The Next Best Thing to a Confession is a Lie

Forensic Pathology Unveils the Truth Behind Two Gripping Homicide Cases

In two separate cases, forensic analysis played a pivotal role in unraveling deceptive stories crafted by suspects, ultimately leading to justice. Forensic evidence tore apart alibis in each case and painted a grim picture of what transpired. Here’s how Forensic Pathologist Dr. Roland Kohr used his expertise to bring the truth to light.

The “Impossible Reach” Case: A Shotgun Alibi Shattered

In the first case, a suspect claimed he was trying to wrestle a shotgun away from his partner in an attempt to prevent her from harming herself. According to his account, as he struggled to disarm her, the weapon inadvertently discharged, causing a fatal wound to her chest. But forensic evidence and an autopsy told a starkly different story.

The Science Behind Shotgun Spread

Forensic pathologists found telltale signs that discredited the suspect’s story. The shotgun was loaded with birdshot, which disperses in a cone-shaped pattern when discharged. This spread created a pattern referred to in forensic pathology as a defect with “satellite wounds,” which appeared on the victim’s chest several inches apart. This dispersion indicated the weapon was fired from a distance of several feet away, rather than pressed against the skin, as the suspect’s account implied.

“In forensics, we look closely at wound patterns. The further away a shotgun is fired from, the wider the spread of pellets,” Forensic Pathologist Dr. Roland Kohr explained. 

Transcript

Today we're going to talk about uh interesting phenomena. We see sometimes with The stories were told by suspects. I was told on this particular case by a deputy prosecutor who I respected very much, But the next best thing to a confession is a lie. If you can catch somebody in an all-faced lie and present that in front of a jury.

The suspect loses all credibility, his ability to witness what really took place in his whole story falls apart and he's left there kind of holding his hat in his hand and uh doesn't really have much to pull back on. So anyway, this was loaded with birdshot, so multiple small pellets.

And when I discharge these pellets will strike the skin penetrate the skin and pass on through into deeper parts of the body. Now, they tend not to act like what you see in the typical TV shows or movies. Where a shotgun will blow somebody across the room. That's very unrealistic.

I mean Newton's basic law, say for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. That much power in a shotgun to block. You know, knock somebody across the room, the person firing the weapon would also be knocked the opposite direction. An equal amount surgeons really don't Get into the forensic aspects of these things.

Yeah surgeons are great at trying to save lives to fix things that are broken. But in terms of being able to ascertain the significance of different types of gunshot wounds, let alone ranges, that's kind of their weakness and that's where the forensic pathologist steps in because we've got specific training in that area.

So anyway, the body is transported to me for autopsy, which we did the next day. And we get her out, put her on the autopsy table and start doing our initial examination. Now, of course, having been to the operating room she was totally unclothed. She'd been clean, you could still see the remnants of the iodinated, you know, surgical soap.

They used to prep the wounds and I can see a big long roughly eight to ten inch long incision that had been sutured shut now coursing down our chest wall. In addition to that. You know, more or less straight. Slightly curved. Wound created by the surgeon. There were individual small pellet-sized, wounds on either side of it.

Now what these are called in forensics are satellite modes. Uh, again the principal is you've got a cloud of small pellets coming out of the end of a shotgun and the farther down range. You go the more they spread out in a cone-shaped distribution. So, literally, when we're testing a shotgun to try to determine what range it may have been fired from relative to a Target.

If the pellets are all very closely clustered together, they will almost represent the exact same diameter of the end of the shotgun. As you get a few feet out, they start spreading out. Is you get even further out? They start spreading out or you no longer have a central cluster.

But you have a central cluster and these satellites around the periphery, Uh, and then even farther out, you'll finally get to where there's nothing but individual pellet entry wounds and no Central large defect. Well, the fact that we'd had the main defect cut out by the surgeon and you know, no longer available for examination, what I had to concentrate on was the fact that we had individual satellites.

