Timothy Palmbach — Direct/Voir Dire

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Timothy Palmbach, P-a-l-m-b-a-c-h.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I'm from Connecticut. Been up in that state for the majority of my life. Most of my career has been in the Connecticut State Police, and I actually started out in a road position. Then I was transferred into a major crime unit. And then from there I spent a good deal of my time in the lab. I retired as a major from the lab in 2004, and at that time I was head of the whole division of the Scientific Services for the State of Connecticut. I then went back to the school which is my alma mater, which was University of New Haven, to teach. I took the chair of Forensic Science position, which is a large forensic science program with both graduate and undergraduate students, and I managed that program as well as teaching. In addition to that, I was doing some degree of consultation, expert consultation, but not much just because of the volume of work that I had. In August of last year, the university offered me an early retirement incentive package, which I gladly accepted, and so now I just teach part-time, assist with a couple of grants that I had, and have a little bit more time to do consulting.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Dr. Henry C. Lee?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Within the field, he is one of the founding fathers and very, very well regarded holistically as a forensic scientist, but very much so as a crime scene reconstruction expert.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes, I do.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, certifications, I have memberships. It's more of a membership organization than certification.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Sure. American Academy of Forensic Science is like the American Medical Academy or American Bar Associations. It's just kind of the large entity that all of the professionals belong to. You have to be a practicing practitioner in good faith in order to do that. And then you go -- it ranks from an associate member to a member, and eventually if you meet the criteria, you could be a fellow. So, I'm a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, yeah. The IAI, or International Association of Identification, they tend to have membership and certification in areas like fingerprint examination, as well as crime scene analysis.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I am.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I am, and the name is exactly that. So, they have membership there, or individuals who've had the requisite level of training, experience. I believe they even make you -- or demonstrate if you've been qualified in court before, and then they'll grant you membership in that organization.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It is spatter, correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, basic course would be 40 hours, and I don't think they want to hear the basic course, and I don't mean that flippantly. There's just -- there is a fair amount to it. The simple way to explain it is we're looking at energy and force applied to sources of blood, or other mechanisms and activities applied to blood, and then determining the patterns that result from that. But once we understand that, you know, it's much of what the training is, is in a lab and environment, you create these patterns. You study the patterns so you understand them. Then it's going to a scene, seeing these patterns, properly interpreting them, and drawing conclusions from them. So, that's the short version of what it is.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes, I am.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It's a governing -- a governor's board that the -- they bring in experts from around the country of different specialities, and we look at practices and protocols within the forensic science community, within the state of forensic science, so it's essentially an advisory board.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I do, sir.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: That's a good question. I haven't practiced law. It was back in the -- at the time, like, early 90s, it's -- there was a lot of stuff going on related to new technologies, DNA being the biggest of all of them. And what was happening for lab directors -- and I was an assistant lab director at that time -- is we spent more time in the court or writing papers in support of new testing and not knowing anything about it. So, many of us, myself included, said if this is going to be a big part of our job, we have to go back and learn it. So, that's what motivated me to go back and do it.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I was, but I gladly, when I went to emeritus status, gave that position up and got a little bit of time back. But I had been for nineteen years prior to that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I have.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: All right, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Alabama -- yeah, I think so. North Carolina for sure. I think I got it.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: In the big genre, it's crime reconstruction and analysis, and subdisciplines underneath that independently are blood stain pattern interpretation and shooting incident reconstruction.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I was, sir.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I think it's known as the staircase case, yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: The field is referred to as blood stain analysis. Blood spatter would be a subcomponent of the greater field, yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I was.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: To review the case, look at the forensics evidence, the pattern evidence, crime scene documentation, lab analysis, autopsies, and related investigative reports that dealt with the scene activity and the physical evidence.