DrWatson
Verified Thoracic and Vascular Surgeon
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Doc Watson - just bouncing off SA's post above.. Could there have been a way to tell from the blood evidence that Morgan had been attacked prior to the eleven minutes between JR leaving her ride home and the 000 call?
It depends not so much on the time in that 11 minutes - more on the time before the forensic team arrived. When blood is first spilled, it clots, and the first hour or so can be estimated, depending on such things as whether or not the victim is on any anticoagulants, including aspirin, warfarin (coumadin for our American friends), etc etc. but assuming that Morgan wasn't on anything like that, or some other "natural" herbal stuff that can have similar effects (eg St John's Wort, ginkgo biloba, and even ginger), then once the blood has clotted, there is no reliable way of "aging" the blood. Certainly not to a narrow time frame.
We saw this in the Baden-Clay case, with the blood stains in the back of the car - there is no way to tell if that was just a couple of hours old, or weeks old.
So if the blood was still liquid or semi-liquid when the police and forensics team arrived, then the bleeding would have to have been very recent. the blood would still be almost warm. But if the team weren't on the scene until an hour or two later, then it would be almost impossible to put the attack into a time frame with any accuracy. And of course, the "body" wasn't there in situ - he had been taken to hospital. And the time of death would have been accurately reported from the paramedics and the hospital, as THAT is where he died - not at the flat.
So we have, in this case, a known time of death, but NOT a definite known time of attack. Unless the police have other information that tells them that.