Inside the Law. Vikki Petraitis

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СКАЧАТЬ break-up a marriage.

      Beth told Maree that her brother had intended to make the drive from Melbourne to Phillip Island where he would spend the night with her at the house in McFees Road. However, Beth’s brother had broken his arm in an accident and had cancelled the trip. Maree said that Beth had assured her mother by phone that because her brother was not coming, she would bring the dogs inside as usual for extra protection.

      Maree stated that Beth left her house early in the afternoon to return to McFees Road, so that she could prepare dinner for Fergus.

      It was the last time Maree would see her best friend.

      The job of performing the post-mortem examination of Elizabeth Katherine Barnard was given to Dr G R Anderson, a medical practitioner from Warragul, by order of the Coroner. The post-mortem examination was carried out in the mortuary of the Korumburra District Hospital, in the early afternoon of Wednesday 24 September 1986.

      Beth’s body had been brought to the mortuary cool-room after it had been photographed, videoed and examined.

      At 3pm, detectives Rory O’Connor, Alan McFayden, Brian Gamble, and photographer Peter Gates attended the post-mortem to view Dr Andersen’s examination. Throughout the examination, Gates took nine graphic photographs.

      The doctor placed a measuring tape gently around the woman’s neck.

      ‘The throat wound is 11cm wide and 6.5cm deep in the fold between the chin and the upper part of the neck.’ The doctor walked over to the bench near the sink and took a notebook and a pen from his pocket and rested it there. He wrote down the measurements with his hand clad in its surgical glove. Traces of blood were left on the page. He walked back to the body and probed within the folds of the jagged neck wound.

      ‘The pharynx has been completely severed just above the larynx, as has the right carotid artery, but not the left. Mmm, that’s interesting,’ the doctor murmured.

      ‘Why?’ asked O’Connor bending closer to take a look.

      ‘Well,’ replied Dr Anderson, ‘one carotid artery is situated on each side of the neck.’ He indicated to the detectives their approximate location. ‘And when one is severed and the other one isn’t, that suggests that her head has been turned or held to the side when her throat was cut.’

      ‘Would the killer need much strength to do that?’

      ‘Depends if the woman was struggling or not I suppose.’

      The doctor continued probing while the detectives took notes. ‘See this line along the lower border of the neck wound?’ The detectives again leaned forward for a closer look. ‘It’s intermittently jagged. That suggests multiple cuts rather than a single slash. Cutting a throat isn’t as easy as you might imagine.’

      McFayden shuddered inwardly.

      The doctor turned his attention to the wounds on the dead woman’s face, as his gloved hands manipulated the tape measure. ‘The upper lip shows a thick slash wound which is 3cm long, extending from the mouth towards, but not reaching, the right nostril. The left corner of the mouth also has a 3cm slash wound running towards the angle of the jaw and there’s a further slash wound under the point of the chin. It is 2.5cm long. The left front tooth has been completely knocked out.’

      ‘By the knife blow?’

      ‘Looks like it.’

      McFayden and O’Connor exchanged glances. Seeing this kind of damage inflicted on a young woman was awful.

      Dr Anderson turned his attention to the chest. ‘The upper chest showed a gaping stab wound 4.5cm long in the midclavicular line, and there is a smaller gaping wound 2cm x 1.5cm, near the third rib.’

      The detectives readied their pens as the doctor went on to measure and describe the A.

      ‘The right side of the A shape consists of a deep slash that measures 25cm long. Two shorter and much more shallow slashes, which have not completely penetrated the skin, run parallel to the deep slash. The left side of the A consists of a slash that measures 29cm long which has penetrated into subcutaneous fat. As you can see here, it’s quite deep.’ The doctor indicated the exposed fat and then continued once the detectives had taken a closer look.

      ‘Three shorter, much more shallow slashes run parallel and adjacent to it. The centre bar of the A consists of an 18cm horizontal slash. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

      McFayden reflected darkly to himself that the likelihood of Dr Anderson, a country hospital pathologist seeing other bodies with huge letters of the alphabet carved into them was minimal.

      Dr Anderson turned his attention to the defence wounds.

      ‘Looks like your victim put up a bit of a fight,’ he observed. Beth’s body had plenty of these wounds. The doctor held up her left arm and measured the deep knife gash in her elbow. The police photographer snapped a photograph of the uplifted arm and captured on film the trickles of bloodied water running down the white surface of her skin. Also captured on film were the hands – the left hand had deep gash wounds in all the fingers and another deep wound in the web between the thumb and the index finger and the right hand had similar wounds.

      Further examination revealed a small slash on Beth’s left ankle. ‘There’s enough of these cuts,’ muttered the doctor, who paused after each measurement to make a record in his note book. ‘Let’s hope this is the last one.’

      Once Dr Anderson had described the external wounds, and they had been extensively photographed by police photographer Peter Gates, it was time to open the body to see the internal effects of these external assaults.

      Using his scalpel, he opened the body from the neck down over the stomach. With a rib knife he removed the ribs and measured the length to which the knife had penetrated into vital internal organs and arteries.

      ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the right lung, the pericardium – that’s the sack around the heart,’ he explained for the benefit of the detectives, ‘and the vena cava, have all been pierced with the long knife blade, which has entered in downwards thrusts. Your victim has bled large volumes of blood into her chest cavity. The right pleural cavity here, is completely filled with blood.’

      The detectives could see for themselves without the benefit of a degree in medicine.

      ‘Death by internal bleeding would have occurred some minutes after the upper chest wound was inflicted.’

      McFayden murmured to O’Connor, ‘From what we could tell from the crime scene, I reckon that the chest wounds would have been inflicted first. Looked like she’d been attacked while she was asleep. Murderer probably got the first strike in pretty cleanly.’

      ‘Thank God,’ said O’Connor.

      Dr Anderson examined other major organs which he found were all normal and free of disease.

      ‘There’s no sign of pregnancy, if that’s an issue,’ offered the doctor.

      Dr Anderson then took specimens: finger nail scrapings, a lock of hair, vaginal and anal swabs, a piece of thigh muscle and 10mls of blood. He carefully labelled the specimens and handed them to the detectives. Other samples including the stomach contents and additional blood were also given to Brian Gamble, to be taken for analysis at the Forensic СКАЧАТЬ