Pathologist says Samantha Josephson was stabbed over 100 times before she died: full video

my name is uh dr thomas richard bieber b-e-a-v-e-r good morning good morning what's your professor i'm a forensic pathologist and uh tell us what a forensic pathologist is yes a forensic pathologist is a physician who has been specifically trained to determine the cause manner and mechanism of death in cases of unexplained death and are you a licensed physician yes sir in what states i'm licensed in the state of florida south carolina of course california and um i didn't renew my west virginia license this year and i was previously licensed in colorado and i let that expire as well it's expensive and i don't practice there all right how long have you been a forensic pathologist um i finished training in 1992 and went to work at that time as a forensic pathologist so it'll be july of 92. so roughly 29 years yes sir can you tell me a little bit about your background your education things of that nature certainly i have an undergraduate degree from the university of california i have a medical degree from st george's university school of medicine i completed a five-year residency training program in anatomic pathology and clinical pathology at the university of colorado and i completed a fellowship in forensic pathology at the denver county coroner's office i completed the i took the certifying examinations given by the american board of pathology in anatomic pathology and clinical pathology and forensic pathology passing all those exams on the first attempt so that makes me board certified in anatomic pathology clinical pathology and forensic pathology all right and when you say board certified i know you talked about these exams that you passed on the first attempt just what does that mean i guess in layman's terms that you're board certified so before you can become board certified you have to complete the requisite training program satisfactorily so you have to in my case i did five year training program to get both anatomic and clinical pathology once you complete that training then you're eligible to take the exam so you take the exam the pass rate is less than 50 um in the group of forensic pathologists that took the forensic pathology exam um it was about 50 was the pass rate to pass all those exams on the first attempt is really unusual no in your 29 years of being a forensic pathologist have you received any awards or special recognition any honors things of that nature yeah so i was appointed to the crime lab council in uh state of florida by the governor and so but that's about the only thing i don't really seek awards or anything like that so i don't really promote myself and what positions have you uh held just through your time as a forensic pathologist so my first my first job out of training i was in a private practice pathology group in modesto california and in that group i covered i was the only forensic pathologist so i covered all the counties of central florida so i'm in central california and it won't mean much to you but it's stanislaus county merced amador tuolumne and calaveras those are all little counties in central valley modesto is the city and that's where i would live then i moved to florida where i became the associate medical examiner in panama city florida i was there a little been a little bit more than a year and then i moved to the chief medical examiner position in daytona beach florida is a medical examiner state it's divided up into two districts 25 districts each district gets a medical examiner appointed by the governor for two or three year term and um so i was in daytona beach and for almost nine years and then i took a teaching position at texas tech university where i was the director of the division of forensic sciences within the university um in that capacity not only did i teach medical students and residents which is what i do now but i also was the director of their forensic science program which included undergraduate track as well as a master's in forensic were science in california at some point in time yes so then i so i was there about three years um and uh um then i went to california my wife had a seizure and it turned out to be brain cancer and she wanted to be back home and so we went to california uh took care of her for a while and then um had to go back to work and uh i went i took a position at alameda county which was i was the chief forensic pathologist in alameda county and would that be the oakland area that's oakland california big office i had 22 investigators i had eight technicians um six clerical staff we never turned off the lights and never locked the door because we ran 24 7. how long were you and opened that area to county yeah i was in alameda county for about three years and finished my kids all out of the nest and they were all out in their own lives and i decided to go back to florida and i took a job in the florida keys and i was the medical examiner for district 16 which is the florida keys that monroe county and and if i can uh in in you know i'm one of kind of focuses now to south carolina sure absolutely sure how long have you been in south carolina since uh june of uh 2018. okay and what is your position here i'm a associate professor at medical university of south carolina okay and uh in the position as uh associate professor uh at musc as i'll call it um you perform autopsies yes sir i do what is an autopsy so an autopsy is an examination of the body um externally and internally it's a systematic examination so there's certain things that we just do the same way every single time it starts with the external so we're looking on the surface of the body for evidence of therapy scars and identifying marks evidence of injury and then just a general condition of the body the internal examination we make incisions on the body so that we can access all the body cavities and organs the organs are removed individually and sequentially and dissected and biopsied we take photographs the entire process so every step of the way we take pictures so and then i'll ask this question because we'll get a little bit more in depth in a couple minutes about that um roughly how many autopsies have you performed in the last 29 years oh yes sir um i don't keep a count um but it's a it's probably ten thousand and it may be more okay have you been uh declared as an expert in uh the field of forensic pathology oh yes sir i have okay um in the multiple states where you've practiced yes many times and in south carolina as well yes sir all right you and i like to offer dr bieber as an expert in reversing pathology he is so qualified no thank you now we can get into a few more specifics now you were talking about kind of the methodology that you use when you uh perform autopsies yes sir and you talked about pictures a moment ago and just how in depth you kind of remove organs and how you kind of systematically go through that process correct yes sir all right now what i'll ask is this um with that methodology you first said that you take pictures yes okay and you uh detail like you said systematically the organs and that's just the process that you go through in every autopsy yes why do you take pictures so um the pictures are taken to document injuries i think the old saying the picture is worth a thousand words probably is accurate here and so and it's oftentimes easier to show someone something than it is to explain it by by words so so now with the availability of digital photography and very good cameras and easy storage we take the photographs that we would