Iago (August) Discussion

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Re: Interesting REading

From: Jasper
Date: 8/30/03
Time: 1:10:39 AM
Remote Name: 68.73.59.222

Comments

Charlie,

As a homicide investigator my brother was on the scene of many grisly murders and suicides. The smell always made him sick. He didn’t show it and he probably didn’t tell anyone except me.

No soldier I was with in combat EVER mentioned the smell of blood and I can’t recall any doctors, nurses or emergency workers mentioning it. Cops like Riske must have seen more bloody traffic accidents and assaults than most people but you don’t hear them talking about the smell, either. I can’t believe that it’s because they didn’t experience it.

Maybe some people are more sensitive to that particular odor than others. Maybe some people don’t recognize the sensation deep in their nostrils as an odor. Maybe the sight of butchered human flesh is so much worse for some people that the odor becomes less noticeable. Maybe they smell it but it doesn’t affect them enough emotionally to recall it. Maybe the circumstance in which they encounter it is all-important.

When I was riding a “combat high” and I knew I smelled the enemy’s blood, I loved it. Not many people will admit that but it’s more common than you might think. There is no greater high than a combat high and I suspect that the smell of enemy blood or just the anticipation of it is part of the sensation. Your sense of time vanishes. You feel like a god. You don’t want it to end. That’s what I think happened to the Bundy killer, which is why the killings took so long. It was an ideal ambush situation. It should have been over in seconds.

A person passing close by in the aftermath of such bloodletting doesn’t have the adrenaline boost to his senses that someone directly involved in the event would have but I still think the smell would be overpowering. The fact that Boztepe and Rasmussen failed to mention it in their testimony doesn’t mean they didn’t smell it. They didn’t walk by the scene. The dog took them straight to it. –Jasper


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