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I am.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I do it as a block rating just simply because I don't want to keep track of hours. So, my initial retainer fee was $5,000. I will have another finalizing as I complete here. Last night I scratched it out. I believe it's going to be $8,000 more, plus travel expenses.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah. I showed up Thursday actually, but yeah, I've been here for a bit.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Again, lots of photographs: crime scene photographs, evidence photographs, autopsy photographs. Autopsy records, data, x-rays, various lab reports, investigative reports, diagrams created by investigating personnel, and reports that were related to those diagrams.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah. Once I agreed to take the case, that material was submitted and I began to just review it, and that's what I usually do is read through it and see and get a sense of what makes sense. One of areas that I was very concerned with right away was looking at the shotgun wound to Paul. And based on all of my training and experience, what I -- what we visualized in the head is absolutely consistent with a contact wound. Reading through the report, it didn't say that. It was written obviously as an exit wound with the contact being down in the left shoulder and the left face. I think within a day I called back to Attorney Harpootlian and yourself and said this doesn't look right to me. It's inconsistent with my interpretation of the results, and my best advice for you would be to hire a forensic pathologist to review the case.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I was.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Friday morning.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Sure. I believe it began with Paul with his right shoulder to the open feed door. This is inside the feed room and he's facing straight ahead, and he's upright, and his arms are more or less at his side. And the first comes at a very oblique angled shot into his chest, travels through his chest, exits the side of his chest into his left arm, exits his left arm, and then continues on and exits through a window pane in the feed shed, which is the opposite side from the doorway.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Where would the shooter have been?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Okay. They're definitely going to be outside the door, and how close they are to the door is subject to a lot of different factors. So, first of all, with what's reported is a, a small amount of gunshot residue in that area, not a lot of it. And, in fact, as I looked at it, yeah, I could see some of a particular matter adjacent to the medial side of that -- of the injury, but I couldn't see much more gunshot residue beyond that. Now in fairness, when you have an article of clothing and you're shooting through the article of clothing, the majority of the gunshot, if not all of it depending upon the distance, will stay on the outside of the clothing. In this case it was black clothing, blood-filled clothing, and you wouldn't be able to see that unless you did some enhancements, or do something what we call a modified reagent test.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did not.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: A GSR pattern testing of the clothing.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: However, I'm not going to dispute what I read, that there was a minor bit of stippling there. But a minor bit of stippling there with a shotgun is going to give you a necessary minimal distance of 2 to 3 feet from the wound to the end of the barrel. The other factor you have to take into consideration is both of the shotshells that have been associated with the shooting of Paul were found within the feed room. Now, while the shotgun has never been recovered and we really don't know the action and how it worked, it is a reasonable assumption that it is a semi -- semiautomatic variety, and then, therefore, as an individual pulls a trigger, it will eject to the right out of the port. So, in order for the two casings to be within the feed room, the probability is that at least the receiver part of the ejection area has got to be just inside the doorway minimally in order for the casings to stay inside there.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, we don't know; I mean, we clearly don't know because we don't have the weapon. You know, an option could be a single shot. That doesn't make much sense. You would have to shoot, stop and reload, and shoot again. It could alternatively be a double barrel. But in my review of the firearms report from the state lab, they indicated that their examination of those two shot cartridge cases were that they came from the same weapon, that they were co-aligning them to one weapon. In the case of a double barrel, you have separate breach face areas, you have separate firing pins, and you're not going to get the two casings to look exactly alike. So, that more or less took the probability of a double barrel shotgun away, and I think the logical inference is it's a semi. It could also be a pumped based action, but again, that's an additional stipulation.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, I frankly think he was startled by that shot. He was -- his right shoulder was at a door. I mean, if he knew somebody was coming and/or saw somebody coming, he would be facing the door or turning trying to run, which he wouldn't have anywhere to go. But he was essentially facing this way, and the door is this way. I don't think he even perceived it until he was shot the first time. And you asked the question did I see any defensive injuries, or any indication of defensive actions on him or the feed room, the answer is no.