"At the tip of the right temporal lobe is a one-quarter by one-quarter inch similar appearing purple contusion. Only very minimal contusion is present at the tip of the left temporal lobe. This area of contusion measures only one-half inch in maximum dimension. "

I know what I think it means - and it is chilling. I think the killer held her head in his hands and looked into her face, held her so hard he left bruises on her face.

Comments?

Again when struck with heavy punches, hammer
blows or elbows this can produce unconsciousness.
Those who follow the UFC will remember in its early
days, a couple of truly devastating KO's were
produced by elbows to the temples. These three vital
points can be finishers and potentially in some cases,
lethal. Beware!

http://www.4-site.co.uk/goshin/extremedef.htm

It almost seems as though two people would be required to produce those marks.

I can't remember what movie it was - - was it released before the murder?

The marks should not be ignored - - they are an injury she got that night. I have no problem attributing that act to an intruder. I can't imagine a parent doing that.

Classic.

Rainsong

I think it means that the perp was pushing her head against something hard -like the headboard or the floor- with one hand , using a thumb on the right temporal lobe and another finger on the left. The other hand would then be free to do other things. The hand that was free to do other things would (probably)have been the perps dominant hand. A purple contusion would be a bruise? Do bodies bruise after death?
Is it right/left as you are looking at the person or the person's right/left?

I wonder if SBTC could be related to that movie or book.

Maybe I will sit and watch it this week. And look through the book - - I did read it once long,long ago.

>Comments?

That is chilling, but this refers to the bruising on both sides of the brain. What this means is that when she was hit with the object, the brain bounced side to side in the skull causing the bruising at the tips of the temporal lobes. Notice in the report that the brain stem has not been damaged. If it had been, it would have been called a sheer effect and would have indicated a different kind of death such as severe shaking or some kind of injury that would have caused the brain to rotate in the head instead of bounce side to side. Something that is seen more frequently in child abuse cases. This injury indicates a calculated, incredibly high impact force being brought to bare on a focused area of the head. In other words....on purpose.

You will note that the contusion on the right is in the same area as the larger contusion under the right sided fracture and is likely related to the impact. The contusion on the left could also be related to forces from the primary impact. The findings are distinctly different from what some refer to as "shaken baby" which is a controversial topic itself.
In the presence of an intact skull pressing the thumbs into the temporal area would not result in the injuries.

I'm not sure what one-eyed Jack is referring to about the brain stem and "sheer effect." Shear stress can be due to either linear (straight-line) or rotational motion. Consider rotational motion: The outer layers of the brain tend to move with the skull while motion of the inner portions are delayed by inertia and the fact that the connection to the skull is not perfectly rigid. This causes a shear stress, and it is possible for the interface between the layers to tear during rotation --- the blood vessels can be broken, in particular causing subdural hemorrhaging. Sudden rotational acceleration or deceleration can cause shear stresses over a large portion of the brain. It would seem that mere linear acceleration or deceleration should not cause such widespread shear stresses, and this is in fact backed up by the literature.

Shear stress: Put the palms of your hands together like praying. Push up with your right hand and down with your left, allowing your palms to slip against each other a bit. What you feel is caused by shear stress. Now imagine doing this very quickly with enormous strength. If your palms were sticky enough and if you were strong enough, you could rip the skin off of your palms.

Rotation can also cause contusions at other locations, including on the opposite side of the brain, when the brain strikes the inside of the skull as the skull is rotated (or skull strikes brain). A lot of people automatically assume that bruising in the opposite side of the brain is a contracoup lesion, but that's not necessarily accurate.

The actual motion of the skull and brain can be rather complex in its details, depending on exactly where the strike occurred, at which angle, on the distribution of the forces, the shape of the skull and brain, etc. The skull movement will be a combination of linear (straight) motion and rotational motion. The brain motion can be even more complex, including squashing, expansion, and so on. A lot of descriptions of skull/brain movement are very simplistic compared to what's really going on.

One way to sidestep a lot of these issues is to calculate the stress required to punch out the missing skull fragment. This results in a peak stress which must be exceeded. If this peak is high enough, certain conclusions can be drawn about the impact. This is looking not at a complete description, but at the minimal requirements. My own work has demonstrated that this was a severe blow and was almost certainly caused by some sort of weapon, therefore was done purposefully. That in itself is an important result. We'll probably never know the details of skull and brain motion because Meyer didn't take very many micrographs. It seems to me that he did indeed collect enough information to draw important conclusions.