to to explain what we see did you have the um do you take x-rays yes sir i do take x-rays um uh in this case we took 13 x-rays okay well and now we're going to focus on this case in just a moment but you generally take x-rays as part of your process yes absolutely all right now now we'll let's focus then let's get to it um so did you have an opportunity to perform an autopsy on samantha josephson yes sir i did all right and uh and the process that you talked about that was what you followed as you uh perform that uh autopsy is that correct yes sir all right um so tell us let's start with photographs um you said you normally take photographs did you do that here yes sir approximately how many photographs did you take 170 photographs why so many um there were a lot of injuries and uh x-rays i was just mentioning um did you take x-rays yes sir okay how many i took 13 x-rays why is that so um we take x-rays um in the case of gunshot wounds as well as stab wounds and so i had initially seen sharp force injuries stab wounds so that makes me think that i need to take x-rays in this case and i'm looking for um perhaps pieces of the knife that have broken off when the knife hits bone um it will it will either bend or break um so many times so you stand steel will bend or break if it hits a bone yes if there's enough force applied and the knife blade is uh not not sturdy enough it will it will ble it will bend or else maybe the tip will break off when the tip breaks off we can match that to a weapon if we recover it now as miss josephson was presented to you on in march of 2019 what was her body weight and height yeah she was 69 inches tall and she's weighed 160 pounds all right and you alluded to some of this a moment ago um when she presented to um what was it that you saw that grasp your immediate attention um the the there were two things first the first thing was that she had an extensive amount of insect activity on the surface of the body and the second thing pretty much at the same time was that she had many stab wounds uh over the surfaces of the body now you talked a moment ago about um you said sharp force injuries yes sir okay explain to the jury on how you characterize shark force injuries so in the universe of injuries for forensic pathologists things are either blunt force or shark force and sharp force injuries are broken down into two types uh incised wounds which are wounds that are longer than they are deep so these would be some people might refer to them as a scratch or a cut and then there are stab wounds and the stab wounds are deeper than they are wide or long so these are wounds that are where the knife has gone in um there's made a little cut in the skin but the the blade has gone deeper into the body so um what some people call those puncture wounds puncture wounds yes stab wounds um we so i won't know when i first see a shark force injury i won't know whether it's classified as a stab wound or an incised wound until i i probe the wound and see how deep it goes all right and when you probe the moon explain to the jury what you mean by probing a wound so i have a metal probe that it's like a thin piece of metal and um and i put that into the wound and i try to follow the path of the wound and then um and i mark the spot on the skin with my fingers by glass grasping it and when i pull it out i can then match it to a ruler and i can see exactly how far the the probe went in now again you captured all of these um um things that you did by taking photographs is that correct yes sir and would that assist you in uh in explaining to the jury uh you know what you observed and why in in your findings as a result of what you observed yes sir now i'd like to um first begin by showing you a series of pictures um and you talked about just kind of the methodology you use as you perform this autopsy did you because of the number of stab wounds that you mentioned did you do them in groupings did you try to group them differently than you normally would yes sir once that the number gets up around 100 it really makes the autopsy report and any description very bulky so i try to group them where they're closely together and and related so yes i'll group them into groups of five or six or eight in a certain area and uh you mentioned the number 100 were you able to count the number of stab wounds as you uh observed on miss joseph's body yes um it's over a hundred i think somewhere around 120 but uh it gets to a point where it's not really it doesn't really add much to the report colton quartz indulgence wrong now let's um for purposes of of uh just organization i prefer to go let's go head to toe so that we can talk about some of these matters i'm going to show you and uh and at this point i'll show them to you um you can in my question to you i'm just going to explain the process to make sure we're clear do not show these to the jury as i show them to you i want you to tell me if you run if you uh recognize them first then we'll talk about them before we do any publishing of any pictures is though i understand all right so your honor i'm going to approach the witness um they are three states 347. please repeat that for me please i'm sorry 347 346 342 and 3 41. now dr b do you recognize these um photographs yes sir i recognize these folks okay so let's start if you'll um start with the photograph on top please refer to that exhibit number let's just talk about what you observe in that photograph okay so i'm looking at um exhibit number three or is it 341 341 and um it's a photo taking that autopsy the body is in the supine position in the supine position means faces up faces up in supine and then prone the face would be down but she's laying on her back in this particular photograph and um we're showing a close-up of the left side of her face at the bottom of the frame is her left ear towards the left side of the frame is her chin the eye and eyebrow are towards the upper right corner and what we see in the center of the frame is her cheek and on the cheek are a number of parallel cutaneous defects which i would describe as abrasions and they're they're abrasions that you would get if the body was dragged you used the word term of art cutaneous uh what is cutaneous um cutaneous is just the skin and um so you're seeing scratches on the skin is what you're suggesting yes sir i'm seeing scratches on the skin and they're they're parallel scratches so um i think that that the scratching surface that's scratching your skin is going in one direction all going in one direction okay and that suggests the person's being dragged yes sir okay now let's look at um again not publishing to the jury yet um let's look at the next picture um of um import yeah and explain again that um exhibit number and tell us what you see in that picture yes sir i'm looking at exhibit number 342 342 and um this is another picture taken at the time of autopsy uh again the body is in the supine position it's a close-up photo and it shows the right side of the head to the extreme right lower corner is the right ear towards the left side of the foot frame is the top of the head towards the extreme upper right corner of the frame is the nose and so in the center of the frame we're looking at the right side of the forehead the right eye and right eyebrow and so uh what is it of uh did you notice any defects uh to miss josephson in those pictures oh yes sir there's many now explain to the jury another term of art what a defect is so a defect would be anything done to the skin that is not part of a normal process so if i cut myself shape that would be a