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, I think obviously your hands always kind of come up, and his hands would be going up in the direction of the shooter and the weapon. So, the orientation of his body would have changed. His hands coming up means that he likely -- they could have been injured. Certainly there could be gunshot residue distribution on them. There could be --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: -- that would be the main difference.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: That was buckshot. So, it's nine, about, 38 caliber pellets.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Sure. Based on the general morphology of what happened to the head, this explosive nature, I'm -- it's taught that way, we've learned it that way and through personal experience, you never see that except when you have a high energy source contact wound. The reason I say a high energy source contact wound, if you took a little .22 caliber revolver and held it to the head, you will not see what we saw here, the simple reason being is it's not creating anywhere near the volume of what we're talking about these gasses, these high voluminous gasses that you get with a shotgun or a rifle. Effectively why? Well, the barrel of the shotgun is going to be longer, it is wider, and so you have this whole big area within the barrel that's being pressurized, and that just creates exponentially a whole lot more gaseous material than you would have seen in a handgun. So, seeing that head in the condition it was, that is a contact wound from a high energy source weapon, which would understandably be a shotgun or a high powered rifle.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Sure.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I heard that, yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah. Yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah. No, I fully agree, completely agree.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No. Actually it's completely consistent with that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, what happens is the barrel is in alignment and tightly against the head. And, again, the shot goes into the head. The gaseous material begins to build, and, again, this is -- again, milliseconds is right, very, very, quickly it's beginning to swell and build. At the same time the shot -- the wadding is starting to move down toward the exit area and come out, and then the head finally goes from the pressure. It can't go -- and as it goes, the gas, the pressurized gasses are going to find the quickest area to escape, and then they're going to redirect in that -- in that format that ends up being in the entrance hole. So, you kind of get, like, a shift in action here, and all of the energy now is re -- is kind of re-categorized. It's now pushing up towards the corner of the ceiling and the door.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I have seen that, yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did because you can clearly a little ding. And I totally agree that could be a pellet impact, but it was taken -- at that time it was taken at a little bit of an angle, and I felt it would be better to get up and get a 90 degree and closer view and examine it myself, and I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes. So, first of all, in close examination of the impact on the door, I do believe that's from a pellet, and actually the dimensional side of it is consistent with a diameter of a number two steel shot pellet. And it is also -- it was elongated, so you could see that it was coming from the bottom up. Quite near there, probably only a foot away, the header, the trim header on the door, there was another one of these steel pellets. Again, the right diameter, actually embed in the wood, and it's still there today. Going back -- and I'll be honest with you. I did not see that in the photograph. I'm going back and looking at the photographs. I confirmed, yeah, it actually was present the day of the shooting.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: An explosion really is the best way to do it. But it's not this kind of explosion, it is -- the military would call it a chaff charge where you focus the explosion in a narrow pathway, and that creates a much larger damage area, and that's what happened here. You expanded the skull plate, and it pushed back through -- first of all, it pushed back through the actual entrance hole of the skull, and as that happened then the skull breaks and pulls out. But there's now a very large energy moving this way, and it's drawing with it things as heavy and large as the entire brain, but it's also grabbing blood, it's grabbing issue, it's grabbing skin, it's grabbing hair, it's grabbing the bone fragments, and it's grabbing part of the steel shot that's still in the skull cavity, and it's pushing it at a pretty reasonable velocity up and toward that corner of the door and the ceiling.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It came out from inside of the brain. That obviously made it through the brain and it was in the brain. And again, remember the wadding has these little fingers that tend to open and flare up. Matter of fact, if you look at it in the photograph, you can see that it was flanged, the finger were folded back. So, it -- kind of braking power, right? It's not going to go through the rest of the brain and out the side of the face into the shoulder as easily as the pellets will. So, it stopped more or less in the brain, and then it got caught up in this explosive force. I'm assuming it just went up and hit -- it could have gone up into the shooter. It could have gone up under the door. It could have gone up the ceiling and wherever -- any one of those areas could have happened and fallen down on the floor where we find it.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, so this is contact, so he's got to be close enough to get the barrel in contact, firm contact with his head. We don't know where that gun is. I don't know if it -- is it an 18 inch barrel? A 26 inch barrel? We don't know that. Obviously that's going to change the difference. But -- and the shot is somewhat overhead downward. So, all of that is bringing this shooter much closer to Paul than when he would -- took the first shot with Paul standing upright.