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February 11, 2000McDonnell suicide scenario unlikely, say three expert witnessesMurder trial of Cynthia McDonnell continues in Leelanau CountyBy PATRICK SULLIVANRecord-Eagle staff writer LELAND - A murder suspect who dreamed of writing murder mysteries got a lesson in forensic science in her fourth day of trial on charges that she murdered her husband. Two forensic pathologists testified that it was unlikely Cynthia McDonnell's husband committed suicide as she has claimed. McDonnell is charged in the shooting death of her husband, Daniel, at their Bingham Township home on Dec. 31, 1998. McDonnell originally told police her husband was killed in a robbery, but later said she tried to cover up her husband's suicide to protect her children and collect a $300,000 life insurance policy. She said she took his revolver from the suicide scene, moved his right arm slightly, but otherwise left his body laying in bed where she found it. Prosecutor Clarence Gomery McDonnell called three expert witnesses Thursday who said that story is unlikely. Gomery contends that McDonnell shot her husband as he lay in bed. McDonnell's husband was found lying face down on his stomach with his left arm underneath him grasping a small pillow and his right arm at his side. A pillow case stained with blood and gun powder was on his head. Witnesses said that he could not have moved on his own at all after receiving a shot to the head. "When you get shot in the back of the head with a medium caliber projectile, it's lights out," said Dr. Jon Thogmartin, a forensic pathologist from Palm Beach County, Fla., who reviewed the autopsy. Even moving an arm from above your head to beside your waste after suffering a gun blast to the head would be impossible, he said, because a simple movement of the arm requires coordinated and complex muscle movements that are controlled by the brain. Thogmartin said several other factors made it unlikely that the victim shot himself in the back of the head, including - the trajectory of the bullet into the skull from the lower left toward the upper right, the point of entry at the back of the head, and the likelihood that the bullet was shot more than two feet away by someone holding a pillow. Only if the victim palmed the revolver over the cylinder using his thumb on the trigger - as opposed to holding the grip and using his index finger - could he have used his right hand to fire the weapon, he said. But that would have burned his hands with powder and soot that explodes from the cylinder gap when the weapon is fired. No gun powder traces were found on his hands, several witnesses have testified. As for his left arm, a blood pattern expert for the Michigan State Police said the blood around McDonnell's body indicated his left arm had been under his body at the time of the shooting. "The other evidence that was presented to me just compounded the case against suicide," Thogmartin said. Having performed hundreds of suicide autopsies, Thogmartin got laughs from the jury when he said: "I've never had one where the gun disappeared on me before." McDonnell told police that she ditched the .38 revolver along the side of a rural road hours after the shooting after making an excuse to pull over while driving home from a shopping trip with her daughter. Police have searched that stretch of road with dogs, metal detectors, and on their hands and knees, but have found no weapon. McDonnell owned writer's guides on murder and forensic science and, according to one witness, bragged at a party the night of the death that someone could get away with murder easily in northern Michigan. |
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