defect that i created so um it could be an abrasion from a rubbing on the skin it could be a stab wound it could be a bruise it could be a burn so a defect is a very generic term for a number of different uh injuries that might have occurred to the skin so explain to the jury the defects just without the picture without the visual which you can point to yourself if that will help at the moment the defects that you observed when you uh perform this autopsy on messengers and based on states exhibit number 342. yes so she has um uh bruising over the forehead and the right side of her face she has a stab wound in the eyebrow she has a number of other stab wounds on the right side of the face you said a stab wound to the eyebrow yes sir okay so a moment ago you mentioned you take x-rays correct yes sir and one of the reasons you take those as you said was to see if there may be uh damage to a weapon to a knife yes sir that's this uh is pro the primary reason when i saw these stab wounds to the head the skull is a very hard bone very thick and stabbing the skull frequently results in the knife bending or breaking and so it immediately alerted me to take x-rays because we might have a piece of the knife actually embedded in the skull thank you sir please continue so i find that she also has a an abrasion on the corner of the eye and as i said some bruising um the right eye is somewhat uh collapsed and that's probably from some trauma to it and um that's and then there's hemorrhaging to the periorbital tissues the tissues around the eye he's got a black eye basically um now let's talk about that word you just mentioned is there hemorrhaging um is there a way to determine if wounds take place if a person is living or postmortem when they're dead yes sir okay explain uh that and uh extravasate it i believe is the term that's used often but explain those terms to the hemorrhaging versus extra vaccinated to uh to the jury if you would please sure so hemorrhaging hemorrhage is an active process and it requires a blood pressure so when the person's alive their heart's beating they have a blood pressure so all the blood vessels in the body are under a pressure and the blood flows extravazated means that the blood has drained out of the blood vessel so if we if we cut say a blood vessel and there's no blood pressure blood will still drip out of it but it's not under any kind of force there is no hemorrhage going on but if the person's got a blood pressure and you cut the blood vessel then the blood will pour will will squirt out it will it will be forcefully expelled from the blood vessel by the blood pressure so it would kind of be like if you had a hose and the water was turned off and you cut the hose you would expect a few drops of water to come out of the cut but it wouldn't be much if the hose was turned on and you cut it then you would expect the water to come out forcefully that's the difference between extravazated and hemorrhage and so in this case you see it hemorrhaging yes sir she has hemorrhage okay so it would suggest she was alive when these wounds were inflicted yes sir all right so please continue as you were describing states exhibit number 342. um there are also some wounds in the hair that we can see and when i saw these wounds i felt around in the hair she has thick hair and i could feel other wounds so at that point i know i'm going to have to remove some of the hair to get a good look at the wounds did you do that in this case yes sir i did and once you remove the hair explain to the jury what you saw just verbally explain what you saw so behind on the right side of the head behind and kind of above the right ear there were multiple stab wounds um did you see anything else of interest in states 342 that you need to explain to the jury verbally uh no sir i think that's all okay now let's turn to uh the next exhibit tell us again uh just identify it do not publish at this period of the moment what's the next picture you have in front of you yes sir i'm looking now at uh 346 346. so stays 346. take a look at that do you recognize that picture yes sir i do tell us what you see there okay it's another picture taken at the time of autopsy and again she's in the supine position this is not as close up as the other photos and at the top of the picture is the case number that we put in the photos and it's the unique identifier that we try to get in all the pictures the photo itself shows her top of her head to the left side of the frame and her right shoulder at the extreme right lower corner the the number placard partially obscures her face but in the center of the photo we can see her right ear and part of the right side of her head we can see the area that i shaved it off the hair so we could look at the injuries there we also see a number of injuries to the right side of the neck also in this picture behind the right ear i've placed a letter an adhesive letter that's part of how we um keep track of the wounds what letter is on there it's letter l okay and what does that signify the letter l in this case um that so far i've gotten to the letter l so i start at a i have a sheet of these letters and i just peel and stick them it's there it's just a peel and stick thing and i will stick them on where the wounds are and so so sequentially if you went i guess or maybe i guess that's probably numerically um you went a b c d e f g h i j k l l so this is the l stab wound is what we're speaking about yes we're on l now at this this particular photograph shows us the l that i put there and um all the wounds either got their own individual letter or the grouping of wounds got a letter and then it was photographed and that's so that if somebody wants to talk about these moons they can say well i'm talking about letter l and then we can all look at the picture and know that this is where this is the wound also in this moon in this picture is a probe part of what i mentioned before about determining the depth of the wound is place a probe in the wound and then and then that way we were able to tell the depth of this wound and its approximate path can you show the jury or on yourself can you point to the area uh on yourself where that probe was placed yes it's right uh kind of blown behind the ear right here i don't know if that's so the record could reflect that uh dr b responding behind his left ear kind of where the skull and the neckline meet is that correct and did you measure that probe at some point um yes okay how deep was that wound um i'd have to look at my report but i believe it was about four centimeters okay do you have the report with you yes sir i do would it help your recollection to take a look at that yes it would it probe it probes to a depth of three 3.6 centimeters okay can you show us just kind of with your fingers about 3.6 centimeters is yes sir i think it's about that far what type of damage would a wound that goes three point six centimeters excuse me did you said centimeters centimeters centimeters into the area that you just showed what type of effect could that have based on your medical experience yes it can go into the skull and into the brain and that would that would be a serious wound okay life-threatening yes sir okay any additional things that you'd like to point out as it relates to states 346 at this point uh no no sir okay now if you'll take a look at i believe that states 347 with the same um instructions just take a look at it and tell us verbally what you see yes sir i'm looking now at 347-347 and this is a picture again taking an autopsy very similar to the last one showing the