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: He's getting hit with large amounts of brain material, blood, skin, hair, bone fragments, and I believe very likely some of the pellets.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Substantial. And the reason we know that is, one, we've seen what happened to the skull, how badly damaged it was. And secondarily, we have two of the pellets. One is actually denting this metal door, and the next -- another one embedding in the wood above it. That -- you know, I can't quantify that force, but that's substantial force, and that's kind of energy that's taking all the brain, all the fluid, all the tissue, and all the hair, and all the broken skull places and sending it -- principally it's going to follow right along the barrel pathway, you know, around it for sure, but that is going to go in the same direction essentially that the barrel had been placed.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: That's quite possible. I mean, for sure, for sure they're literally covered in all of that material for sure. But given the size of the bones, the amount of bone, and now pellets coming back at them, if any of them hit him it's going to be an injury, whether it's substantial or just a stinging injury. Yeah. I think that that's possible, actually probable.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: A lot. A lot on the upper body and head.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Certainly. I mean, and you're going to be covered on any surface. But, yeah. I guess the thicker the hair is probably more will retain in there.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Exactly. So, you have this core high, high velocity, kind of high volume pattern going up to the corner. But you also -- this hole in the side of the head is like -- it's this -- it's, like, very large. And so once that's open, there's still a lot of energy right there, and there's blood and tissue right there. You're also trying to just literally blow volumes of that, and that's what we're seeing throughout the room. That's why you're seeing, you know, on shelves and on the door and trims, and on this wall and this wall over here with the exceptions -- if you really look at it, there are some areas that what we -- they have a void appearance, which to us would indicate there was something there that absorbed the blood that should have been there, and in this case it would be the shooter, the shooter's position.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Oh, I don't think at all it's possible that that was -- the shot came the way that Dr. Riemer articulated it. I think probably Dr. Kinsey, and I don't blame him, relied on that information that was provided to him by the -- by Dr. Riemer. He began to conduct his analysis based on that information, which was wrong.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, you have to look at the shot distribution evidence. We'll talk about gunshot -- gunpowder residence. We'll look at where blood spatter is located. And then we'll look at where we see, you know, this pellet and other projected spatter coming back. None of that is consistent with the lower trajectory upward shot that Dr. Kinsey articulated, and all of it is consistent with an overhead contact shot to the back of Paul's head.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I do.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: This is showing the left side of Paul's face and the left shoulder and the injury in that area.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes. The shoulder is much larger and much more diffused and spread out. The side of the neck is a bit more circular and certainly smaller. And then if you look at the shoulder injury, again, it's substantively larger, and you can see, you know, damage, a lot of tissue damage in that area. You can even, from this photograph, visualize easily one of the pellets that's still present more or less up on top of that area.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes. Again, it's all about distance. You know, in order -- you're spread -- distribution of spread is a factor of distance travel.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Sure, and then you actually can see the effective spread over distance. Because by the time those pellets hit the window behind there, which is, you know, 5, 6, 7 feet, now you start to see the spread of the shell.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, this is showing the final resting position of Paul, and this is obviously after both of the shots and where he's, he's, he's, he's located. As you can see, the brain is located on -- to the left of him against his left leg. And there's a substantial amount of spatter in this area around and transfer and pooling by his feet in the doorway. And you see that his feet are more or less on the -- if you were standing on the outside, it would be more or less on the right side of the doorway, and then the rest of his body angles a little bit more toward the left from that once he's outside.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, this photo, in conjunction with several other photos in that area. But, yes, it does inform me -- to me his, his motion between the two shots.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: From the other side, yeah, so you're now looking more at the left side. And again, you can see the large brain mass, you know, somewhat near his left knee area. But you can also see a fairly large piece by his -- of brain material by his left ankle. And then there's more maybe 18 inches away from his body kind of adjacent with his belt or hip area. There's also what appears to be a large fragment of skull on the ground, maybe a foot off of the cement path.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: They're views principally of the floor area within the feed room.