That were literally several inches apart. Now, this tells me right out of the gate, something's wrong. Uh and this this pertains also to the fact we're using a long barrel weapon like a shotgun. Shotguns have barrels. That can be sometimes three feet long compared to a handgun, where you might have inch and a half to six inches or so.

And it makes a major difference. Now, the big difference is we're getting two is Is your arm long enough to reach the trigger if the barrels held tight against your skin? And this is a really simple test we do. And I always insist, when we're dealing with long barrel, weapons that the investigating police officers evidence tax, whoever's working the case bring to them, or with them to the morgue.

The actual weapon that was used And then, all we have to do is take this weapon. Hold the barrel against the skin surface where the entry was and then see if the arm is long enough to reach to the trigger. If it's not, we got a problem. Now there's exceptions, we've seen over the years.

I've had people who have committed suicide that their arms not long enough to reach the trigger that Hold the barrel with both hands and, you know, with their shoe off use their big toe to push the trigger. Uh, and that's that can be quite effective. But usually, you find, obviously a shoe is missing, uh, you'll have some abrasions usually on the hand, from the kickback.

Uh, but It's going to have a distinct appearance. Now, the problem is that assumes that the barrel is held tight against the skin. Which is going to be the minimum distance. You can deal with. Now, if the pellets already starts spreading before they hit the skin, that tells you the gun barrel had to be farther away.

Not in contact with the skin. In fact, possibly up to several feet away And that's what we could infer from this type of pattern when we were saying the fact we had individual pellets satellites as it were On her chest. Wall tells me that there was no way, this was in contact with her skin.

Yet when we took the picture of her laying on the morgue table with her arm outstretched, Even had it been a contact with her skin wound. Her arm was 8 inches too short, to reach the trigger.

He says, he's trying to get the gun away from her while. She's got her finger on the trigger, and it goes off. But this is impossible. Unless your arms suddenly grew an extra three to six feet longer and then snapped back, and she was the amazing rubber man. There's no way, this could happen.

The end of the barrel. This weapon had to have been Probably several feet away from her chest wall. And she wouldn't have even been able to necessarily reach the end of the barrel. Now, here's where a secondary woman came because the tip of her left thumb had been blown off, by this same, shotgun blast and the surgeon had overselling that before releasing air for the coroner's office.

That tells me there had been a defensive wound attempt now defensive wounds or wounds of people instinctively make. I mean, clearly, Your hand is not going to stop a bullet or a shotgun. But people nevertheless, if something's pointed at them, whether it be a gun, a club, a baseball bat are going to put their hands up, try to protect themselves.

She had clearly done that in the process. Got in the tip of her thumb blown off before. The rest of the pelace, then entered her chest. Check in. We got this guy in a clear line that we can very easily demonstrate any jury in a matter of about 2 minutes.

There is no way her finger was on the trigger. It had been fired by somebody else standing several feet away from Well, and that's bullshit. There is absolutely no way. He was trying to rust away from her because again she's not even touching the barrel. She's got her hands up to try to block his shotguns that's being pointed at her and he's the only other guy in the room.

The fact that we've got the spread pattern enough that we've got individual satellite pellets on our chest wall, tells me this Barrel is several feet and probably at least six to ten feet away from her chest. The fact that her thumb is also blown off Is just again, one more thing that she was trying to defend herself.

She knew he was pointing the gun at her. You know, it's not like he snuck up on her. She saw, what was coming and tried to block the shot? Uh, so I mean just again, he hadn't been standing Probably at least 10 ft away from her when he pulled the trigger.

And facing her and Gunner, right in the chest. And so up to that point, you know, he thought he had a pretty airtight story. In fact, one of the funny things about uh, this story was Small towns like Terre Haute happen, to have its own two television stations locally, they did local news and back in the 70s 80s up to early 2000s.

Stories like this were often lead stories from the local news and it's like this guy try to uh, you know, Envision themselves being TV stars. And so you know after his story came out before the office he'd been completed. He was approached by one of the TV stations to say, you know, would you say a few words on air?

