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From: Jasper
Date: 2/6/02
Time: 7:27:55 PM
Charlie,
I don't know how to say this without sounding like I'm beating a dead horse, but the shoe size was also crucial. You can't frame a man with shoes that he couldn't have put his feet into. Moreover, they had to be a comfortable fit for the killer to maneuver properly and easy to measure with the six-inch rulers that homicide detectives and criminalists carry with them in the field.
The table that Miss. Marple provided shows you why the same man wears shoes of different sizes using the same correct U.S. standard (mine range from size 11 1/2 to 12 1/2) depending on the style of the shoe. Some shoes have thin walls between the inside (where the foot goes) and the outside with toes and heels that extend over the toe and heel of the sole (where the shoe makes contact with the ground). These would be the smallest size measured from heel to toe on the outside. Some have thick walls with soles and heels that extend beyond the upper skin of the shoe. These are the largest sizes. The rest fall somewhere in between.
And yes, Charlie, I do have a pair of size-12 shoes that measure 12 1/2 in the same style as another pair of shoes made by the same manufacturer that are also size 12. My son bought them for me - and they don't fit. The shoes that the killer wore had to have the same inside and outside characteristics as a pair of shoes that did fit O.J.'s feet. O.J.'s Reeboks were a perfect match.
O.J.'s Reeboks also had something in common with the killer's shoes that you don't find on all rubber-soled shoes. They had a relatively sharp border going completely around the soles and the heels. A complicating factor in measuring the sole and heel of a shoe from a shoeprint is whether or not the edges are rounded or offset from the interior tread pattern. The border around the bloody shoeprints on Bundy made them ideal for measuring. The fact that the toe of one shoeprint sits right on the "T" formed by the grout of four intersecting tiles, makes for an ideal photograph.
If you look at the photos of the shoeprints in Fuhrman's book you can see that there is an ideal photo for every point about the sole and the heels that you might want to make. One gives a great representation of the pattern on the sole. Another does likewise with the heel (within the same 8" radius of the envelope, the cap, the gloves and the blood drops between the glove and the heelprint). What you get when you combine all of the pictures of the shoeprints is a composite that leaves out nothing.
Take a close look at that heelprint next to the small constellation of evidence at Goldman's feet. As Miss Marple noted, blood could not have been on the sole of that shoe when the heelprint was made (rubber-stamped). The only thing that keeps it from being "too perfect" is the heart-shaped pool of blood covering part of it, which the killer could have easily painted in by dragging his finger, his knife blade or a twig through the nearby pool of blood. In other words, it appears to me to be a contrived imperfection…just like the contrived imperfections in Fuhrman's notes. --Jasper