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Again, it's looking downward at the feed room, so you can see this -- from the area the stoop, and then heading back into the -- kind of the feed bag, and you'll see that yellow placard number one. And what -- from -- what I can deduce from that, and let's focus with the placard area number one and the blood stain that's on the floor in that area. That is classified as we call a vertical drip pattern, and that occurs when blood from above comes down. I believe that what that blood is attributed to is the chest wound, and so, you know, the chest -- the shot came into the chest. Of course, the chest entrance is going to start bleeding, but as long as Paul is upright, it really just -- gravity is going to kind of just flow that down, you know, on his shirt. That will kind of catch it. It's not -- you won't see that on the floor for a period. But the shot then came out of his chest, into his arm, and out of his arm. So, you've got, you know, eighteen -- you know, seventeen or eighteen different holes here. There's lots of opportunity for this to bleed, and, in fact, it did, and you can see the blood running down his arm. So, I think what you're seeing in those accumulations of droplets on the ground is that -- the positioning now post that first shot of his left arm bleeding, and then you can begin to see some movement away from that toward the door.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes, it is.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, there's a couple of things going here. You know, one, it might be -- can I come down and point?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It might just be easier.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Your Honor, is that okay?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Thank you.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Okay. First of all, again, these areas here are the vertical drip patterns that I was alluding to. And, again, you can see them begin to move in this direction, and you'll even see a couple of the larger droplets here, again moving toward the door. Again, these are coming from Paul as he's moving away with more or less -- kind of from the center part of the room toward the doorway. But an area that I think is worth paying attention is this area of the floor here, and then this little bit of trim here. And what I -- and this is a second impact area, as this is not directly related to what we're seeing up on the ceiling, although it is related to the overall event of him receiving the head shot. And I believe what we're seeing here is after -- I think he's moved sufficiently -- that he's now moving toward that doorway and the door jam right here, and in this area here is where he's going to receive the shot. And as he receives the shot here, it's going to exit from his lower base and it's going to hit the shoulder. As it's coming out of the lower phase, it's coming with a volume of blood and tissue, and then that's going to get slammed basically right into the shoulder where the shots are, and that's going to create another projection independent. And that's going to line up for us that his head is located right in -- you know, it's about a foot or so off of the ground in pretty close proximity to the edge of this trim board, and you can see the resulting spatter in this area, which also supports that impact spatter and is consistent with that being the projection of the shot out of his head through his lower side of his face and into his shoulder.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It's the same basic area. I mean, we can highlight here. Again, there are larger pieces of brain-like matter or tissue, bone fragments here, here, and here, and there's even more that are beyond placard number one.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, with his claim of it coming from the left shoulder and the left side of the face, he'll always have -- the weapon will also have to be lower than that area and to the left side of the victim --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: -- of Paul.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: He's right here. He's right against -- he is right up against that doorway.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: The shooter cannot be there because Paul is there. The shooter is going to be into the same doorway area, probably even, you know, maybe 1 foot there and 1 foot in the -- actually in but adjacent to the open door, the opposite side of the door.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: And if --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: As I say, we could actually see on the floor there --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, if you look at the area immediately --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, a voiding area is an area where we would expect, looking at all of the other areas around it, to see blood stain. So, in other -- in this case, you really have blood projecting everywhere just because of the volume of this explosion of the head. And so if we look at an area that seems like it has less blood than the immediate adjacent areas, then the best explanation for that is something was there to block it and capture it. That is to say that that blood didn't make it to the floor, or didn't make it to the floor because it's physically on the body of the shooter that's now gone and has left the scene.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Again, with the shooter standing in this area here, which is the door side of the door jam right, there is much less blood. Now, again, there is some here, but -- and, I mean, if I'm standing here and blood is being projected all the way up and showering all the way down, in addition to this big stream of it that's coming this way, then of course droplets can still kind of make their way up and come down, and come here and around, just not as many. My presence here is going to absorb a lot of those droplets but not all of those droplets. And so we see much less of that blood here. And if you look at the face of the door, the lower half of the door, there's much less than there is above it. Again, will you see some droplets on it? Yes. But actually most of those droplets, when you really look at them, have a downward trajectory, which is again very consistent with them coming up and over and downward. So, it's by volume there's less blood there than we're seeing in the immediate adjacent areas and, and the, the logical -- not logical, the defense side -- the defensible explanation for that, the reasonable explanation for that is that we have a voiding effect taking place.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I mean, you almost don't have to. You can --

