Jim, why not first tell me what answers you are hoping to see that you think will not only convince you but convince others that Jim Van de Velde doesn't fit some sort of arbitrary profile of a murderer. My guess is what answers you are hoping to see is not what others might hope to see. What you are asking is totally subjective and impossible to "prove". Heck, lie detector tests are the closest thing we have to what some might call objective testing and that's still a hotly contested methodology based both on the technology and the person interpreting the results.
Besides, didn't we all agree that just about anyone could be a killer under the right circumstances? This is why our legal system is based on the presumption of innocence and not guilt. We need evidence. We need a motive. We need a scenario that makes sense.
You did a great job figuring out the knife had to be carbon steel. Now we know the blade is 4-5 inches and non-serrated. Is that type of material used in a kitchen knife? No. Does that tell us something? I think so. I think it says that whoever did this didn't set out to kill anyone that night. If they had, I think they'd have brought along a much bigger knife. It tells me that someone probably didn't grab a knife out of the kitchen drawer before heading out; they probably routinely carried it.
Can we speculate on the type of person using the knife by the way it was used? For example, I normally think of throat slashes as "final" wounds, often singular wounds. In other words: "The victim was found face down on the floor, her throat had been slashed." End of story. Not so here. Can you envision a killer stabbing someone 16 times in the head, supposedly in a rage, yet somehow he decides after all that, gee, how about one in the throat for good measure? Sounds like some punk got off 15 blows in a matter of seconds, many superficial, the knife got stuck or started to loosen too much to be effective, and he just stopped and finished the job the old fashioned way... a cut to the throat that probably bled profusely, and freaked the person out enough to just stop right there.
- Jeff |
