It is worth repeating that Pamela Vitale's autopsy demands consideration. LINK TO AUTOPSY In terms of injury, the testimony of the medical examiner, Dr. Brian Peterson is equally revealing. Following is a summation of Dr. Peterson's trial testimony. Take note of the amount of abrasion and scratching on Pamela's body, especially to the face and feet.
Quote:
When the body arrived for my attention, she was clothed. She was clothed in a white short-sleeved T-shirt, black skirt, purple briefs, and white socks. I described the shirt partially pulled up on the right. The skirt was pulled up around the hips. There were some holes with blood staining on the left sock. The right sock had been pulled up completely over the foot and was around the ankle.
The majority of the injuries were blunt-force injuries. And blunt-force injuries comprise three different types; contusion or bruise, abrasion or scrape, and laceration which is a crushing or tearing-type injury. So if you think about abrasion as being like road rash from falling off your bike, that's what abrasion is. It's the external layers of skin. Contusion is just a bruise, as we all have seen. And then the laceration is a little bit different. A laceration is crushing or tearing.
A lot of the injuries in this case had aspects of both abrasion and laceration. Whatever object or objects have been used in this case, they didn't leave a distinct pattern; but there was a lot of lacerations and abrasion. There were fractures of facial bones, of hand bones, but those were also blunt-force-type injuries. The other type of injury in this case was a stab injury of the abdomen.
The cause of death related to the blunt-force head injury, in my opinion. The stab wound occurred at or shortly after the time of death.
Beginning here were on the left side of the head; but in general, you can see on the right side of the head the same kind of shapes, on the back of the head the same kind of shapes. All represent lacerations. So those were crushing or tearing type injuries that in many cases separate the scalp and expose bone, but in no case actually fractured the skull. On the front of the face, there are also lacerations. But then this colored-in pattern that obscures so much of the face represents abrasion. So if we start on the right side of the scalp, I note there are at least eight distinct injuries identified. They begin on the upper part of the ear. They extend to the top of the head. But with blunt-force injury, I can't tell you how many applications of force may have caused one injury. I also can't tell you if there's perhaps overlap there. On the fleshy part of the ear, there was a 7/8ths-inch laceration and then just behind that on the scalp, an additional 1/2-inch laceration. There's also redness and scraping around the edges of the laceration. That's the abrasion component. And, in fact, in between many of these injuries at different places on the head, there was abrasion of the skin in between lacerations. So it's both kinds of blunt-force injury, I think, speaking to an irregular striking object. Let me move from the right side of the head to the front to the face. A couple of different type injuries here and also a pattern. In terms of laceration, there was laceration on the bridge of the nose. And through that injury, I could see that the nasal bone was actually broken beneath the skin. The term I used was "comminuted" -- That means broken into fragments. And there were two areas where I saw a speckled pattern. The first was on the nose, I described as a pattern of white spared areas surrounded by red contusion. The chin here was an opposite pattern. It was also speckled, and that looked like red speckles surrounded by white spared areas. When I have seen this pattern in the past, it looks like carpet. My opinion is that most of what we see in the front -- not all, but most, was caused by the face being forced hard against this carpet by blows to the back of the head. Specifically, there was laceration around the eye, as there was laceration on the forehead. There was laceration in association with that fracture Also, there are these large areas of abrasion. And particularly over on the right, although there's laceration here and here, the rest of this is just abrasion. So I had to figure out how can that happen without actual impact, because I think if there had been actual impact, like we had back here, there would have been laceration to the skin, and there wasn't. There was injury that can't really show on the diagram because it was internal injury; but inside the mouth, the ? incisors, the cutting teeth in the front of the upper jaw had actually been broken loose from the jaw. And associated with that, there was laceration or tearing injury inside the lip. On the back of the head, again, there was the same kind of pattern of abraded laceration. So crushing or tearing type injury, multiple different shapes, and characterized by that scraping red injury around the edges of all of them. I said on the back: To the occipital protuberance, which is the lump on the back of the head, up to the top of the head, there were at least 11 different lacerations in that space. Now, I measured representative lacerations in this case, and they ranged from here, 3/4ths of an inch to 3 inches. Again, I'm making some assumptions that when I measure a 3-inch injury, it's just one injury and that it doesn't represent overlap. On the left side of the head, I counted at least seven separate abraded lacerations. And what there was on the neck was a rectangular pattern of yellow-red impact abrasion measuring 2 1/2 x 1 1/8 inches overall. There were additional purple bruises or contusions around that injury, with separate contusions over the right collarbone. And also, just above the top of the breastbone, there's a notch there you can feel, a relatively small area with this 2 1/2 x 1 1/8 inch pattern. Those injuries were impact-type abrasion. On the torso there are a number of injuries; plus the stab wound. Again, blunt-force injury varying in shape and size. There were bruises; some pink, some more purple. But there was contusion and abrasion on both shoulders, on the breasts. Extending up to the neck, there were scratches. Again, no particular pattern, though. Nothing that was particularly reminiscent of object but all consistent with blunt force, until we got down to the abdominal area. It was 1 1/2 inches above the bellybutton, this was a horizontal stab wound. It measured 2 ¾ inches in length, it gaped to 3/4ths of an inch. When I pressed the edges of it together to see the shape of the blade, it appeared to be a single-edge wound. Internally, if I could get back to that stab wound for a moment, the injury actually passed through the stomach. It passed through small bowel. And it passed through the tissue that supports the small bowel called the mesentery, there was no internal bleeding.