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yeah, if you go back to the original that helps. So, literally across the whole top of the door, but most particularly in the upper left quarter, right, by the inside, the upper top, you see large, large amounts of blood transfer. You see what looks like a contact transfer of material. And as we blow up on that area, we'll see bits of what look like brain debris. We'll see lots and lots of hair in that area. This is also the area where we saw the pellet impact. So, this is exactly -- you know, following the barrel back up to the shooter, this is the area right in alignment that you're seeing up here on the upper part of door, and that's where this is a very substantial amount.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, as I say, if that volume is there and that much is coming back, then logically why are we seeing such diminished below that? Why is that, you know? Yes, there's blood there, but the volume difference between that is substantial. And that can be explained by, again, the fact that that is a shooter location, and much of the blood, not all of it, but much of it is being transferred onto their clothing.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Or face or hands or them or the gun.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, I think that the best -- we have some pretty good data as to where Paul's head was because of that secondary impact location that I showed you. The exit portion of the head has got to be in that general vicinity. Obviously the 8 or 10 inches up is where the entrance part of it is. But that does give us a pretty good approximation of where Paul's head was when that shot occurred.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Not even that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, clearly there was because we see it, yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It is, yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It is.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, now we're looking at a little closer view of just the top of the door. Again, you can see the extent of the blood spatter in this area of the door, and then also the adjacent area of the door trim. Of note isn't also that it's there, and there's lots of it, but lots of it is quite small, and in the blood stain analysis field what makes blood droplets smaller is by increased energy. So, as we start seeing an accumulation of droplets, which we do on the trim up here and also on this door here, that means that they are subjected to much more energy and -- than virtually the other drops that we're seeing around the room. And that's because these are -- these are the ones that are coming directly back under the explosive power, coming out of the entrance hole and moving up, much of it into the shooter, some of it up, and over, and into the ceiling, and the top of the door.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes. It's going to be in this area right here.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, yeah, he got the other -- he got the actual bullet, and that is the actual pellet, and then I was pointing -- which is here. I believe it's right here. Yeah, and that's the actual physical pellet that was observed in the door.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It has been projected back along the access -- again, of the barrel of the gun -- because of this high voluminous material that's now escaped, and it's pushing back out the entrance hole, and it's moving all of this area with a lot of energy, a lot of velocity back up in this corner.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, for starters I wouldn't expect the patterns -- in the scenario where the top of the head is going to be the terminal point of the gunshot -- in other words, of the theory that it started in the left shoulder, went through the left cheek, went into the head -- I do not believe that you would even have a fracture of the skull, that you wouldn't even have an exit wound. That those pellets -- because of two reasons. Mostly it's not contact. All that gaseous material is not going up into the cranial ball. It's just going free form, so you don't get any of the explosive value. And secondarily, the number two pellets are much lighter, their mass is less, and so they're not going to have the energy that's necessary, particularly after moving through his shoulder, through the face, and up through the brain, to penetrate and break out of the skull. I think you wouldn't even see any of them outside of the skull. You certainly would not see this, that rearward projection or blast of blood and hair and the bone and pellets that we did see.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: They are.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: This is an overall photo of that same area of the door that I took on Friday, and you can see the impact dent right here in the upper corner. Same relative position as you saw in the crime scene photos.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes, sir. Yeah. And the actual pellet is up here on the door trim, and again, it's in the same relative position as observed in the crime scene photos.