Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [115]
Pointing to a photograph, he continued. “Here we can see that the skin of the penis has been literally removed or carved off,” Peretti said. “And what we have here is the shaft of the penis without the skin on it. And all around it we have all these cutting, gouging wounds. The scrotal sac and testes are missing.”
Christopher’s skull was fractured, as were the other boys’, but there was an additional fracture on his skull, not found on the other two: a round, quarter-inch hole had been literally “punched out” of his skull, just above where it joined the spine, where, Peretti said, something had been literally “punched into the brain.” It was a dramatic statement, and one that bore no relation to anything Jessie had said. But no explanation was sought—or offered—for the remarkable injury.
As the questioning continued, Peretti also reported that he had not found any mosquito bites on the three children. That absence had troubled Lax and the rest of the defense teams from the beginning, because of the numerous reports about how thick the mosquitoes had been in the woods on the night the boys disappeared and the association of mosquitoes with blood. But having asked the question, Davis quickly moved on. “Now, Doctor,” he said, “I have noted in your autopsy report that there’s no mention as to time of death. Did you deal with that issue, or did you mention that in your autopsy report?”
“No, I didn’t,” Peretti answered.
Estimating the time of death is an important part of a medical examiner’s work, and Peretti offered a only weak explanation for his failure to report one. “Determining the time of death is more of an art, not a science,” he said. “Realistically, it is not possible, unless you were there and you witnessed the person who died.” He said the best anyone could provide would be an estimate, but in this case, not even that had been possible.
“Now, Doctor,” Prosecutor Davis said, “you said that part of your job is to prepare an autopsy report. In this particular case, were you particularly cautious about who you released that information to and when you released it?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Normally, where do your reports go to, as far as who gets a copy of it?”
“What we do in the crime lab,” Peretti explained, “is, the day we do the autopsy, we issue a sheet. It is called a ‘Cause of Death’ sheet. This sheet automatically goes to the prosecutor of the county of death, the coroner, and the investigative agencies handling the death investigation.”
Davis asked, “Did you kind of change that procedure a little bit in this case, in order to insure that the information obtained in your autopsy report wasn’t disseminated in the general public?”
“Well, what I did was—normally what we do…for example, if I do someone who died of a heart attack, I would write on it ‘heart attack, coronary artery disease.’ But because this case generated such intense media coverage, and there was rumors—a lot of rumors—people calling for all of these circumstances, I elected on the Cause of Death sheet just to put the causes of death on the sheet. I did not say anything about any of the injuries. I didn’t tell the prosecutor. I didn’t tell the police. And I didn’t tell the coroner. I just kept it to myself.”
Lax, who sat listening to the testimony, was astonished. A standard element of crime lab reporting—information that was usually “automatically” sent out—Peretti had “just kept” to himself. Lax wondered how many deviations from normal procedure could arise in a single case.
Newspapers the next day reported that Damien had spoken briefly with reporters during a break in the proceedings, before his attorneys “led him” away. The exchange was long enough, however, that Damien had managed to describe the charges against him as “bullshit” and to observe that