Here’s another little aid.

This is great, Richard. Thank you.

Did you just create this now or has this been on your site previously?

Just made it in last hour.

Just made it in last hour.

Thank you very much. This is very helpful.

It probably needs 4.75 inch tear adding to number 9

Added it in.

One thing I neglected to mention is that in the autopsy report it mentions " drain tubes". Those were the chest tubes put in by the doctors. Because they were not wounds inflicted by Zodiac, I did not include them. There is also mention of two "femoral intercaths" and "cut down incisions" on the ankles. Those are also common procedures done by the medical staff and were not included. in Also, I didn’t include the bruise that was mentioned because it was not a serious or fatal injury.

I’m still trying to figure out how Petris determined the length of the knife to be 9 to 11 inches. None of the stab wounds appear to go that deep.

12. A 10 inch (25.5 cm) somewhat S-shaped incision extending from 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) above the sternum to two inches below the navel on the right side that creates a small nick in the top of the right side of the liver

Is it possible the knife point entered by the sternum, nicked the right side of the liver and the blade travelled under the skin and the slightly deeper tissues of the abdomen to by the navel. This incision effectively traveling parallel to the outer skin, but under it. In other words, there is no massive S-shaped gash in the epidermis, just an incision wound just above the sternum which then split the underlying tissues in an S-shaped pattern. The depth of the wound parallel to the outer skin measuring 10/11 inches. The wound was described as an incision rather than a slash, as is described in (11). A long slash-type incision running from under the right armpit along the space between her fourth and fifth rib to the sternum

There is nothing else in that report that could justify an estimate of a 9 to 11 inch blade.
‘Dr DE Petris further stated that after examining the wounds inflicted on Miss Shepard it was his opinion that the weapon used would be from 9 to 11 inches in length and one inch in width and possibly sharpened on both sides on the top of the blade similar to a bayonet type weapon. In addition the wounds indicated it would be a heavy or sturdy type blade’.

That is a possible conclusion. It is important to remember that in autopsies an "incision" is a knife wound that is longer than it is deep and a stab is deeper than it is long.

I also thought that Petris may have extrapolated the length by the 9th stab wound that went nearly 5 inches under the skin or from the 10 inch slash on the side. Those could have been made by shorter blades, IMO.

Although emergency medicine providers commonly describe any break in the skin as a laceration, this terminology is forensically and technically incorrect. A laceration is defined as a tear in tissue caused by a shearing or crushing force. Therefore, a laceration is the result of a blunt-trauma mechanism. A laceration is further characterized by incomplete separation of stronger tissue elements, such as blood vessels and nerves. These stronger tissue elements account for “tissue bridging” which is seen in lacerations. In addition, lacerations commonly occur over bony prominences and tend to be irregularly shaped with abraded or contused margins. Lacerations are typically caused by hard objects like a pipe, rock, or the ground. An easy way to remember the difference is to think of a glass beer bottle. If someone takes the bottle and smashes it over someone’s head and the skin is opened, that is a laceration. If a person breaks the bottle on a table and uses the piece to slash someone, it is an incised wound.

This is what I was wrangling with in the Cheri Jo Bates autopsy, with knife wounds being described as lacerations and not incisions or slashes,

I don’t have any answer for that. To the layperson, laceration, incision, slash, and cut would all be synonymous.

I’ll look into that a bit further and see if I can get some clarity.

This is what I was wrangling with in the Cheri Jo Bates autopsy, with knife wounds being described as lacerations and not incisions or slashes,

Maybe the fact that both Cheri and Cecelia fought with their attacker, Cecelia actually "rolled around" instead of fought, resulted in some wounds being more laceration type than incisions. It was a bit more like being hit/punched with a closed fist and knife instead of stabbed, if that makes sense.

This is what I was wrangling with in the Cheri Jo Bates autopsy, with knife wounds being described as lacerations and not incisions or slashes,

Maybe the fact that both Cheri and Cecelia fought with their attacker, Cecelia actually "rolled around" instead of fought, resulted in some wounds being more laceration type than incisions. It was a bit more like being hit/punched with a closed fist and knife instead of stabbed, if that makes sense.

The Cecilia Shepard attack has always been described as a woman who was stabbed 10 times, yet of the 12 entries Chaucer posted, only 5 are described as stab wounds and the rest are described as slash-type cuts, cuts, incisions and slash-type incisions. The picture we get from the descriptions down the years is of an attacker who plunged the knife into her back, and continued stabbing her sides and front as she rolled over. This isn’t the story told in the autopsy report. The autopsy report suggests a killer who was stabbing and slicing his victim, and not a killer who was just plunging the knife in a downwards motion. Admittedly, Cecelia Shepard would have been moving about, but that doesn’t explain the 10 inch cut and 10 inch incision. The commonly told story doesn’t align with this autopsy report.

#7 and #8 look like one cut to me, resulting from a double-side bladed knife.

QT