And of course he jumped at the chance just like people jumped at the chance, you know, taking selfies and everything else these days. And so he was the lead story. And he got on there and again, said, pretty much what he told the police. Oh, I loved her so much.

I was trying to get the gun away from her. I didn't want her to hurt herself and it just went off. Well, whoever the reporter was was putting the store together and then editing it. Uh, was pretty sharp guy. Don't remember who he was, but He realized he had a pretty good story because he followed up with this interview by talking to me after Mike autopsy was completed.

And the story actually, of course was totally foreign to what was consistent with this other guys. Right away because when the story finally made the air, it was a two-part and the reporter what he did is he aired this guy's interview first where he's saying, You know, I tried to save her, you know, blah, blah, blah blah.

And then they immediately switched to me and I'm on camera saying there is no possible way that he, you know, that she had the gun in her hand, unless her arm suddenly grows, six to ten feet longer than it was Said she was shot by somebody else, she did not pull the trigger.

Yeah, it's kind of like and this was our lead story. Yeah, clearly I'm not law enforcement but I am a board-certified forensic pathologist, okay. It's all just literally means this pathology is a word means the study of disease, traditionally pathologists were the doctors that examined specimens removed, its surgery to see if there's cancer or infectious disease or whatever's going on.

Laboratories, they do things to basically support other Physicians in making their diagnoses forensic. Pathology has additional training and analyzing wound patterns and pattern is a big key because we can look at wounds and by seeing patterns of distribution patterns on the skin and so forth, we can kind of reconstruct what had to have happened.

So, essentially a forensic pathologist is an expert in wound. Patterns on human bodies and the effects that various types of weapons and external forces will have on human bodies. And that extends to things like poisonings, whether it be drug, overdose law, enforce injury, thermal injuries from fires, And of course Firearms and so you know, you give me a firearm, I'm gonna be able to give you some pretty specific information.

Now, I can't give you a precise ranges necessarily but with additional studies, which we could do on a firing range, we can sometimes narrow down the range of fire between end of the barrel and skin service that was struck within just a couple of inches. In this case, this wasn't even a close call.

I mean, the fact that we have a Individual satellite pellets striking the skin. Knowing how shotguns work. You know, clearly the end of the barrel, this shotgun had to be 6 to 10 ft or more away from her chest wall. Nobody's arms are 10 feet long that they can reach out to touch the barrel.

Let alone an extra three feet longer to touch the trigger. So there are clearly no way she did it and his whole story just fell apart that moment. After that story aired on the evening news the next day, The attorney this guy retained because suddenly he realized he was being charged with homicide.

Net with him, talked a little with him. Reviewed the, uh, video feed from Channel 10 and said, You don't have a leg stand on. We need to play bargain to lessen. The amount of damage, the amount of time you're going to serve is if this goes to court, you know you're fried.

So first 24 hours, they approached, the prosecutor said, we want a plea bargain. I didn't spend days weeks months trying to get this case ready because they knew there was no defense. Uh it's not it's it's bad enough to say well yeah, I I want to retract my testimony but when you've gone on local TV in the entire Community has seen it and it's on videotape and you didn't do anything to be coerced, go on TV, you really have no defense.

So uh, Friends turn early prosecutor that I was working with was one of the deputy prosecutors in the office at the time. Brad, boo. Real sharp guy and he called me up the next day after that plea, bargain had been announced and said Doc, you got him said, that's the best, angel, confession is a line and you certainly nailed it narrow it down there.

So that was kind of satisfying because if you do your work right in theory, I should never have to go to court. If we can prove the case Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Just on the evidence, we have, Defense attorneys. Unless they've got a total imbecile for a client will realize.

We've got to mitigate the damage.