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, this is a close-up view, 90-degree on, of that pellet in the -- up in the -- into the door trim. And what it was demonstrating is a couple of things. One, that it is a steel pellet. You can see the coloration. You can also see that the diameter fits the general profile, diameter of a number two pellet. A number two pellet is .15 inches, or 3.8 millimeters. And so if you -- unfortunately this particular protractor ruler had it backwards, yeah. So, you have to kind of protract down. But that is very consistent with that 3.8-millimeter, so -- this is just to demonstrate that it's actually embedded into the wood, and it's the right kind of structure and size of what the number two pellet would be.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, that's a close up. That's actually a close up of that impression on the metal door that we saw. And you can see that it's kind of oblong in shape, and it's more round and fatter here toward the bottom. And this ruler, by the way, is running parallel to the floor, and the floor is below it, and then it tapers angularly this way, which shows that the direction of that pellet is actually coming in an upward direction. It's not coming straight on.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes, I can.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It's a picture of me on the external part of the doorway just showing what the relative positioning would have to be to hold a shotgun in roughly the position that Dr. Kinsey was alluding to.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Thank you.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, generally there's a couple of really key observations. One, all of her wounds were facing the direction of the shooter, so at all times during this -- her shooting she's facing the shooter. Now, she is moving for sure. There is some degree of movement, you know, from where the initial shooting most likely occurred, which is -- we can't give you an accurate estimation for that. We can give you a really good estimation of where it ended, and that's where we find her, and I'll talk about which wounds were associated with that in a minute. So, you have her facing the attacker the entire time. At no point did she turn or go blade or anything other than face him, and moved a little bit in the area, although not much. And then the shooter, based on the overall distribution of the shell casings, also moved again somewhat, moving, you know, toward where -- the ultimate location where we find Maggie.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, so Maggie is underneath a blanket there, and she's in a face down position there.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Her head is more toward us, and her feet are pointed more toward what I think has been identified as a dog house. You'll see placards in the foreground 3 and 4, which are two of the Blackout 300 casings. You'll see a placard 12, which is over on the grass more in alignment heading, you know, more toward Maggie's head area, and that was a large piece of what appears to be brain-like material. And while you can't see the numbers, there are additional placards immediately to the left side -- well, they're on Maggie's right side, but as we view the photograph, they're to the left of where she's currently located. So, this just gives us some general orientation of approximate locations of the shooter, and certainly where at least the fatal shot to Maggie was taken.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Again, I think this is an area in which Maggie passed -- would pass by during this incident. It's also an area that's being highlighted now where what appears to be a damaged loop earring, which is consistent in shape and design and structure to the one that's still on the right here. This one would have come out of her left ear at the time of that impact shot to her left ear, and more or less just been blown over this structure.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I do.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Right. So, you know, when you find a body you also have to wonder is that really the position that the body remained in, or, you know, through medical -- you know, maybe the defendant or the accused or the shooter did something to the body. More likely in a medical evaluation they do something to it. We always just want to know is it -- are we looking at it in the right orientation, or did somebody flip it over and whatnot. And so I think it was valuable in this case to have seen that injury in the back of her head, the massive amount of hair that came off that. And then if you look close up on the back of her legs, you'll see just dozens and dozens of hairs laying on top of her legs, which would be a good indicator that she didn't get moved, that this is -- we can count on this being the final position, unaltered position of Maggie.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: It's physiological material. I mean, it looks structurally like brain material but it's tissue.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I think it's possible. I think it's possible because as we're seeing here, that you have a projection of brain material backwards toward the direction of where the shooter would have been located. We also have a couple of the shots, the left thigh shot and the abdomen shot, which have been identified as having stippling around them. By virtue of being stippling, that does make it in the intermediate distance, and that's going to move the shooter anywhere from -- I would agree with what Dr. Eisenstat said. I think 3 feet is probably a good approximation.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I do have an opinion on that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: My opinion is the totality of the evidence is more suggestive of a two-shooter scenario.