right side of her head and neck towards the top of this frame is her nose towards the left side is the top of her head towards the right side is her the base of her neck and what i'm doing in this photograph is i'm holding the ear forward so we can see behind the ear there is a stab wound that actually goes through the ear and then ends up going into the skin behind the ear and so to demonstrate that i've pulled the skin forward we can see the l that i said previously that designates this wound the actually another wound the ones behind the ear are different but so that's what we're seeing here and we also see the stab wounds to her neck courtesy john and i'd like to have state's exhibits 341 342 346 and 347 admitted in evidence they're marked for identification at this time and i'd like to ask have them uh entered in evidence at this time their identification only at this time yes sir and did you take these these photos yes sir i did were they taking a normal course of business yes sir now let's look at mr i'll give you uh let's talk a little bit more after we talked about the neck and the head um let's talk about the torso next so i'm going to hand you uh just a series of pictures at this point in time and i'll show you exactly which ones these are you publish the photographs that are in evidence the exhibit numbers are thank you i'm going to show you your honor excuse me uh dr beaver states number 343 stage number 344. states number 349 states number 350 states number 351 states number 352 states number 353 states number 354 states number 355 states number 356 and states number 357 like to hand you these ones all right so let's start with um parse through those take a look at those and let's take the uh pictures of the torso out first and let's talk about what you observed in the torso okay all right so which uh which number you had in front of you sir so i'm going to start with um uh states 3 56 i believe it here yes is right you can sit down and you can bring that photo with you now looking at uh states 356. all right explain to the jury let's turn this way so you're facing the court reporter and i'll hold it tell the jury what you're seeing here let's uh photo taken at the time of autopsy no we'll have to rotate around we may need to walk um then we're looking at her back and now she's rolled up on her side so so we're looking at the left side that's being her left arm at the top and her right shoulder at the bottom and we have cleaned her up washed off a lot and things like that that might have obscured the injuries but we still see a lot of um of these sort of the skin is sort of uh abraded on and this these yellow sort of yellow waxy looking things that's all insect activity so that's what and this specific insects are ants in this case so ants have taken and started to kind of um take off the superficial layers of her skin but there are also injuries here and so we can see a stab wound here a stab wound here an establishment here and a stab wound here so she has she has a number of stab wounds on what i would call the plank area so in this area of her back um this these ones um uh one of these goes actually into the lung but then the other ones don't penetrate any internal organs they go superficially a centimeter or two but not not into an internal organ but the main thing is the insect activity take a look at the next torso photo that you'd like to take a look at i think um yes but i think this is most of the rest are not torso so i think this is the next one all right well tell us tell us what we're looking at if you'll show us and tell us what exhibit you're looking and this is a photo this time the body is laying on its back it's pine so she's laying on the table back we've got the placard in here with her i do identify her and we're looking at the abdomen here and her hand is kind of resting up on the abdomen so we can see here some some of that insect activity again on her wrist so that insects ants in this case have done that um then we can see the knuckles of her hand she has a little defect right there on that knuckle which uh it's indicative of some type of blow perhaps and then she has a little bit of discoloration in the knuckles contusion maybe okay so we have some swelling in the knuckles maybe some discoloration and we have this little defect here um and then the rest of her torso looks okay to me and an indication of insect activity on her wrist if you could uh take the next photo in the order that you'd like to go through sure i think we'll just start here so this one is uh three 343. okay so states three four three so here um we're looking at the arm and uh so first we have the insect activity i've been talking about and we have two uh wounds here and here so superficial wounds uh where uh her arm came in contact with a knife or sharp instrument cut there and so this is the back of the left arm so this area here you can see her elbow here and there's another unit there's just one two three injuries on that arm and the yellow waxy materials postmortem from okay let's take a look at the next explain to the jury what we're looking at here so this is the right shoulder and part of the right neck so she's laying on the back and the right shoulder is here in the center up to the far right corner of the frame is her right ear and um some of the injuries on on her right neck but i'm going to come around to you soon make sure that you're able to see that so so what we have are um multiple statues in this small area so in forensic pathology we like to think of things that are close together in space are close together in time so um these injuries would be um from rapidly inflicting establishments because they're all very close together some of them are overlapping and there's a couple in here that caught my attention almost immediately and they're parallel they're two parallel cuts and we will see others like that and that to me i said that's unique it's it's very difficult to put wounds exactly spaced apart and exactly parallel and so it made me think that we were dealing with an odd weapon and that we would be able to identify this weapon so so this is the first real kind of clue i started thinking about is when i saw that right there that's right and that made me start to think about the type of weapon being perhaps not perhaps not just generic knife but maybe now something unique um so she has other wounds in her neck here but again these are all grouped together and i would group this as a single grouping of wounds because they're all in the same area they're all about the same size and they they go into the musculature they're not going to be failed by any of themselves with medical treatment they're not going to be lethal now if you look again at states exam number 349 that we've been referring to do you are you able to see any defects to her ear there um yes sir so this one at this at the far right you can see um there's a defect in the ear here that that's a stab wound that actually goes through the ear and into the neck from behind the ear and uh we were talking about a photo earlier where i tipped the year forward and that's that was to see what that went through actually went through the year what's the exact number 349 your honor the same process would uh what exactly are we looking at oh yes sir um this one is uh 344. all right 344 a little bit so here we're looking at the body again laying on the back this time we're looking at the left arm so we have the left arm and hand here and the placard is in here the the arm is running across the frame and towards the bottom of the frame