The coroner whom Jams quoted mentions that the shaken-baby syndrome is controversial. Yes, it certainly is. Many researchers have claimed that it is impossible to cause hemorrhaging of the brain by mere shaking, and that this requires some sort of impact. Not having done these calculations myself, I don't know. But it does seem rather odd that a mother or father could shake a baby enough to cause hemorrhaging. The head should wobble, causing the impulse to be spread out over time. This would dramatically reduce the any impulse to the brain. On the other hand, "impossibility" would also require some sort of proof. Perhaps certain specific types of hemorrhaging are indeed possible. There are probably some good studies out there somewhere...and lots of bad ones.

Thanks for the coroner's quote, Jameson.

http://www.state.sc.us/ddsn/pubs/head/equip.htm

The bruising is caused by the brain being displaced during the blow and hitting the bony skull surface. Wecht thought it could be due to her being shaken to wake up---others disagree. It seems logical that it was caused by the horredonus head blow.

The link that Maikai posted has a very good description of brain injuries. The portion pertinent to this case is:

Begin quote:

What Happens to the Brain When it is Injured?

Initial Events

Three initial events can occur following a traumatic brain injury. The first is immediate damage, which results from the brain's impact against the bony structures of the skull, especially in the area of the forehead (frontal area) and upper cheek and ear (temporal area). This impact can cause tearing, bleeding and bruising of brain tissue.

Second, as the brain turns and twists while affixed to the spinal cord, tearing and stretching of the nerve fibers often occur within the entire brain and brain stem.

Third, additional complications can arise. The brain can suffer diffuse swelling and in 75 percent of the cases will demonstrate an increase in intracranial pressure. The general swelling and increased pressure reduce the blood flow necessary for the undamaged brain tissue. Unconsciousness or coma may result, depending on the severity of these injuries.

Further Changes

Although the types of injuries described thus far occur within hours or days of the accident, further changes will develop over time. As the brain swelling resolves and blood flow to the tissue stabilizes, two things happen.

* The nerve tissue that was not severely damaged, but merely impaired by complications such as swelling, will return to functioning.
* Nerve tissue that was severely injured will continue to degenerate and die.

End quote.

I have added emphasis in some portions which should show up as bold italics .

The first paragraph about initial events is what I referred to as "linear" motion. The second paragraph about twisting is what I referred to as "rotation." The author failed to mention compression and expansion.

The author failed to mention tearing and stretching of blood vessels, although he/she may argue that the discussion was about nerve tissue, not other tissues --- and indeed the scope is very limited.

Note that swelling reduces blood flow, hence can reduce hemorrhaging.

Note "hours or days." Why_Nut and I have repeatedly pointed this fact out and it has been repeatedly ignored. There is no way to determine on the basis of Meyer's autopsy report what the sequence of events of the murder were. Dobersen and the rest of us can speculate all we want, but the information is lacking to make a definite determination as a number of Denver-area pathologists have pointed out. I would be willing to accept that it is more likely that the head blow occurred lastly , but that's not necessarily what actually happened. The order of the injuries doesn't even matter for many of the theories of the crime.

It's still a mystery to me that the left side of the head has no
corresponding injury to the blow that occured to the right side of the head. Seems to me that if she was hit while lying on that cement floor that she'd have a contusion on the left face or side of the head. I've always thought she was either lying on something soft like her bed or her head was "in the air" rather than in contact with a hard surface when she was hit by a blunt instrument. The lack of a corresponding facial injury on the left side might be what inspired ST's theory that JBR was swung or pushed into a fixed
object to cause the skull injury. Ya think?

On the other hand, a larger head with the same density will have more mass, hence is more difficult to accelerate and decelerate. Depending on the mass and dimensions, it may be that babies are actually less susceptible to certain types of injuries than older children. There may be some studies comparing babies and older children for various types of injuries.

Maikai mentioned the lack of corresponding damage to the left side of the brain. In this case, the skull was fractured for a large distance on the right side, potentially causing much more complicated motion than most simple descriptions. There are many possible motions that could result in the injuries noted. Once again, without much more detailed micrographs it's really hard to say exactly what happened in terms of brain motion, collisions, etc. This is one of those situations where there is a lot more speculation than there are data.