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Doctoring the evidence
"It
is awfully important when this girl died," Crown prosecutor
Glenn Hays told the jurors. "You can take with safety that
this girl was killed from 7:00 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday,
June 9." Pathologist John Penistan clearly implied to the
jurors that he based his precise conclusion on the time of
death on his two-hour analysis of Lynne's body Thursday night.
But
"Until you are dead" details the strong evidence
that suggests Penistan doctored his evidence on both the time
of death and the contents of the stomach to help the police
and the prosecution.
Cpl.
Hank Sayeau was present and he carefully logged every minute
he received evidence from the doctors: 8:40 p.m., hair from
scalp; 8:58 p.m. jar containing contents of stomach; 9:27
p.m., fingernail scrapings.
Between
9:00 and 9:30 p.m., as Penistan was wrapping up his autopsy,
Sayeau made the following inscription, which presumably could
only have come from the doctors: "Cause of death-Strangulation
Evidence of rape."
Nowhere
in the pages from Sayeau's notebook that evening does any
reference to a time of death appear. It is inconceivable that
the OPP officer in charge of gathering exhibits in a murder
investigation would fail to note such a crucial lead if the
doctors did provide it.
To
get more analysis, Sayeau took a jar containing Lynne's stomach
contents to the Attorney General's laboratory the next day,
Friday, June 12. A handwritten note from the biologist at
the laboratory who received the jar contains this telling
remark: "Found: 1:50 pm Thurs. June 11 Time Death-Path-maybe
40 hours."
"Found"
was a reference to when Lynne's body was discovered. "Path"
was short for 'pathologist,' John Penistan. If the police
were telling the laboratory experts that Penistan's guess
for the time of death was forty hours before the body was
found, that would put the time of death at sometime between
9:00 and 10:00 p.m.
Read
more about doctoring evidence in Chapter 30 of "Until you
are Dead".
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