Now there have been other cases of a similar ilk. Again these tend to involve long barrel weapons more than short barrel but this was very similar, it happened a couple years earlier. In this case, we had a domestic disturbance between a couple that were in their thirties. Now again first call we get is, you know, 9-1-1 call, you know, I woke up this morning went out from the bedroom and my boyfriend is laying dead.

On the floor of the living room, this is female calling in claiming her living boyfriend. She finds dead when she wakes up in the morning. Now of course, please respond. Yeah, I'm sure Medics probably responded slap EKG leads on Aim confirmed. He was dead so he wasn't transported from the scene was pronounced right then and there and I got the call and of course his corner I responded.

Yeah, yeah I don't go to every single scene when I was cornered because I had staff of Deputy cars who I had helped train and who I respected and who I trusted. But anytime we had a potential homicide, they would usually let me know and just to be ahead of the game, I would show up.

So this case I showed up Around the scene. Laying next to this guy is a And of course we look around again and you know this parameter that parameter it all takes a new account what's going on but There's something kind of fishy on this case. How do you not hear a gunshot in a small house, in the Next Room?

So, that's the first question that doesn't quite add a heck, when I was a teenager, I could sleep through a thunderstorm with no problem, but this is kind of starting to make the question. So anyway, this is a, you know, early morning. Call, you know, we were called out probably seven o'clock by the police, so we make arrangements to do the autopsy that same day.

We get the body in, put it on the table and of course I insist on having the rifle brought in with it. And again, once we make note of the initial wounds, do the photographs. Look at the clothing, do this, do that. We undress the guy look at the wounds.

Again, clean them up a little bit and at that point I said, okay, let's get the rifle out. And again we get the rifle out and when we try to line it up with his chest entry wound and stretch his arm out, his arm is not long enough to reach the trigger.

Until there is no way that he could pull the trigger himself, he can rig things, you can take a ruler or something else, you know, to push the trigger. But generally anytime that happens, you know, weapons like rifles and shotguns have recoil. And the gun site if you're holding the barrel, with one hand, is going to be kind of jerked and will usually cause some sort of abrasion maybe even laceration in your hand as you're discharging it.

Clear, this guy had not shot himself. Nothing really added up. And as they finally went back in front of the girlfriend, she finally confessed that she tried.

Now, the irony of this whole thing was, Here being physically abusing her for some time. Um, Kind of been ongoing and she'd finally had enough of it and he I guess was coming at her that night and she got the rifle said back off or I'm going to shoot you.

He was intoxicated kept coming, so she shot. Now, had she picked up the phone at that time called 9-1-1 said, my boyfriend was coming at me. I've been abused for months and years and I decided not with enough and this was self-defense. And a story, it would have been considered a justifiable shooting in self-defense.

Uh, and she would have walked

Instead though, she tried to evaporate this story that he'd shot himself, And again, Calvin broil yourself in one of these stupid lies. Now the other thing that made it just a little more countless on her part was when we looked at the wound, he had not struck a vital organ.

It caused Hemorrhage, but it was a sort of thing that actually called 911 soon as it happened. Ams would have responded you to take to the hospital and probably would have survived. Now at that point going forward it's still self-defense restraining order. You know he's probably facing jail time for domestic abuse.

But instead she fabricates the story and looking back on it. Not only was he wounded but not killed outright. She was cold enough. Go to bed, you know, this happened. Probably 10 o'clock in the evening. She goes to bed. Sleeps, and then gets up the next morning. Go to work and then when she's sure he's dead, that's when she makes her call.

So again here actually told the truth out of the gate, not a problem I'm sure that, you know, no jury would have convicted her for anything, but pulling this nonsense, the fact that she tried to lie about it and let the guy lay there and bleed to death on her living room floor that kind of you know, sucker case.

So it's just again you know, lies people think they're so dang smart. They watch so many TV shows. They think they're so clever. But the average person just doesn't understand enough of the ballistics, the forensics, everything else, and they paint themselves in these Corners. And once you, you know, go public with your announcement, there's no turn on back.