Regarding the sequence once again:
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.