and we can see the insect activity here but she also has two small wounds on the forearm and there's some hemorrhage into the soft tissues of the arm again the wound's not lethal but but it just shows the level of activity look at the next photo please sir so this wound this uh photo excuse me um you can see the peel and stick thing that i was talking about earlier and uh the placard is at the bottom she is lying on her back on the table and we're looking at the right arm here you can see one of the wounds that was up on the right shoulder or in the grouping of the right shoulder right here it's not a good angle photographically so you could just see the discoloration of the skin and then you see a parallel two parallel wounds in the elbow so um that to me that was starting to again i'm starting to think about at the time of the autopsy i'm thinking these two parallel wounds to be that close together and parallel like that is um very unusual and it's going to mean something i just need to figure it out and then you can see the torso here i don't see much there her hand would be off the frame to the bottom thank you sir let's grab that next uh [Applause] so this photo we're looking at the foot and um it's the right foot and it's she's laying on her back and there are some stabbings here and here we see really well that two parallel stab wounds that i was talking about and when i probe these wounds excuse me they run exactly parallel as well so it's not like the knife went this way or this way they are parallel in every respect and so that's unique and here i got the sense that there might be one and then two but the the knife didn't go very deep so um now i'm looking at this really being some type of a unique weapon you can see some pinkish discoloration around the wound and that is hemorrhage so we know she's got a blood pressure at this point and blood is being forced out into the skin around the wound once the blood vessels are cut [Applause] thank you sir 355 355 so now we're going to look at the right hand so placard's at the top she's laying on her back we're looking at the right arm to the far right of the frame is about to where her elbow starts or the um and then to the right of the frame or the tips of her fingers and we're looking at this wound on the palm of her hand so this is two parallel stab rooms small exactly parallel and they probe all the way through the hand and they go side by side all the way through the hand so what i'm and there's hemorrhage around so you know she has high blood pressure at this point um so there's a couple things to take away from this first of all it's a defensive type injury you're being attacked with a knife you put your hand up to try to reflexively block that attack and the knife goes through your hand that's what happens here and both of those wounds are parallel they're the same kind of parallel close together stab rooms that we saw on the foot and the shoulder and here they're really just it's it's a really good demonstration so i took another photograph closer up would you get that one please thank you so we're looking at states exhibit number 354 and 355. so take a closer uh picture of the palm of the hand we're looking at the palm of the right hand again towards the top would be her wrist towards the bottom tips of her fingers and these wounds are exactly two little cuts that are parallel to each other and um they're a set distance apart they don't doesn't vary and they go all the way through the hand so this wound is what you would expect for someone trying to defend themselves from the stab and and the knife hits them but in this case the knife is is is unique because it's got these two blades that would have to have two blades or two pieces to the blade that would be parallel and um so at this point i i knew we would find if we could find the knife we could match it up with this one because there's just and i actually went to google and i looked at about a thousand pictures of knives and i couldn't find any knife that was like this that had those kinds of parallel blades so i guess so so we're going to look 353 353. so 353 is the right hand again this time we're looking at the back of the right hand so remember i said that the wounds to the palm went all the way through and came out the back and so now we're looking at where it comes out in the back and again there are two parallel uh moves side by side and so coming out like that they would have to be it would have to be two parallel legs so we have the hemorrhage around it so she has a blood pressure and the wounds are exactly parallel and they're that set distance apart so um that would take some kind of an unique instrument to do that yeah i got all of those matching photos i think i have one more this is uh 351 351. so uh here is the left arm and it shows us the insect activity sometimes based on the positioning of the body and what the insects have access to can tell us something so sometimes if a body is moved from one place to another the insects get on the body in one place and do damage some skin and then the body is moved to another place when the insects don't have access that can tell us help us to piece together what happened so that's why this photo was taken there aren't any real significant injuries here just and activity so that's the left arm so the pattern here is that all injuries are occurring on the right side of her body right shoulder right side of her face and neck downs right hand left arm relatively sparing can you offer an opinion as to what would happen for those major injuries to take place on the right side of one's body that would be the side exposed to the attack could i have seen the jury box if you will please no sir i'm going to show you what's been marked mistakes exhibit number two would you like paragliders yes sir i'm sorry states exhibit number 295. uh i'm handing you now what's stace exhibit number two nine five you referenced multiple times well tell us what you what you're seeing with that that interests you as you look at this um this knife has two two blades and um they are relatively parallel um they are bent at the tip and um they are the size appropriate for the wounds that i saw this is this is a this is this is the weapon and as you look at this based on your 29 years as a forensic pathologist do you have an opinion of that weapon and the the injuries that samantha josephson sustained yes the the parallel cuts are made by this now did you see may i have stage number 225 please did you see some singular stab wounds as well yes yes and many in fact the majority of the stab wounds were singular establishments let me hand that to you so please speak to the jury yes sir so once this is pulled apart like this now it's a single bladed weapon so that's one of the things that was confusing me at the autopsy was i thought there must be two weapons because there was the parallel blade ones and then there were the single ones so i thought it's unusual to have two weapons but now i think it's explained it's explained to my satisfaction that this is the this is the the knife in this confirmation would make the parallel wounds that i saw and then if it's in this confirmation it could then make the single stat wounds thank you sir now as you perform this all the time well that's right how much blood does the human body only contain it's about about four or five liters four or five liters yesterday and so in uh us metrics in american metrics what is that uh it's probably close to a gallon okay and so as you perform the autopsy on miss josephson how much blood was found