One of the most controversial aspects of the Bundy murders has to do with the coroner's report on the victims.
After viewing the autopsy, Det. Phil Vannatter saw that the length and width of one of Ron's stab wounds seemed to match the blade of a German Stiletto knife that O.J. purchased shortly before the murders (the wound straight trough Ron Goldman's neck that punctured his ear on the other side). He also noticed that the blow to the back of Nicole's head could have come from the heavy, bronze-capped heal of the Stiletto. He purchased a replica of the knife from Ross Cutlery where O.J. bought his knife and the prosecutors proceeded to build their case against O.J. around their certainty that they would find the murder weapon before they made the arrest.
Working for the defense, one of the world's leading pathologists, Dr. Michael Baden, discovered errors in Dr. Irwin Golden's autopsies that put the prosecution's theory of the murder weapon in doubt. Golden did not check to see if the blade of the German Stiletto actually matched any of the wounds in either body other than it's length. He also missed the fact that the blow to the back of Nicole's head was severe enough to cause brain damage. However, Baden often stated that such errors are common and all-in-all Dr. Golden did an excellent job.
By the time Marcia Clark learned that O.J.'s German Stiletto was found in his house unsullied with the oil used for sharpening it still on the blade, she was already committed to presenting it in court as the the type of knife that O.J used to kill Ron and Nicole. The prosecution could no longer prove a connection between O.J. and the knife that they still believed was the murder weapon. They couldn't determine where that knife came from. They never found out where it went. And they could not prove that it was ever in O.J.'s possession. Worst of all, Dr. Golden made repeated references in his autopsy report to stab wounds that appeared to have been made by two types of knives, wounds that could have been made with either knife and one knife consistent with all of the wounds.
To salvage what they could from Dr. Golden's autopsy, the prosecutors
labeled Golden
incompetent and brought in his boss,
Dr. Lakshmanan
Sathyavagiswaran, to reinterpret his results. Dr. Sathyavagiswaran, who
consented to being called by his easier to pronounce first name, stuck with the
prosecution's story of a single killer using a single knife similar to the German Stiletto
to create all of the stab wounds in both bodies.
Some of those wounds were characteristic of a double-edged knife (two pointed ends) and some were characteristic of a single-edged knife (one pointed end and one flat end). Dr. Sathyavagiswaran argued that the long, thin, tapered point of the single-edged Stiletto could have penetrated the skin in such a way as to leave two pointed ends. These wounds with a front to back orientation (killer facing victim) were predominately on the left side of Ron's body suggesting a right-handed killer with a Stiletto. But the stab wounds showing a flat end with a back to front orientation (killer in back of victim) were also predominately on Ron's left side suggesting a left-handed killer with a different knife.
Some experts, chief among them Dr. Henry Johnson, concluded that Dr. Golden's autopsy report showed clear evidence of two killers. Dr. Johnson went so far as to produce a tape to support his argument that there were two killers, a left-hander with a Buck knife and a right hander with a dagger. However, neither knife he used in his demonstration matched the width or the thickens of the stab wounds in either body. He discounted the blunt force wounds to right-rear Nicole head and the left-rear of Ron's.
Dr. Johnson knew nothing about a military kill technique that could easily account for one man with a different kind of knife in each hand rendering both Ron and Nicole helpless in two seconds or less and also account for all of the wounds on both victims. The autopsy report on Ron Goldman is the key. The orientation of the sharp knife edge was up and the paths of the stab wounds were also up suggesting an underhand attack -- the way the military teaches its men to use a knife. Other aspects of the killings, including the selection of the ambush sight and the areas of Ron's body that his assailant attacked were also characteristic of a military kill.
Missing from every interpretation of the autopsy report was a credible candidate for the knife that the killer used to inflict the wound in Ron's left thigh close to the femoral artery, the deep stab wound in his chest and the one that punctured his abdominal aorta. The answer was a Swiss Army knife. The man who came up with the answer--but not the knife--was an ex-Marine named Mark Fuhrman. --Jasper