Everyone expected fireworks in the autopsy results. Remember? We all thought the autopsy results were going to blow the lid off this case. I expected possible chemical processing of the bodies and/or dismemberment. But the only anomalies in the autopsy results were elevated [but apparently normal] alcohol levels in Shan’ann’s cadaver, and a damaged frenulum in Bella’s case.
Later on Dr. Phil made an “error” on his show, when he spoke about broken bones. At 4:47 in the clip below he says:
“He had to break their bones to get ’em in there…”
To demonstrate his argument, Dr. Phil used this graphic:
It seems pretty straightforward right? The width of the hatch is 8 inches, the width of Bella’s shoulder’s was 9.5 inches, ergo to force her body into the hatch Watts had to break her bones.
According to the Discovery Documents, the “smallest width” [presumably of the shoulders or hips] was measured on Ceecee’s body at 9.5 inches.
This is the width of that overlap:
It’s about 38 mm, just under 4 centimeters or less than half the horizontal width of your debit or credit card. It’s basically as wide as two to three average-sized adult fingers side-by-side.
The Discovery Documents and autopsy reports are surprisingly vague about the measurements, and are also unexpectedly vague about the dimensions of the oil tanks and hatches. There are no diagrams. There’s very little detail.
Even so, it doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to see that by slightly elevating a horizontal structure of a particular width [say the hip or shoulder skeletal bones] through a circular hole of fixed width, the total width can be slightly reduced. When people move furniture through doors or manoeuvre them up and down staircases, this lifting or lowering to alter width is routine applied.
This manoeuvre can be described mathematically as follows:
By raising the shoulder or hip on one side by about 33 degrees [or approximately 5.1 inches above horizontal], a small body could theoretically be fitted through a small hole without breaking anything.
The Discovery Documents and autopsy reports are silent on Bella’s minimum skeletal width. Let’s assume it to be inch wider [which is a completely uninformed, and uneducated guess]. The lifting to reduce the additional inch, once again, isn’t impossible.
The fact that both children’s bodies were dumped with their clothes on, suggests as tight as the fit was, it wasn’t so tight to necessitate the removing of the clothes [the fabric remaining in place could cost a quarter of an inch or so].
Dr. Phil’s illustration is also misleading, because the girls did not have their arms stretched out horizontally, but lifted above their heads. In this position it would also be easily to lower one shoulder through the orifice, and then the other, rather than trying to force both through simultaneously.
Although it seems possible to push both bodies through without breaking bones, the only way to verify this would be to use a model skeleton [to scale], and re-enact trying to place the skeletal through the hole. Theoretically easy to do, by practically not quite as straightforward. Another option is a computer animated model using a scaled skeleton and the thief hatch to scale.
Any volunteers?
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