Let's consider how the reported confession by David Elder fits with the evidence in this case. The facts include: Elder was a heavy user of crystal meth. He was violent and has a criminal record. He was homeless. He spent significant time on Hunsaker Canyon Rd. during the Fall of 2005. He "stole anything he could get his hands on". He was seen on Hunsaker Canyon the morning of Pamela's murder with his skateboard. He was reported to be high on crystal meth the morning of the murder. The day after the murder he confessed to killing Pamela and claimed he used his skateboard as a weapon.
Methamphetamine users often display multiple behavior changes. These individuals are frequently violent, bizarre acting, excessively anxious, confused and unable to sleep. Psychotic features are very common as an effect of this drug as well. These individuals can show paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, mood disturbances, delusions, homicidal thoughts, suicidal thoughts, and out of control rages. These behavioral changes can persist for years after drug use is discontinued. An acute methamphetamine psychosis has been described in the medical literature. This is characterized by extreme paranoia, well-formed delusions, hypersensitivity to environmental stimuli, stereotyped "tweaking" behavior, panic, extreme fearfulness, and a high potential for violence. Source
Pamela was murdered on Saturday October 15th, 2005. Her autopsy was not performed until the following Monday. No cuase of death was reported in the media until after Pamela's autopsy. David Elder confessed on Sunday October 16th that he killed Pamela by beating her to death.
It is important to note that while Pamela was struck with several objects found at the scene, the actual murder weapon was never identified. The prosecution opined that Scott Dyleski went into the home armed with a rock. David Elder claimed he used his skateboard as a weapon. Below is a picture of a typical skateboard. After that, let's take a look at the testimony of the medical examiner concerning the injury to Pamela.
Quote: The shapes that you see beginning here were on the left side of the head; but in general, you can see on the right side of the head the same kind of shapes, on the back of the head the same kind of shapes. All represent lacerations. Quote: And that would be a good example; was that caused by one blow that tore the ear and tore the scalp beneath it, or was that caused by two separate blows? I can't say. That's why the count has to be a little bit rough. But these were all lacerations. They were all crushing or tearing-type injuries. They had abrasion or scraping around the edges. Again, a different type of blunt force there.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. Well, a simple linear laceration could be caused by an object like this pointer. All right. And if I were to hit myself really hard in the head with this pointer, what you might expect to see is a line of crushing and tearing. That depends on how hard I hit myself, but it might even expose bone. This is is a relatively smooth, regular object. If an object were more irregular, then I think these injuries were caused by a more irregular object. The striking surface wouldn't necessarily be uniform like this. And if the striking surface were irregular, that can leave irregular injury, not only in terms of the shape but also in terms of the pattern on the skin. And the pattern on the skin here involved central crushing or tearing. And as you can't really see on the diagram but as you will see on the photographs, I hope, there's also redness and scraping around the edges of the laceration. That's the abrasion component. And, in fact, in between many of these injuries at different places on the head, there was abrasion of the skin in between lacerations. So it's both kinds of blunt-force injury, I think, speaking to an irregular striking object. Quote: All right. On the back of the head, again, there was the same kind of pattern of abraded laceration. So crushing or tearing type injury, multiple different shapes, and characterized by that scraping red injury around the edges of all of them. I said on the back: To the occipital protuberance, which is the lump on the back of the head, up to the top of the head, there were at least 11 different lacerations in that space. Quote: So here is the left side now. And that was in the space extending from the top of the head to the hole for the ear there, beginning on the frontal bone right here and extending back to the occipital bone, which is a bone on the back of the head. So there were at least seven injuries there. The largest of them I measured was L-shaped. That would be this one right here, above the -- here. And that L-shape injury measured 2 x 1 inch. Quote: Q. Were these, the nature of these injuries on the left side of the head, in terms of the irregular character of the laceration coupled with an associated abrasion, the same as they were described on the right side of the head?
A. They were. In fact, the injuries to the left, to the right, and to the back of the head were all in that respect. Similar in that respect. Quote: Q. Thank you. You started to talk about, I think, the extremities on the left hand. It was actually in response to my question about the left shoulder. Was there a pattern -- and I'm looking at page 3 of your report, basically in the middle of the page -- a pattern of contused abrasions on the left shoulder?
A. All right. I see where you are looking. And what I was talking about there was the superior or top of the left shoulder. Again, it's not going to show well on the diagram since they are two-dimensional, but on the top of the left shoulder there was a pattern of contused abrasion that measured 4 1/2 x 2 inches.
Q. Thank you. At the base of Ms. Vitale's neck, did you observe an abrasion that had a certain shape to it?
A. This would be on the back of the neck. And on the back of the neck was a series of red abrasions. They formed a V-shaped pattern. The largest, the largest of these red abrasions -- and they were all V-shaped; the largest of them measured 3/4ths of an inch in greatest dimension.
Q. Let me ask you about that. You have described some of the blows to the head and the shape. Did you see more than one, either injury or series ofinjuries, that had either a "V" shape or a "Y" shape to it?
A. There were -- there were multiple injuries of the head shaped. I talked, for example, about "V" shapes on the face. There were "V" shapes, for example, on the scalp. There was a "V" shape here on the back. "Y" shape, for example, this laceration on the scalp.
Q. And you are referring to the left side of her head?
A. Correct. So roughly right angles, if you want to look at it that way. So there were a lot of shapes. Again, the challenge that I have is not knowing if some of those injuries represent overlap or not. Not knowing if that represents truly a shape of the object or perhaps intersecting injuries. You just can't tell postmortem. Quote: On the right leg, there was an impact-type abrasion on the lateral or side surface of the hip. I described it as trapezoidal, so there is a geometric shape to it measuring 1 3/4 x 3/4. Quote: On the front of the right thigh, a dark red abrasion with surrounding purple bruise form a "T" shape. That would be in the rightmost image, the front image on 33B. There's a "T" shape on the front of the right thigh. That measured 1 1/8 x 1/4 inch. The arm of the "T" measured 1 3/4 inches. So there was some size to that one. Quote: There's that peculiar right-angle-type pattern or F-shaped injury on the right thigh Quote: So it's a geometric shape. It's a peculiar shape, but it's an impact abrasion. Quote: Now we're looking at the right leg and the knee and the lower leg specifically. And the same kind of pattern, bruising; and then within that bruising, discrete injury representing abrasions for the most part. Quote: Another possibility is that there were multiple applications of force with an irregular object. Quote: A. It shows a couple of different features. One of them is it's not a straight line, so there's some zigzag to it. Number two, there's abrasion, but it's not regular in the sense that there's more on the top of the wound than there is on the bottom. So to my eye, this speaks to an instrument that has an irregular striking surface. Something like the yardstick or the pointer wouldn't work. That would give a more symmetrical pattern. This is not symmetrical, but it's a nice example of an abraded laceration. Quote: A. This is a view of the top of the head and, once again, a pattern of abraded laceration. The injury right in the center --excellent -- shows that abraded pattern around the edges very nicely, with also bruising. So again, they are irregular, they are different shapes, but they are all variations on the same pattern; crushing or tearing with abrasion around the edges. Quote: The whole thing taken together. Right angling or so in the upper right-hand corner, angle in the lower left-hand corner. It's okay. It's big, but it's rectangular. Quote: There's also some angle to it. So in that sense, it's reminiscent to that pattern on the neck, or even the one on the hip.
