Timothy Palmbach

Timothy Palmbach testified for the defense as an expert in crime-scene reconstruction and analysis, bloodstain-pattern interpretation, and shooting-incident reconstruction. He reconstructed Paul's first shotgun wound as an oblique shot into the feed room and the fatal head wound as an overhead contact shot near the doorway.

Palmbach relied on blood patterns, biological material, wadding, pellet impacts, and apparent void areas to place the shooter close to Paul and to conclude that the shooter likely would have been heavily contaminated. He rejected the lower, upward trajectory attributed to the State's experts, while qualifying his positioning analysis because the shotgun was not recovered and its barrel length was unknown.

He described Maggie as facing her shooter during her movement and said the evidence was more suggestive of two shooters. His reasoning included the shotgun shooter's likely exposure to biological material, the close timing, and the practical difficulty of one person managing two long guns. He also identified apparent partial bloody footwear impressions and criticized the absence of enhanced footwear documentation and basic fingerprint processing in the feed-room area.

On cross-examination, Palmbach acknowledged receiving a $5,000 retainer and expecting approximately $8,000 more plus travel expenses. He could not confirm that he had reviewed the complete case file and had prepared no written report. He said most of his analysis preceded his recent site visit, identified two upward-projected pellets as the new information obtained there, and maintained his contact-wound mechanics and central reconstruction. State rebuttal expert Kenneth Kinsey later disputed Palmbach's trajectory and blood-pattern conclusions, with the competing interpretations examined through photographs and courtroom positioning.