http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090802/NEWS/308029961/-1/SPECIAL21
Case details lead experts to deadly conclusion
Can six experts be wrong?
O'Connell, working pro bono on behalf of the McCarthy family, has asked experts to look at the photographs, police reports and autopsy. Six of them have come to the same conclusion: Patric was murdered.
But the one opinion that counts in the eyes of the New Hampshire Attorney General's office and the U.S. Attorney's office in New Hampshire is the one of Dr. Thomas Andrew, the state medical examiner, who concluded early on that Patric's death in 2003 was accidental by hypothermia. Andrew has been unbending in his analysis, despite evidence brought forward by O'Connell and the Boston office of the FBI.
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In his analysis, Dr. James Weiner, the former Cape Cod medical examiner, also concluded that Patric suffocated. Weiner has since died.
"The missing articles of clothing are most troubling," Weiner wrote. "In cases of hypothermia, it is well known in the forensic field that just prior to collapse from the cold, the victim experiences a hot sensation and starts to remove clothing. Typically, this removed clothing is found nearby the body."
Patric's hat, socks and coat were never found.
Dr. Murray Hamlet, an expert in cold injury for the Army for more than 20 years, is perhaps the most adamant that Patric's death was not caused by hypothermia.
"Not a chance in hell," Hamlet said in a recent interview. "That's what I believed from the start when I saw the pictures."
Ann Marie Mires, a crime scene expert who used to work in the Massachusetts state medical examiner's office, called it "glaringly obvious" that Patric did not get lost. In her report, she points out that K-9s were unable to pick up the boy's scent from where he allegedly disappeared and that the remote location didn't jibe with the description of Patric as being timid and shy.