A. Dr. Spitz I believe was the assignment of Detectives Trujillo, Wickman and possibly Weinheimer.

Q. They didn't tell you that, did they?

A. No, but I'm trying to answer the question.

Q. I know but we have a limited amount of time today but if we don't finish, we can come back and
finish another day. It would be helpful I think if you try to focus and stay on task with my question. I
don't mean to cut you off. You have the right to explain the answer but we can move quicker if we go
directly to answering my question. My question is, sir, did the FBI to your knowledge make any
statement to the Boulder police about the credibility of Dr. Werner Spitz?

A. No, to the contrary. I'm not aware of any such statement. And to the contrary, the detectives
assigned to Dr. Spitz thought the world of him and thought he was entirely professional and credible
and I never heard anything attacking the credibility of Spitz.

Q. At either presentation, it wasn't said?

A. No, DeMuth's presentation, other than attacking virtually everything, the VIP presentation, I took
that Spitz was an esteemed forensic pathologist.

Q. Relying on your fellow officers again, right?

A. Yes.

Spitz may be right about the flashlight being the weapon that caused the head blow, I don't know.

But he is wrong about the stun gun marks - - those aren't the marks from a child lying on a toy or buttons. Other things that didn't cause those marks - trained mosquitos and a staple gun.

for more on the stun gun marks:

http://www.jameson245.com/stungun.htm

We know a few of Patsy's friends played in the Moms Gone Bad softball league. Any chance that the bat found outside belonged to someone on the team?

I assume the BPD looked into the whereabouts of Patsy's bat, if she owned one, and since the Ramsey's have said they don't recognize it and the BPD has never sourced it to the Ramseys...maybe it belonged to one of the Moms Gone Bad.

I still want the investigators to do experiments with fireplace tools to see if that might be the weapon.

In a three-page report, forensics expert Dr. Werner Spitz furnished a logical sequence of events on the night JonBenet was killed.

*First, there had been a manual strangulation, by twisting the collar of the shirt, with the perpetrator's knuckles casuing the neck abrasion. That was consistent with rage-type attack. (My question: where is this twisted collared shirt??)

**Then came the devastating blow to the head, followed by the garrote strangulation. The detectives felt this could have been done either to ensure death ot as part of a staging (note: the detectives felt, not Spitz). Another doctor said that the head was hit with great force and that the cracking skull would have made a tremendous noise. It was agreed that the cord around the throat was applied to a victim who offered little or no resistance, probably as she lay grievously wounded by the head injury. (again, I don't see these words absolutely attributed to Spitz. As for resistance, how much resistance could a little wee girl give?)

***By examining the condition of the pineapple in the stomach and the rate of digestion, Spitz put the time of death "about or before 1 A.M."
(first of all, the stomach was empty, so let's just assume another error on ST's part. The condition of the pineapple in the small intestine indicated by Meyer was that it was "fragments" of a fruit or vegetable material. Steve seems to be missing a condition required for Spitz to reach this 1 A.M. conclusion because Spitz does not know what time JB consumed the material/pineapple. Something's wrong/missing in this statement attributed to Spitz.)

I think Spitz is a respected forensic doctor, yet anyone who follows famous court cases knows that it is not uncommon for two equally famous experts to disgree on the meaning of the evidence before the court.

I also feel that famous experts tend to bask in an aura of infallibility and self-importance that can hinder their understanding of whatever evidence they are examining. They are also human beings that can be swayed at times by others suggestions or circumstances, fatigue, incomplete information, actual lack of expertise in a given field and time constraints.

I don't have any idea if, or how much, these things might be true, or untrue, for Dr. Spitz. Obviously I don't know the man. I can imagine the BPD asking him to choose among a small assortment of possible murder weapons such as: The flashlight, a brick, falling against something, or a golf club. In that case, even I might choose the flashlight as the most probable, or only one possible. If, however, the group included a bat and a tape-wrapped 1/2" pipe with a tee fitting I might think otherwise. I think these doctors are very busy and feel they don't have the time to consider every possible weapon source for each of the victims they study. I think they rely on the investigators to offer them possible weapons, wherever possible, to consider.

At this point, I think it is possible that the Flashlight was used, based more on Dave's research than Spitz's (hey Dave, I lost your email addy, can you email me again?) but I don't think it is a given, not by any means. And I am pretty flumoxed at his suggestion that the (stun gun) marks were caused by "snaps"....I mean that is just plain stupid.

"More likely a weapon of some sort was used. People can swing golf clubs at speeds over 100 mph and baseball bats at speeds in excess of 75 mph, respectively. .... It is also the case that using a weapon allows for the attacker to direct a deadly impulse to a specific area .... The weapon was also probably somewhat long to achieve a very high speed, not as short as a flashlight, for example. It also had to be relatively hard to achieve a very short deceleration (deformation)time."