On the left, There were injuries that extended from the shoulder to the hand. And the injuries on the upper arm were around the elbow, on the shoulder. There were scratches and bruises around the elbow -- or rather, an L-shaped pattern of abrasion. Some scratches on the left wrist. There were -- there was laceration on the left palm. There was compound fracture of the middle joint on the third finger, compound fracture of the closest joint on the index finger. Compound fracture means that the skin is torn and the bone is actually exposed. On the top of the left shoulder there was a pattern of contused abrasion that measured 9 1/2 x 2 inches. And on the back of the neck was a series of red abrasions. They formed a V-shaped pattern. The largest, the largest of these red abrasions -- and they were all V-shaped; the largest of them measured 3/4ths of an inch in greatest dimension. On the back, there was another type of sharp-force injury what I described this as was a series of three intersecting superficial incisions. On the right leg, there was an impact-type abrasion on the lateral or side surface of the hip. I described it as trapezoidal, so there is a geometric shape to it measuring 1 3/4 x 3/4. There was several on the side of the thigh, several red scratches. It can be a superficial incision. It can be a fingernail-type injury. It's so shallow, it's not possible to say what the mechanism is. So I just call them scratches. So there was scratches on the side of the right thigh. On the front of the right thigh, a dark red abrasion with surrounding purple bruise form a "T" shape. That measured 1 1/8 x 1/4 inch. The arm of the "T" measured 1 3/4 inches. Just below that, another contused abrasion measuring 1 1/4 inches in greatest dimension. Below that, all sorts of purple bruises over the knee forming a 4 x 1 3/4-inch pattern within that overall contusion or bruise. There were two separate abrasions on the lower leg. Several discrete patches of abrasion, the largest group of injuries there measuring 5 x 2 1/2 inches. There was more abrasion on the top of the big toe. There was red abrasion on the top of the foot. And there were contusions on the bottom of the foot and on the bottom of the great toe. So along with injuries on the hands, I will characterize those as defense injuries. On the left foot, on the top of the foot, there was a pattern of gray bruising with central red abrasion that measured 1 x 1 inch. Moving up the leg, you will see a similar injuries there. There were red abrasions with bruising on the mid left lower leg in a group that began 4 inches below the knee, formed a 7 x 5-inch pattern. There was purple bruising on the back of the lower leg and a 4 x 3 3/4-inch pattern containing a central scratch. There were purple bruises over the patella or kneecap, and on the lower of the patella, I saw the same speckled pattern that I saw on the chin and the nose. That speckled pattern measured 1 1/2 x 1 inch. There were scratches on the inside surface of the thigh. Those were actually both thighs. On the left, 1 1/4 x 1/4 inch; on the right, 2 x 1 ¼ inches, and a few other scratches a little bit higher. There was a large amount of contusion on the back of the left hand. What that reflected was discrete red abrasion, also a lot of bruising. And within that combination, there was a fracture of the closest bone on the left index finger. There were also lacerations on the back of the hand measuring up to 3/4 of an inch in greatest dimension. Moving up the arm, there were red contused abrasions on the elbow. There were bruises on the upper arm. And with abrasions, there was scratches. There was laceration on the palm of the left hand, the largest of those measuring 1 x 1/2 inch. The -- just in terms of surface area injured and fractures, et cetera, there was more injury on the left than there was on the right.
How does this relate to Scott Dyleski?
The prosecution's speculative theory is that Scott Dyleski, armed with a rock, surprised Pam and beat her to death, then changed and cleaned up in 22 minutes. (note- there was no evidence what-so-ever that a rock was used to beat Pamela. No rock residue was found at the scene, or anywhere on her body) Prosecutor Hal Jewett in his letters (click to read) opined "the amount of time it takes to strike someone over the head with a rock twenty six times is actually quite short". What he fails to address is the abrasion and injury all over her body. How did Scott Dyleski's magic rock cause abrasion without laceration to Pam's face? How did his rock cause abrasion to her feet? How did his rock literally cause abrasion all over her body? How did the rock pull her right sock UP around her ankle?
The fact is the injury to Pamela does not support the prosecution's theory.