in her body it was not a lot um i found 20 milliliters in the pleural cavity right plural cavity and really we had we had difficulty obtaining the blood that we used for toxicology and so 20 milliliters is about how much if you could and again in layman's terms tell us what 20 milliliters looks like maybe uh an eighth of a cup okay so about this much yes yeah a couple tablespoons maybe three so based on the wounds that you saw and the fact that about five liters of blood should be in the human body where would you expect the blood to be found in this type of activity in this type of case the she's going to bleed out she's going to bleed out she said yes sir and one of the neck wounds involves the carotid artery and the jungler vein we haven't talked about it much but but that that wound would produce a lot of blood flow okay and you'd expect to find that blood where wherever she wherever it took place wherever there were these wounds were inflicted the blood would come out immediately just like the hose analogy all right now you mentioned the neck wounds and the jiggly the jugular vein is there something called a hyoid bone yes sir okay let's talk to the jury about the hyoid bone and what you observed with that yes sir for forensic pathologists the hyoid bone is has it has a great significance it's a little horseshoe shaped bone literally it would it would fit inside my hand right here and it sits up high in the neck and so if you if you'll just show us you know sure sits up high in the neck yes sir and um it's hooked to the back of the tongue and to part of the larynx and it's a free-floating bone it doesn't have it doesn't articulate with anything it's not like an elbow or something it's just it's hinged by muscle so there's muscle of the tongue on one side of it muscle on the on the throat on the other side of it so um and for us it's the synaquinone and that which names of manual strangulation so if you strangle somebody you put your hands on their neck and you squeeze that will fracture the hyoid bone so when we see a fractured hyoid bone it is manual strangulation until proven otherwise the bone because it sits so high up in the neck it's very punches and blows to the neck don't affect it because it's mobile and it's attached to muscle again blows to the next generally don't affect it you have to get that you have to get that squeezing motion to fracture it so she had a defect in her hyoid bone on the right side in her case though i'm not of the opinion that it's a strangulation i think it came from one of the stab wounds to her neck the knife actually got up high enough to sever the highway bone um so it's your suggestion that states exhibit number 225 295 this night would have gone high enough to serve that moment yes sir and so um it doesn't say it doesn't say for us that for me it doesn't say absolutely i couldn't tell you absolutely there was no manual strangulation involved but i can tell you i i would favor the that it was done by a knife by the stab wound but it would be high to do because that bone is relatively protected even in ligature when we see a ligature strangulation or someone committing suicide with the ligature with the height of the literature i'm sorry explain what the ligature is oh so if we put a rope around the neck common very common way people commit suicide common way for people to attack each other and even then you don't see fractured hyoid bone because the ligature the rope or the wire or the phone cord slips up over the bone or slips up underneath the bone but it doesn't get the highway bone so hyoid bone for forensic pathologists is manual strangulation until proven otherwise and so here you see that there's a severed juggling yes and carotid artery as well all right and so based on your 29 years as a forensic pathologist are those wounds um lethal wounds yes sir okay and so when we talk about the types of lethal wounds that you saw we talked about an injury to the brain yes sir and we've talked about the injuries to the hyoid bone yes and the juggler uh any or both of those could be considered lethal wounds yes okay and the wounds that you saw consistent with the stage number 295 the knife you talked about do you have a an opinion right now that you can tell this jury um of what caused samantha josephson's death yes multiple stab wounds i made the cause of death multiple stab wounds according to building jobs gentlemen we're going to have you go to the jury room for a break now please do not discuss the case all right welcome back you may continue thank your honor now i'm gonna show you dr b for state's exhibits number 347 number 341. if you take a look at those please we discussed them briefly but i want you to take a look at those yes sir okay um are those familiar to you yes sir and those again are pictures from the author that were taken did you perform yes sir all right i'd like to have those two uh exhibits to entertain the evidence you're on thank you step down please now dr beaver first i'm going to show you what's been marked the state's exhibit number 341. um as we talked about your testimony earlier [Applause] when you explain to the jury the significance of this photograph and what that helped you uh ascertain so the first thing that we i didn't mention before but so i i didn't mention this before but it's a good thing this reminds me um insect larvae are here so um that's what those uh are and so flies will come to the body almost immediately within a matter of minutes they lay their eggs and eggs hatch and that's what you're seeing there it takes a few hours for the eggs to hatch so these are the marks on the side of her face that i was talking about earlier they're parallel and remember they're yellow and kind of waxy looking so they're postmortem there's no blood pressure to cause these to to hemorrhage they're occurring in the postmortem interval and because of their their parallel like this pretty much all running the same direction that makes me think that there's a surface there that's that's now scraping across her skin so to me this means that the body has been moved in the postmortem interval somebody's moved the body after death and it also tells me a little bit about the insect activity too thank you sir now next i'm going to show you what's been marked as states exhibit number 347. so explain to the jury what that is and the significance of bread please so we talked about the photograph with the letter l in it before and it's showing the right side of her head and right side of her neck and here i've um i talked about the stab who's to the ear on the other side and here i folded up the ear so we can see behind it and you can see again the two very parallel two parallel lines of where the stab went through the ear and then went into the neck um this is not uh a fatal wound these two parallel wounds are not fatal but they're of interest because it's it's helping us to identify the weapon this uh you can see some of the insect larvae are in her hair and then there are some wounds here this wound here goes into the skull in the brain as does this one also this wound here is um somewhat unusual in that it has um what we call a dog leg a dog leg just needs like an ankle and what what it means is that the knife either the knife or the body they have turned relative with the blade in place so if you put stab this person and then you twist the knife or they move their head you can create this you create this dog leg type of a situation so i know that the and here i believe that the blade hit the skull and then and then was deflected and that's what created