line you see going vertically across the hole is where the ME made the coronal incision to reflect the scalp. There remains on the back part of the skull the thin membrane that lies between the skull and the scalp: the pericranium. It is bruised in the area of the impact from the weapon, but you can still partially see through that semi-transparent membrane where the actual depressed fracture is. It is not rectangular, it is elliptical. In fact, I can use my drawing software to draw over it a perfect ellipse:
If you look at the above post, youll see that if the linear fracture is pushed together, it fits even more perfectly with the ellipse I drew over the actual depressed fracture:
The problem with all this is that if Spitz starts off with the wrong information (shape of the depressed fracture), how could he possibly match it to the weapon used? Thats why I hate seeing so many accept his idea that the Maglite was used to cause the head wound. It
wasnt.