Okay, I've looked at both autopsies, as best I can, and just wish someone professional could read it for us in lay terms. The "backward" and "forward" information about the shots confuses me. I'll have to look that up.
What I can ponder is the gunshots were mostly from the front, as far as I can tell. The 13 year old, Taylor, who was shot three times in the face and once in the neck, seems to have been closer to one shot than any of the others and closer to her killer's gun than the other child, Skyla, was to the shots fired at her. Well, that may or may not be true, as I can't really read an autopsy report, obviously, but I'm THINKING this because one shot had stippling from the gun powder, IF I'm reading this correctly. This makes me wonder, with the shots being to the face and her being the older, if possibly her attack was more personal--in the face.
Also, I can't make out what would have caused the abrasion on Taylor's cheek. Did she get that falling on something, or did she get hit by one of the assailants? With the gun butt--the size of the abrasion being small but the M. E.'s drawing makes it look brutal? Surely they'd have found traces of metals or oils, or a pattern of some kind from the shape or texture of the gun if that was the case...? Maybe not, just some thoughts.
So the killers just shot these children like dogs. No sexual assault at all. That's a bit odd, too, considering a killer, particularly more than one, would seem to have no boundaries that would stop two of them from further abusing the girls. So that leads me to wonder if the killers were immature and new at this kind of crime, afraid of getting caught if they lingered too long or tried to kidnap the girls to take them somewhere private first? Or perhaps they had nowhere to take them, being minors or living with relatives?
Most adult males who are this depraved would have thought of securing a location for sexual abuse, it would seem to me, if they were experienced criminals before killing the girls. Unless this was a random attack, which came out of the blue, somehow provoked during a chance encounter, asking for directions or something.
Of course, no one knows the actual pathology of a killer until you know the killer, but no sexual assault makes me wonder if one or more of the assailants was a female. Just thinking...nothing more.
One thing that I'm also wondering: if the killer hit Taylor on the face, were there footprints? She seems to have dropped to her left knee--abrasions there, and that would seem to come from being hit on the right side on her upper cheek. I wonder what the positions of the bodies were when discovered. LE might not know, as the family who found them might have moved them, naturally enough, of course. God help them.
The other child, Skyla, seems to have been shot rather impersonally, mostly in the chest and abdomen area.
The thing is, were these children trying to run away? Skyla has a couple of shots that may have been her turning around, or maybe she was whipped around by the shots, I don't know. Taylor had her hand up to protect herself, which is when she was shot through the hand, but that's about all the time she seems to have had to react before she was dead. So it would seem there were two killers. Otherwise, one at least would have begun to run, it seems to me. And that would have meant one killer would have used the same gun on the one running, to stop her? Could have, I can't remember if the autopsy specified exactly what caliber bullets were used on each shot, so I'll have to look at that again.
Let's say Taylor was shot first: in the face, relatively small target zone, three or four quick shots; then one in the groin as she lay there, it seems, the bullet traveling upward through her body all the way to her lungs and torso, if I remember correctly. So it would take a second or two for the body to fall backward, when that last shot was fired, unless the killer came back to shoot that one, which is possible. (This is where the issue is important of which gun was used on which child, or both? I don't know, I'm just winging it here.) It would take a few seconds at least to get off five shots that hit your target, I'd think. Those shots were none of them point blank, gun to face, and only one had any stippling from one shot, so the killer had to be a couple of feet or more away, right? So what was Skyla doing once the shots started?
She might have been too scared to run. It happened fast, it appears. But she was hit by a small caliber bullet in at least one shot, if I am remembering my quick read of the autopsy. So that would be the second gun, because Taylor had a medium size bullet found in her, right? So this has me wondering if both girls were shot at about the same time, giving neither a chance to react.
But there was no fighting other than the abrasion on Taylor's cheek and knee that I can see. Though there were abrasions on the back of Skyla's legs and buttocks...or am I misremembering this? Sorry, I'll have to go back to study these and do some research when I have more time. Unless someone else has done this already and if so, thanks in advance and can you tell me where to find it?
I guess what I'm wondering is, did they know their killers? Or did they simply trust strangers who stopped and shot them so brutally, not thinking to run, not panicking, not suspecting strangers could be so wantonly monstrous?
Surely LE has evidence of tire tracks, footprints, blood spatter, bullets and therefore knows the models of the guns used.
Well, don't pay too much attention to what I'm speculating on, because I haven't looked at this more than the short news bites before today. I hope it's just a matter of time before these killers are caught. If there were two of them, they may turn on each other. Or one of them may not be able to keep it quiet, may brag or repent...or let it slip while drunk. I hope....