this dog leg skull is very dense bone has two tables so there's like two layers of bone and this would be a place where that would happen the wounds on her neck um you can see them here um what's uh interesting of these wounds is that um you can see that how they're kind of squared off at the back this is a straight line and it's sort of a v at this edge so um here squared off the um these two don't show it as well but that helps me to tell this is a single-edged knife so there's not it's not a double-edged weapon and that the heel of the knife the flat part of the top is here and the cutting edges is there so it orients the knife relative to the body so dr bieber can to you again states exhibit number 225 i'm gonna give you these gloves if you like holding states exhibit number 225 left to you that weapon as you compare it to the actual sharp force injuries that mrs josephson sustained tell us what your opinion is so this knife has the two parallel plays and it would be stabbed like this so um so this would this net this knife fits these are single stab wounds so the knife would have to be like this for these and it has a flat part here so the flat part would be like this this one has flat part too this has a more serrated edge to it and that leaves distinctive markings on the edge of the wound sometimes i i don't want to get into it but i don't i think this might be where that this part of the sob life was used but it's but it's too um it's too hard to say for sure thank you sir no i'm going to show you what's uh we've talked about this briefly states div number 352. let me hand that back to you sir and just reorient yourself with that picture if you would please yes sir now in your 29 years as a pathologist um again some 10 000 or so autopsies that you've done do you always find dna under fingernails no sir let's talk about that just a little bit uh with stakes exhibit uh that i just handed you um what is it that you do during an autopsy when you photograph fingernails so so um during the autopsy week we use that the autopsy has a uh means to collect evidence so we cut we clip the fingernails and place those into an envelope and then that is turned over to law enforcement for analysis so we take each fingernail and we have a clipper and we clip them and then we put the clipper in with the fingernails so they've got the clipper as well as the fingernails in my experience the dna is hit and miss sometimes you get it sometimes you don't and there are so many places in which it can be the specimen can be compromised the first is that you don't get the person doesn't have any dna under their fingernails they didn't scratch anything or they didn't get them material oh your honor he's a frederick pathologist he's been doing this 29 years he's examined over 10 000 bodies and judge he's got an opinion as to why dna wouldn't if a person is um doesn't have dna under their fingernails he's giving a reason why that would not happen based on his experience he hasn't been qualified in that area sustained the objection thank you man so you gave you talked about reasons um here there you clip fingernails you turn them over to law enforcement yes sir okay and once you've done those things um at that point in time you again after you photograph the fingernails um do you do anything particular after that did you observe anything particular of her hands that were of interest to you and her nails um she she had injuries to her hands also i don't think her nails were very long as i recall they weren't long they were fairly short so so i don't know if that affects the recovery of dna and so as we wrap up um you gave an opinion as to the cause of death here yes there will be the cause of death here is what multiple stab wounds okay and the blade that uh that actually inflicted those stab wounds was what it's the tool you showed me with the parallel knife blades state states exhibit number 222.95 yes sir thank you that's all my questions at this time examination thank you very much your honor man please the court yes good morning good morning and you have a copy of your report with you today right yes okay and the date that you uh examined uh ms joseph and that was march 31st is that right yes matt okay and during that exam you're wearing protective gear yes ma'am right gloves is that right yes gloves wearing uh protective gear on your hair on your head to cover your hair yes and probably on your body yes yeah we wear a plastic gown that goes over the head has sleeves actually hooks over your thumb then i personally wear two pairs of gloves and i have a hat and then i have a mask and it's it's a paper mask similar to the ones that are here like this and then i have booties on and then under all that i'm wearing scrubs clothing that stays in my office that doesn't go anywhere else and musc has a service i machine i turn the scrubs in and i get new scrubs every time gotcha and anyone else that would be present with you in that exam room they would have protective gear on as well um at least gloves yeah for our for our technical staff they all would um including the person that takes the x-rays sometimes law enforcement comes in and they don't you told us earlier that uh your exam starts by doing an external kind of view of miss josephson's body right yes ma'am you uh take her weight yes ma'am right um you indicate that she uh was 160 pounds at the time of autopsy yes ma'am she was 69 inches tall yeah yes ma'am it's i they're laying down long i should say yes 69 inches long and that is five feet nine inches is that correct otherwise a healthy adult female yes okay and you also during your kind of external exam you exit you take note of the clothing that she has on yes ma'am and any uh notes about that you put in your report anything you observe yes i um my suit my exam of the clothing is more superficial of get the kind of clothing she has on if it's and general description i don't go into detail examining the clothes because i'm going to take them off and i'm going to package them and they're going to be sent to an evidence technician who's going to examine them thoroughly because your job is related to examining the body exactly in this case it came with clothing on it yes ma'am on her and you did mention in your report that you noticed defects in the in the clothing yes ma'am specifically her shirt yes and that it was heavily bloodstained yes you go on to make notes about her fingernails yes and in your report you indicated that they were medium length at the time okay today you're telling us that you thought they were fairly short and length well they were they're not long let's put it that way so i was in the idea of getting dna under your fingernails long fingernails are will be more effective in getting some kind of dna under your fingernails than short ones so hers are medium length so um probably a little bit longer than mine but but you noticed that they were medium length right and they would be you know doing my nails longer than my nails um i i think yours are about medium length maybe this is medium length yeah so if if you can see i'm short there's no white okay no white color i have no white on my nails i hard to see your nails but i but you were able to notice with the nails that she had evidence of tearing that's what you put in your report correct yes and at the autopsy on march 31st you take the clippings correct and along with the fingernail clippers that you clipped with put those in a bag right correct an evidence bag correct and those get sent off yes law enforcement takes those right yes takes those back to the lab right yes and you go on to tell us about the you notice that there are offensive wounds on her knuckles is that right i'm not sure what you mean by offensive wounds you believe you told us as it relates to picture 352 states 352. 