Robert Jones

By: Robert C. Jones My October 19, 2008 essay was constructed to comply with the Unplug custom of writing a Halloween piece in October, and the story it related was fiction. It was based on historic facts, however, in that the character, Catherine Eddowes, was a real person who was believed to have been murdered by Jack the Ripper in 1888. Many of the wounds on her face and body were incised, and incisions are one of the subjects of this piece.

Incised wounds, including homicidal, suicidal and accidental wounds, are made with sharp instruments such as knives, razors and broken glass; and they slice neatly and completely through the skin, leaving edges that, in large incisions, tend to fold to the side, often creating a gaping wound. If victims are cut through folds of skin, their wounds might appear jagged. If a wound is caused by a chopping motion, its edges will often have been abraded by friction if they are rolled inwardly by a blade. If inflicted with a heavy instrument such as a hatchet or meat cleaver, chop wounds can be deep and can detectably damage underlying bones. As might be imagined, such wounds are rarely indicative of a suicide.

Depending on the location and depth of an incised wound, it can result in serious bleeding, an air embolism and death. Incised wounds are often inflicted with a swiping motion, so they tend to be longer than they are deep and deeper at the end initially cut. Which end of a nonvertical swipe is deeper often indicates whether an attacker is left-handed or right-handed. If an attacker is behind a victim, incised wounds are typically inflicted on the neck. In fact, a large number of homicidal incisions appear on victim’s necks. If an attacker is right-handed, such wounds typically begin near a victim’s left ear, curve downwardly and then upwardly toward the right ear. Left-handed attackers leave an oppositely extending incision. Suicidal wounds on necks follow the same general patterns. An attack from the front of a victim usually produces incisions that are more angled from the horizontal and are shorter.

Defensive wounds are often incisions located on a victim’s hands and arms. Incised wounds are usually fatal only when suicidal or homicidal and not when accidental. Suicidal wounds are most often found on wrists, and they often include initial, experimental, “hesitation” wounds. Assault wounds are not likely to include hesitation wounds or repeated slashes at the same location. Unless one falls on a pitchfork or the like, accidental wounds are usually single and are likely to be located nearly anywhere. Since incised wounds have no distinctive width or depth, they offer little or no indication of what kind of weapon inflicted them, except that it was sharp.

Incisions are often confused with lacerations, but they are not the same. Just yesterday, there was a main character on a CSI program that referred several times to incisions on a corpse’s throat as lacerations. Unlike incisions, which are usually inflicted by sharp objects, lacerations are the results of blunt trauma splitting, gashing or tearing the skin. Skin located over bone is especially prone to lacerations. If you have watched a prizefight or two, you have probably seen lacerations inflicted by a blow above a fighter’s eyebrow. You will also have probably noticed that such wounds can cause substantial bleeding. Lacerations of the scalp caused by some objects can appear to be incisions, but careful examination will reveal that crushing and bruising are present, that the wound edges are at least a bit ragged, that hair might be forced into surrounding tissue and/or that some uncut tissue might span the wound.

My research has indicated that even medical doctors do not always know or respect the difference between incisions and lacerations. To some, the difference might seem trivial, but that difference can be crucial during courtroom testimony. Someone found guilty of inflicting a laceration with a roundhouse punch might be made to pay damages, perform community service or attend an anger management class. Someone found guilty of incising another with a knife could well end up viewing the world through a barred window for a number of years…if his or her cell happens to have a window.

Unlike incised wounds, penetrating wounds are usually deeper than they are wide. A wound that extends into an organ is referred to as being a penetrating wound. If it extends completely through an organ, it is referred to as a perforating, or transfixing, wound. Penetrating wounds sometimes offer indications of the configuration of the weapon that inflicted them. A thin, double-edged blade leaves a slit having two sharp ends. A thin, single-edged blade often causes a wound with one sharp end and a wider opposite end. A thicker, single-edged blade might leave an end configuration known as a “fishtail” caused by a laceration of that end as the wider edge of the blade stretched the skin. A blade passing through bone such as a skull or breastbone often leaves a fairly accurate indication of its cross section. If a victim is struggling when stabbed, or an assailant twists the stabbing implement, the resulting wound could be distorted and not provide much help in estimating the configuration of the implement used.

A stab wound is usually done with something sharp and flat such as a knife. A needle puncture would be done by something sharp and thin such as, obviously, a needle. A puncture wound is typically small and made by a sharply pointed instrument; but it could be made by a more blunt instrument such as a screwdriver, a tooth or a wooden, vampire-pegging stake.

One might assume that the depth of a stab wound would provide a fair indication of the force applied. Once a sharply tipped instrument has penetrated the skin, however, it takes surprisingly little effort to force it deeper. Of course, if the instrument strikes a bone, its continued progress would require the application of some additional amount of oomph; and extracting a knife from a clothed body can sometimes require a surprising amount of force.

Extra facts:

A knife need not be very large to inflict a fatal wound. Even something as small as a penknife is capable of penetrating a heart or an abdominal aorta. The amount of external bleeding is not always an indicator of the seriousness of a stab wound. Internal bleeding can quickly result in death.

After death, and someone’s heart stops circulating blood, there will be no accumulation of blood cells and serum at the site of a postmortem abrasion. As a result, such injuries display a light-brown – rather than a normally red – appearance. A postmortem abrasion might, however, appear somewhat red if it is incurred in an area of lividity. In the latter case, an exploration of underlying tissue will reveal no hemorrhaging.

Estimates indicate that 71 percent of stab victims and 49 percent of gunshot victims do not gasp a few last words and drop dead but remain alive for at least five minutes.

For some reason, I have never heard the words “jugular” or “jugular vein” mentioned as plurals; and I have found them written as plurals only in medical papers and textbooks. In popular usage, someone is always “going for, or slashing, THE jugular. As most persons are aware, arteries direct blood from the heart and veins direct it back toward the heart. Among the veins, there are interior, exterior and anterior jugular veins.