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: For sure. I mean, all of this -- I mean, several. I can speak for myself, and I believe others have opined about this, including some of the analysts in the case. There are what appear to be partial footprints in blood in the feed room and on the cement around it. And while I'm not a footwear pattern expert, I can generally recognize what appears to be footwear, or partial footwear impressions. I would agree with that. But in order to go beyond it's a general pattern to something more specific, then generally what you do, and I have done this countless and countless times, is you spray enhancement reagents on them, and you spray a reagent -- we generally call them blood -- blood pattern enhancement reagent, or you can even use a straight protein spray. Amneal Black would be an example of one of those. And by spraying those reagents in the area, it reacts with the presence of blood or proteins, and it brings up the transformation, gives you a lot more clarity, a lot more detail, and you can tell an awful lot more about a particular footwear pattern. Absolutely should have been done in this case. And I also believe, second to that, you had a lot of dirt in the immediate area that should have had at least partial footwear impressions, and I saw no indication of any attempt to either look for it, photograph -- properly photograph it, or analyze it.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did not.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, if you thought that the fingerprints could contain blood, which maybe they easily could have, then, yes, you could also use those reagents to enhance partially or fully bloody fingerprints. But I think you could also use basic fingerprint processing techniques at least on, on the door and any surface in the area. Since we know this is a very confined area and the shooter has to be in that general area, and the possibility of touching something is there, it would have been wise to look for that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No, ma'am.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I'm not a doctor.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: That's correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No. Before I arrived here, everything else was predetermined, and I had done all of the work and the analysis. What I didn't know, or didn't perceive, was these two pellets, and the fact that the energy was able to project two pellets upward. That was the only new information.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No, I wouldn't know that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did not.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I did.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: As a result of the back spatter from the head shot, yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Any other?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Other than what?

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Well, all I've seen is partial footprints that have been observed in the feed room. I've yet to read a report that said conclusively they were Paul's.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: So, first of all -- and again, I, I am not a footwear examiner, so I'm not going to make a determination about whether or not it's -- definitively is Paul Murdaugh's shoe. All of the reports I've read generated by the State, the ones that I've seen, would say that they didn't exclude it, but that also does not mean that it's Paul's. Now, I'm not disagreeing that it doesn't maybe have some characteristics similar, but I don't know that they're even at a point where that has been fully identified as Paul's.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Definitively identified as Paul's? No, I did not.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I got the reports that I -- that were supplied it me, yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Not that I saw.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: That is correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Actually, that's more exactly what it would be like, yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Only when you confine it. And, again, that's why it makes the classical determination of a contact wound in something like the cranium. It's not -- you shoot a person anywhere else, you will not trap the gaseous material and allow the pressure to build up, but then eventually, yeah, it does look like a bomb going off. That only happens in a cranium vault.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: I would say the fact that his entire brain came out and a large portion of his skull is missing, that's pretty dynamic. I don't know how much you want.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: There were pieces of his brain throughout the room, including out on the ground.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: The majority of the structure was physically together, but whether it was injured is absolutely not for me to decide. That's a pathologist that needs to do that.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Yes.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: No. Because, again, the energy source is going to find the easiest egress, and that's where the entrance hole came. So, that's why none -- that explosive value did not go down with the shot, which it's kind of the logical inference that all should come this way or this way to his left. But in this capacity, because this is in this sealed vault, this is this large hole there, then you get kind of a shift, and all of this now starts pushing back that way following the exit point out the entrance hole.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: The explosive release of the gas trapped in the cranial will push back upward in the direction of where the barrel was. Absolutely some of the projectile and energy has gone through the brain, exited the left side of the face and into the shoulder, and created exactly that pattern that you were pointing to a minute ago on the door jam.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Correct.

TIMOTHY PALMBACH: Thank you, Your Honor.