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What else can be observed about the bloodstains?
The bloodstains, as forensic scientists and chemists now know, are from real human blood.
See: How do we know that the bloodstains are from real blood?
From forensic observation we see that the stains are from real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. When the stains formed, the man was lying on his back with his feet near one end of the fourteen foot long, banner shaped piece of cloth.
The cloth was drawn over the top of his head and loosely draped over his face and the full length of his body down to his feet. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum.
Some forensic experts think that can identify that some of the blood flow was venous and some was arterial. Most of the blood flowed while the man was alive and it remained on his body. There is some blood that clearly oozed from a dead body, as was the case for stains resulting from a wound in the man’s chest. Here, the blood, with a deeper color and more viscous consistency, as is the case for blood from a postmortem wound, ran from a chest wound, flowed around the side of the body and formed a puddle about the man’s lower back.
Mingled with the blood from the chest wound are stains from a clear bodily fluid, perhaps pericardial fluid or fluid from the pleural sac or pleural cavity. This suggests that the man received a postmortem stabbing wound in the vicinity of the heart.
See: How do we know that the bloodstains are from real blood?
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© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
