Where's the blood?

snokkums · Post by **snokkums** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 9:44 am

I was reading thru some old posts and came across one that was interesting. It was titled "The Trail of Blood" posted by Harry on May 14, 2002.
"There is a distinct absence of blood leading away from both murder scenes. I know the rooms were all covered with rugs and any blood would have seeped into them. But that doesn't mean that the blood could not have been seen upon closer inspection."

I went back to the archives and looked at the photos. I know the pictures are in black and white and they are small, but I didn't any blood either.

Were the police just careless with the crime scene? There was no blood on Lizzie either, which could indicate that she didn't do it or she was naked when she committed the crimes or she had an accomlice.

But still not much blood. What's up with that?

augusta · Post by **augusta** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 10:59 am

No kind of footprints or drops coming from the murderer walking away from the body/s always makes me wonder, too, Snokkums. There may have been too little on the carpet to be noticed. Or maybe if there were any noticeable spots, someone else from the house could have wiped them up with a rag if they found it right away and it might not have been visible with the patterened carpets. Just some thoughts.

Yooper · Post by **Yooper** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:51 am

How much blood should be found, and based upon what should we find that amount?

FairhavenGuy · Post by **FairhavenGuy** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 9:39 am

I have always thought that far far too much emphasis is put on the so-called lack of blood. I simply don't see that striking someone on the head with a hatchet and then chopping about several more times is going to result in huge amounts of blood gushing or splashing all over the place.

Our heads are not balloons full of blood that are going to explode when struck by a sharp, heavy object. We're used to seeing such things in in horror movies (or in the Zapruder film, in which President Kennedy's skull is blown apart by a rifle bullet) but I cannot see a hatchet blow to the head causing that sort of scene. And the repeated blows following the the initial killing chop require no more force than hammering in a nail, really. There's no need to think someone was wildly raising a hatchet over her head time and time again in order to inflict the damage that we see in the photos of the bodies or the damaged skulls. Such wild flailing and smashing would have inflicted far more damage than is shown by the physical evidence.

The very fact that there were NOT huge horror-movie-like splashes of blood and gore all over the rooms points to the reality here. Most of the blood that was found (under Abby's head or on the sofa and floor beneath Andrew) oozed out after the chopping had stopped and most likely after the killer had left.

There were some sprays of blood on the wall behind Andrew, but unless his head was acting like a garden sprinkler, the fact that some droplets of blood did indeed fly in that direction might really indicate that not much blood flew in the opposite direction toward the killer.

The very notion of a killer dripping blood and tracking it around the house has never made sense to me given the evidence we see, the location of the wounds and the type of weapon. And if there WERE bloody footprints, they likely would have been made by the blundering Dr. Bowen.

Yooper · Post by **Yooper** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 6:48 pm

I have to agree with FairhavenGuy. Since there seemed to be no evidence or testimony addressing an attempted cleanup effort, I suggest that the amount of blood found is indeed the correct amount we should expect to find under the circumstances. Given the number of hatchet blows administered to Abby, there seems to have been remarkably little blood spatter in her case.

snokkums · Post by **snokkums** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:43 am

I know are heads aren't full of blood, but there should have been something.

FairhavenGuy · Post by **FairhavenGuy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 9:15 am

There was something. In both cases blood oozed from the head wounds and soaked the area beneath the heads. In Andrew's case, I think blood even made it through the sofa to the floor.

The blood just wasn't splashing around as much as we sometimes think it should have, based on what we see in horror movies and such. And it's not really a surprise that the killer most likely was NOT covered with gore or that there weren't bloody footprints all over the house.

Yooper · Post by **Yooper** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 11:03 am

The hatchet itself would have had blood on it and the act of swinging it would have thrown the blood away from it, somewhat similar to cleaning a paintbrush by swinging it to remove the water, but not to the same degree. There would be far less blood on a hatchet than water in a paintbrush. The spatter from swinging the hatchet should describe an arc directly correlating to the arc of the hatchet swing. If the hatchet was swung from more or less the same position by the user, the spatter should be relatively concentrated in the same area. We could probably determine where the killer stood if the spatter is relatively confined rather than randomly distributed about the room. Blood spatter from a swinging hatchet would be projected away from the user.

About the only way for blood to get on the murderer is directly from the wound as the result either of a blow or arterial spurting, or from a stationary hatchet dripping on him or her.

augusta · Post by **augusta** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 1:56 pm

It's been said over and over that once the heart is stopped, the blood doesn't spurt anymore. Maybe the killer knew just where to make the first blow a fatal blow.

Fairhaven Guy, why do you call Dr. Bowen a blunderer? It's funny, and I do enjoy poking fun at him. But he did not want to testify against friend Lizzie. And he was like shocked when he saw the bodies and said stuff like, "Addie, come see!" And told people Abbie died of fright - or was it fainted? - then recanted it during his testimony. What else did he do that could not be explained as being rather dazed by it all?

Is it that he carried a Mr. Potato Head kit in his medical bag?

