From: mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Subject: Re: Oswald's Photograph
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Applied Upyerstemmatey Corp
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 19:45:00 GMT

In article <schuck.711734750@sfu.ca>, Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca writes...

>Mitchell S Todd    > 
>Bruce Schuck (me) >>

>>>You are misrepresenting Roffman. He said the fragment had to come from
>>>a lead bullet because the copper jacket is *too hard* to shave off as
>>>it enters the skull.

>>	*He* said? Since when is Roffman an expert on bullet wounds?

>I should have said that Roffman quotes Forensic Pathologist Halpert
>Fillinger:

>    You can appreciate the fact that a jacketed projectile is going to
>    leave very little on the bone margins because it is basically a
>    hardened jacket, and it's designed so that it will not scrape off
>    when it goes through a steel barrel. One can appreciate the fact 
>    that going through bone, which is not as hard as steel, may etch
>    or scratch it, but it's not going to peel off much metal. In
>    contrast to this a softer projectile might very well leave little
>    metallic residues around the margins.

	Funny. I was generally under the impression that *all* bullets
	were designed so that they would not scrape off while travelling	
	down a steel barrel. Sarcasm aside, who would make a bullet
	that left pieces of metal in the barrel?

	Actually, even hunting bullets are jacketed. In the case of a
	soft-nose, the jacket extends from the base to just a few
	millimeters behind the head, exposing the core at the tip of the
	bullet. A hollow point is fully jacketed, save for a small hole
	in the very tip of the bullet. Unjacketed ammunition is quite
	rare, and I've never fired any, nor can I find anyone who has.
	The size and shape of the fragment in question --roughly, a 6.5mm
	sphere-- represents something far more than the small shavings
	that Fillinger indicates. 

	From looking through a decade's worth of forensics journals,
	I have yet to find any articles directly applicable to 
	the question in hand. I'm still looking.

>He also quotes Rowland Long from his book "Physician and the Law"

>    Not infrequently a collar shaped fragment of lead is shaved off
>    around the wound of entrance and is found embedded in the
>    surrounding scalp tissues.
	
	This, however, does not apply to the problem. The fragment is
	not "collar-shaped" in any way.

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