352 that you noticed um on her knuckles yes so don't um the discoloration is on this part of the knuckle well do you want me to talk about this or not is there a question the question was you noticed a defect with her knuckles yes and that is on her is i believe that her right hand left hand which hand is that um it's the left hand and you told us on direct that was indicative of a blow i said that it could be blows or struck okay like she hit something yes okay and on the flip there was a stab wound to the other hand correct and we call that a defensive wound yes something that you would see if somebody put up their hand to stop something from happening yes and that went through and through yes you also told us that miss josephson experienced significant blood loss yes i believe so that it was difficult to even obtain a sample um to send off for toxicology yes and the deepest and i'm just looking at your report here that and correct me if i'm wrong the deepest wound we noted here was um is that seven centimeters i believe yes and that was to her thigh is that right yes and seven centimeters is what three inches or less than three inches two i think it's two and three quarters maybe okay um and that's the that's the um the deepest moment i'm not gonna touch this we've seen that plenty but the the weapon that we've talked about here today it opens up you said is that right yes i i had not seen the weapon before it was presented to me today so i did not know that it opened up until i saw it this morning but you've been told um you had a conversation with the prosecutors in preparation for trial where you did a discussion about this multi-tool was was had right yes that was like a few days ago and that and during that conversation you would say that some of the wounds are consistent with being made by the open the multi tool in the open position and some in the close position correct so there was some information you had prior to today about what type of weapon was alleged to have been used yes okay and then also at that time you told them there was evidence of offensive wounds because of the discoloration and defects you noticed on her knuckles i'm having trouble with this offensive wound thing and i'm i'm just using the words that we were we were given that you would that you would be testifying to okay so do you want to hear what my problem is or not sure yes sorry please okay so the knuckles um the knuckles that are in question are the ones that show defect are these here like this one okay and this one and this one okay so offensively when you make a fist mostly you hit these knuckles not ones that are in and not necessarily these so so i don't know exactly how those knuckles were injured um they could have been injured in throwing blows but i'm not going to say that they are offensive injuries it's a fine gradation of logic but that's what i mean but based on that photograph and your observation it appeared that she hit something yeah something she hit something or something hit her gotcha and you described these wounds and there are a lot of them i believe you said there were over 120 or around 120 yes something like that and multiple stab wounds in a small area that indicates to you close in time or close together in space close together in time correct so this is a um these are rapid stab wounds in my opinion yeah based on what you observed on the right hand side of her shoulder right yes that grouping of wounds there right yes okay and again we have wounds all over her body right in all areas of her body not covered completely but they're they're not just on her head not just on her torso but she had some on her legs her foot back right yes she has wounds in many places you were able to see those as you examined externally you were able to see those and make notes yes ma'am and photograph them and photograph and did you do any measurements or i guess you did mention that you had done a google search to see if you could find anything but did you other than um did you measure the alleged weapon in this case i i never even knew this weapon existed until a few days ago okay so the it has two different blades right yes and then when it opens up the blade would be there would be a blade on each end is that right yes okay and i didn't know any of that until just a few days ago okay and you didn't get a you didn't get a picture of the weapon at that time no and in fact i sent law enforcement a picture that i thought might be the weapon just from my search of thousands and thousands of images of knives and um but it turned out to be something entirely different interesting back the quartz indulgence no ma'am i don't it was this was a long time ago right i sent it literally within maybe three days of the autopsy and then i haven't visited this autopsy since until we had the discussions a few days ago would that have been a south carolina law enforcement division investigator it was somebody who came to the autopsy somebody who came to the autopsy okay thank you so much are you direct thank you now dr beaver you said that um we keep getting bogged down in this term offensive wounds or offensive wounds um you essentially said that with her left hand she hit some thing or something hit her correct yes that that's a better way to characterize it and i'm sorry if i was unclear before um what kind of things in the back of the car could a person hit um the door i suppose the window i i don't really i don't really know i i don't know the car so i don't really know and so based on your testimony based on the cross-examination that i was just offered you said essentially the knocking knuckles of some people call them was what was yeah yeah exactly the what we would call the first interphalangeal joint but this is the knuckles right here not the ones that are on your actual hand right but the ones that are on your fingers the first one on your fingers is exactly so there they could be but they're not completely characteristic of offensive injuries now let's talk about the knife again is it possible to have a wound that's deeper than the length of the blade yes sir explain that to the jury please so um when the skin is compressible you can push in and it will give so when the knife is pushed against the skin the hilt of the knife the handle pushes in on the soft tissue and allows the blade to go deeper into the soft tissues so it's it's it's fairly common to see wounds deeper than the length of the blade particularly on the abdomen and on the chest area but also on the thigh where where there's a lot of soft tissue that can be compressed by the hilt of the handle of the knife and you saw that in this case um i did not see that hilt or handle mark which is sometimes good for us to see but that's what i measured it when i put the probe in and i pulled it out and i put it against the ruler that's what the length was and how long would it take a person to die from these wounds um the injuries to the brain and the carotid artery are fairly severe and would the bleeding would be profuse and very rapid so um i would say a matter of minutes maybe 10 or 15 minutes maybe 20. okay of course indulgence around so that's all my questions thank you any further questions nothing further on i think you missed step down thank you

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Published: Mon Jul 26 2021