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From: Jasper
Date: 9/12/03
Time: 12:44:33 AM
Remote Name: 68.73.201.243
Charlie,
About Golden’s measurement of Nicole’s height…
I can think of another possibility for the error. I didn’t give it much weight because of my background in making precise measurements and reasonably accurate estimates when I can’t make the measurement directly. This might make more sense to you....
I assumed that Golden’s experience would have given him the same measuring capabilities I got from decades on my job. His experience might also have given him some lazy habits. When Golden got the body it was in a fetal poison. Her back was bent. Her legs were drawn up. Rigor mortis had set in. No matter how good you think you are, you can’t make an accurate measurement of length under these circumstances. You have to straighten out the bent portions of the body until it lays flat or measure each segment of the legs and bend in the back individually and add them up. If Golden did not do either of these things, he could easily have been off by three inches or more.
The same thing could have happened with the body of John Wilkes Booth and Lee. Harvey Oswald. This could be a common error among medical examiners which gets reinforced though repetition.
I was in auto design for over ten years before I discovered a measuring error that the best design sculptors in the business had been making from day one. It was part of a standard operation. It got the job done quickly, with results that were not questioned until the final stages of design and engineering approval. I noticed that the error was consistent and tracked it to the source. It never got fixed because the margin of error was small and the error itself got adopted as the correct version of the design.
Like everybody else, I am a captive of my experiences. I could be projecting something in my experience that doesn’t exist with medical examiners in general. Then again, how many times does the issue of a corpse’s overall length emerge as a problem? It might ONLY occur in high profile cases when somebody outside of the autopsy room questions it. --Jasper