USA. The victim’s body was discovered after a neighbor became suspicious about the manner in which the young man’s car was parked at his trailer home. The neighbor had noticed the car on Tuesday but did not become concerned until Wednesday morning when he noticed that the car was still parked in the same location. He went to the front door and heard loud music playing from inside, which was not customary for the young man, who should have been at work. The neighbor contacted the young man’s mother and together they entered the unlocked rear door.
Fig.1 The victim was discovered lying on his back across his bed with a .308 rifle between his legs, suggesting that he had shot himself in the head.
When they opened the door, they saw a human brain on the floor. The victim was discovered lying on his back across his bed with a semiautomatic Remington .308 model 742 rifle between his legs, suggesting that he had shot himself in the head with the weapon. The butt of the rifle was lying against a mirror, which had been removed from the wall during refurbishing. It should be noted that this weapon has a tremendous kickback—the mirror should have been shattered.
Fig.2 The victim, according to the investigating officers, shot himself in the head twice with a Remington .308 model 742 rifle.
There was a large amount of blood and brain matter found in the room where the deceased was discovered. The entire top of the victim’s head was blown away. The rifle belonged to the deceased. There was an open box of Remington .308 ammunition for the gun found in the premises with six cartridges missing from the box. There were two bullet holes in the roof of the victim’s trailer, suggesting that two shots had been fired upward toward the ceiling, and the police recovered two spent shell casings in the bedroom next to the victim’s feet. It should be noted that the Remington .308 model 742 rifle ejects from the right, usually 10 to 12 feet. The shell casings would not have landed at the victim’s feet.
There appeared to be velocity blood spatter going into a closet in the bedroom. However, there is no reference to this fact and apparently the authorities never processed this nor looked into the closet. According to the police report, “the rest of the trailer was observed and there were no signs of a struggle.” Based on its preliminary observations, the police agency wrongfully assumed that the victim had shot himself twice in the head with this high-powered rifle. The case was classified as a suicide.
Fig.3 This photograph depicts the gunshot wound to the victim’s head.
A review of the police reports by the consultant revealed a careless and perfunctory investigation totaling a mere eight pages of police reports, four of which were vouchers. The police did not attempt to locate the fired rounds; they did not test or examine the firearm; no ballistics reports were prepared; no gunshot residue (GSR) testing was done on the victim to ascertain whether he had fired the weapon; and no attempt was made to reconstruct the event. The police did not process the crime scene for fingerprints. They did not determine the trajectory or the velocity blood spatter and did not recover pieces of the victim’s skull, which were later found embedded in the bedroom closet wall by a crime scene cleaning company hired by the family to clean the trailer. The police failed to conduct a background check or victimology. The police and coroner assumed that the death was a suicide. A local hospital pathologist (not a forensic pathologist) conducted an autopsy and determined that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head and ruled the death a suicide. However, the hospital pathologist could not even determine the location of the entrance wound.
Fig.4 The butt of the rifle was lying against a mirror, which had been removed from the wall during refurbishing.
Further investigation did not reveal anything that would fit a suicide profile. In fact, in over 300 interviews conducted by a private detective hired by the family, not one person described the deceased as depressed or suicidal; to the contrary, they described him as upbeat and excited about his fiancé’s planned arrival and their upcoming marriage.
During the week preceding his death, he had gone out with friends, attended a birthday party for his sister, and purchased groceries for the upcoming week. On Monday of the week he was killed, he was at work. According to his supervisor, he was in good spirits. In addition, he had even paid his union dues 3 months in advance. He was expecting a visit from his fiancé and was refurbishing his mobile home. He had built a new deck on the back, purchased paint and wallpaper, and arranged with a neighbor to borrow tools to redo his kitchen cabinets. His long-term plans included an application for a loan and a trip to Alabama to clear some property in the fall.
Fig.5 The hallway of the victim’s residence. You can observe his feet hanging off the bed in the bedroom.
Interviews of the friends and relatives of the deceased were conducted and disclosed that certain property and money were missing from the deceased man’s trailer when he was discovered dead. A number of persons stated that the deceased was known to keep at least $1000 cash in his mobile home. According to the police report, only $2.50 was found in the victim’s pockets. Also, according to another relative who had reconciled the decedent’s accounts after the funeral, the victim had made a withdrawal of $200 cash from an ATM machine; this was unaccounted for and missing from the trailer.
Fig.6 His brain is found lying by the back door, which is northeast of his position.
According to family members, the victim’s radar detector, which the deceased always kept on the sun visor in his car, was missing, as was a pouch of tools from the rear seat. In addition, a gold calculator with the deceased man’s initials inscribed, which the victim had gotten as a gift for participating in a wedding, was missing from the trailer. This gold calculator was later found in a local pawnshop.
The inquiry into the death of the deceased was perfunctory and inadequate according to the recognized standards of professional death investigation. Numerous investigative errors and serious omissions occurred in this investigation as well as an obvious failure to support the classification of suicide forensically with evidential facts. It was readily apparent that this particular crime scene had been staged. The victim’s death was in fact suspicious and not consistent with suicide.
Fig.7 Illustration of the crime scene.
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