(See past article in "The Hatchet" called "What Was in Dr. Bowen's Bag".)

FairhavenGuy · Post by **FairhavenGuy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:27 pm

Augusta, for some reason, I've always been of the opinion the Dr. Bowen wasn't near the top of his class in med school. . .

That opinion, of course, is colored by a modern view of crime scene procedure. Andrew should't have been moved, his pockets searched for keys, covered with a sheet or anything really. But the doctor and the police were equally to blame. Few people knew much better back then.

snokkums · Post by **snokkums** » Fri Dec 25, 2009 7:53 am

Actuallly, I have always wondered ho wbowen got into medical school. He just doesn't seem the smartest guy in the world.

FairhavenGuy · Post by **FairhavenGuy** » Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:29 am

Snokkums, the standards were not really high back then. Just fifty or so years earlier there were still barber-surgeon-dentists who cut hair, pulled teeth and did bloodletting.

A lot of new medical procedures were developed during the Civil War, but much remained unknown.

snokkums · Post by **snokkums** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 7:26 am

FairhavenGuy @ Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:29 am wrote:Snokkums, the standards were not really high back then. Just fifty or so years earlier there were still barber-surgeon-dentists who cut hair, pulled teeth and did bloodletting.

A lot of new medical procedures were developed during the Civil War, but much remained unknown.

I didn't know that! Imagine that-- go to the doctor and get a hair cut, a tooth pulled and get something for what ails you!

Thanks FairhavenGuy!

hyacinth · Post by **hyacinth** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 11:11 pm

In defence of Dr. Bowen I found this :

The physicians of Fall River are energetic ,
skilful and ambitious, and include surgeon s
and specialists of marked ability . They are
of a wide variety of nationalities and num-
ber about 130, six of whom, as appears b y
the last directory, are women . Nearly all
are of the allopathic school . Dr. Jerome
Dwelly is easily the dean of the active pro-
fession here, with Dr . Seabury W. Bowen
probably next in order.

And after all he was a family doctor and I doubt that he saw many murder scenes .

SallyG · Post by **SallyG** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:05 pm

hyacinth @ Sat Dec 26, 2009 11:11 pm wrote:In defence of Dr. Bowen I found this :

The physicians of Fall River are energetic ,
skilful and ambitious, and include surgeon s
and specialists of marked ability . They are
of a wide variety of nationalities and num-
ber about 130, six of whom, as appears b y
the last directory, are women . Nearly all
are of the allopathic school . Dr. Jerome
Dwelly is easily the dean of the active pro-
fession here, with Dr . Seabury W. Bowen
probably next in order.

And after all he was a family doctor and I doubt that he saw many murder scenes .

Exactly! Dr. Bowen was probably just as much in shock over the whole situation as everyone else! A family physician cannot be expected to know crime scene procedure, and from what I've read of it, it was very lax back then, anyway! I know of nothing that indicates that Dr. Bowen was any less intelligent or less skilled than any other doctor in Fall River!

xyjw · Post by **xyjw** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:42 pm

I'm curious to know what the "allopathic school" was. Does anyone know? I also think it is impressive that there were six women doctors listed in the Fall River area.

doug65oh · Post by **doug65oh** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:46 pm

allopathic is just a fancy word for conventional medicine, believe it or not. see http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art ... ekey=33612 for a start.

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 4:35 pm

In the case of Abbie's murder, the blood seems to have been confined to the small area where her body lay and died. Remember, that was a tight space and there were 2 chairs there that do not appear in the later photos.

There was blood on the rail of the bed and on the drawers of the bureau~ Dr. Dolan, at the prelim says about that:

On the drawers of the dressing case, I presume they were swelled and could not be put in their whole length, on the projection of them, on the uppermost drawer, there were three or four spots.
-and--
I think on the second one [drawer] there were six or seven spots, quite large ones, as if they had gone up in the air and had fallen down.

http://lizzieandrewborden.com/CrimeLibr ... odEvidence

Here is a representation of how small an area it was where the attack occurred, by KK.

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 4:42 pm

Dr Dolan, in the prelim, says about Abbie's bloody body:

Under her head, and pretty well down on her breast, she was lying in a pool of clotted blood, quite dark, as if it had been there sometime. It was not in the fluid condition that Mr. Borden’s was.

The front of the clothing was very much soaked, that is, down to the chest, and also the back, down about half way, of course going right through to her underclothing.

Here it shows just how much rug was removed to take away the blood evidence

Yooper · Post by **Yooper** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:33 am

There may have been good reason for Dr. Bowen to appear to be in shock at the time of the murders. The day before the murders, he diagnosed Abby's complaint of poisoning as simple food poisoning, which was likely correct. The next day, both Abby and Andrew were murdered. This may have caused Dr. Bowen to reevaluate Abby's poisoning complaint, and his handling of it. Regardless of how correct he was from a medical standpoint, he may have missed the real point of Abby's visit, if it was to express a fear for her life. She was right.