Posted this in another thread, but this one is more appropriate..
The only way I can make sense of the totality of the wounds is if the ME is off on his opinion that the gunshot wound would have immediately rendered Travis unconscious and unable to defend himself. Even the ME says he does not have complete information because he can't track the bullet through the brain. There's no testimony about what functions are controlled in that part of the brain or why it would necessarily have immediately incapacitated Travis completely.
The other factors that support the gunshot being first are:
1. The shot was downward traveling from Travis' right brow down to his left cheek from at least 2-3 feet away. (ME testimony and pics). This was exactly the relative positions of Travis and Jodi in the last "alive" picture of Travis in the shower 44 seconds before the camera dropped.
2. At no time after the throat wound would Travis have been in a sitting up position that could have led to the path of the projectile from right brow to left cheek unless Jodi was laying on the floor shooting him...an outlandish scenario.
3. The shot could not have been made in the position Travis was found in the shower, so if he was shot after death in the bathroom/shower, Jodi would have had to again reposition his body in the shower after she shot him.
4. Jodi brought the gun with her and all the evidence indicates that she went with the intention of shooting Travis. Reason and logic say that shooting him would have been her first attempt to kill him. In one of her interviews she said that if she killed Travis she would have kept shooting him til he was dead -- and I think that was her intention, but the gun jammed and she had to resort to other "less humane" means. She worked the gun jam into her story during her 48 Hours interview, claiming the gun man tried to shoot her but the gun jammed so she could escape. IMO she was drawing on her actual experiences and observations when coming up with these stories so as to try to make them believable.
5. ME testified that the trajectory of the bullet could have caused blood to enter mouth and nose. This fits the blood spray and patterns around the sink which cannot really be explained any other way -- stabbing in the heart would not cause that kind of spray and would not cause blood in mouth and nose. Although I do think there was some testimony that the patterns could have been caused by Travis being stabbed while he was positioned at the sink.
6. Finally, although we cannot take any of Jodi's statements as the truth, I believe that her account of the intruders was her way to telling pretty accurately what happened to Travis. She wanted to make it believable so she gave an account that she actually believed could have happened -- i.e. Travis being shot and still surviving and able to lift himself up on all fours. To make it as believable as possible, I think she relied on what she actually observed as reality ..Travis was shot and was badly injured but did not die or lose consciousness. She left out the stabbing to the heart and throat slice because she wanted to claim he was still alive when she left.
The only thing that was holding me back from believing in this sequence was the ME's testimony. But there are so many other factors that support him being shot first, and after listening to the ME testimony again, it's not as conclusive as I thought. In fact, he first says that the head would would have "likely" been incapacitating "rapidly" (not immediately). So I conclude that the ME made a mistake with his opinion about the sequence. The fact that the shell casing had no blood does not bother me at all -- Jodi poured water over stuff, and it could have been kicked around or cleared from the gun after the fact.
FINALLY someone got it right! We may be outnumbered 2:1 in the voting, but I think this is the only sensible scenario given all the information we have.
I'm assuming most readers here have listened carefully to the police interrogation tape? There is a very telling point when Jodi describes Travis after he was shot by the 'intruder'. She says: "He was still
alive!". The way she says this sends chills up my spine. She expressed a combination of surprise and emotion that was clearly genuine. This was the emotion she felt when she shot him in the shower. She fully expected a head shot would be immediate death. But it wasn't. She was very surprised when Travis was far from dead or incapacitated. She also indicated in the interrogation that the gun jammed. I think this was also an element of truth. Finally, if you'll recall, she describes that IF she were intending to kill Travis, she would do it humanely by shooting him until he was dead. She said this for two reasons: 1) this was her intent from the start when she brought the gun with her (which obviously she did); and 2) by describing this to the detective, she sets up a contrast with what the crime scene actually portrays. That is, why on god's green earth would she undertake to stab and butcher her ex when a gun would have been much cleaner and efficient?
So she expected Travis to die in the shower with a head shot while he was sitting down. The angle matches the bullet trajectory. But he doesn't die. She pulls the trigger again, and the gun jams. At that point she leaves the immediate scene to get the knife. Travis, stunned, stumbles to the sink, not knowing quite what to do. His sinus has been penetrated by the bullet, spilling blood into his mouth and lungs (as he breaths in through his nose, he aspirates blood). He coughs, and blood projects onto the mirror. Jodi returns with the knife, and starts trying to finish him off. He sees her in the mirror and turns to defend himself, acquiring defensive wounds. Mortally wounded and unable to stop the attack, he attempts to flee down the hall, where he falls and succumbs to additional stabs in the back and finally the throat slash. She is ferocious in her attack because she really wants him dead quickly, as the whole thing has turned from a carefully planned execution into a brutal nightmare. And she probably
doesn't want him to suffer unnecessarily (as she indicated to the detective). What appears to be over-kill in cases like this is really just an attempt to end the life of the victim quickly. Stabbing rarely results in immediate death.
Ok, so what about Horn's testimony? Like the poster above, I was not at all persuaded by his suggestion that Travis would have been immediately incapacitated by the head shot. On what basis does he believe this? People often get shot in the head and don't go down immediately. It depends on what part of the brain is injured, the caliber of bullet, etc. The medical literature is full of cases of people with brain injuries who don't seem to be terribly affected by the injury. Sadly, suicides by gunshot to the head often fail to achieve the objective. This is particularly true of gunshots from the side into the temple. Some of us also seem to have forgotten that Horn stated that brain tissue degrades quickly upon death, and it was not possible for him to determine the extent of hemorrhaging. I'm frankly shocked that the defense let him get away with putting his scenario out there without vigorous cross examination and presenting an alternative scenario by expert witness. As this is a critical point in the trial, this mistake is huge.
For those who believe Jodi would have brought a gun as part of her plan, and yet bring upon herself all the mess, horror, and uncertainty of a knife attack as her first act of violence, I would recommend a careful re-listen to that police interrogation. There are haunting elements of truth to her story. Jodi was methodical. From the gas cans, to the staged robbery to get the gun, to all she did to try and cover her tracks. It makes absolutely no sense that she would have used a knife as the weapon of choice. She wanted a clean kill in the shower. Minimal mess, minimal DNA exposure to clean up. A scene of bloody mayhem is the last thing she would have wanted.
Dave
