Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1999-02-18

DR KLEPP: When a person has just eaten a meal and the food is now in the stomach, on opening the stomach would appeared to be undigested.  One can on occasion actually identify what the person has eaten, one might for instance see rice particles or peas or meat.  I don't in this specific instance exactly say what was in the stomach, but it appeared undigested, in other words it looked as though it had just been swallowed.  Had it had a more fluid consistency and had undergone digestion, I would have called it partially digested food.

MR RICHARD: What are the various answers that you could have put to that question 17, stomach and contents?

DR KLEPP: Well it can either be undigested, partially digested, it could be empty, it might have contained blood, it could have contained mucous, it all depends what's there.  It was actually undigested in this gentlemen.

MR RICHARD: Now when does the digestive process stop?

DR KLEPP: Stop or start?

MR RICHARD: Stop.

DR KLEPP: Well it would have stopped in this gentleman when he died.

MR RICHARD: Not at the time of the gunshot?

DR KLEPP: It's a difficult issue, I've actually brought some references about it, that food is digested and undergoes digestion from the time one eats it.  In other words chewing food mixes it with saliva and the digestive process begins.  When it's in the stomach it continues to be digested.  There are however a number of factors which alter the digestive process, one of which, which is important to consider, is stress.  I don't know the circumstances of this death, but if for instance during the meal or shortly after the meal this man had been subjected to stress, in other words either verbal or physical, the whole digestive process would come to an end.
	We on occasion see people who had been lying in hospital for a week, still with stomach content in them because the whole movement of the stomach actually stops.  I'm not sure if that has answered your question, but it certainly would have been slowed down by a stressful situation and certainly when he had been shot, I would not have expected much movement out of the stomach into the intestines of food.

MR RICHARD: Can you make any comment as to a time between death and the shooting?

DR KLEPP: The time of death and shooting, I think that's a question that was put to me a bit earlier, how long in other words would it have taken him to die after the gunshot wound?

MR RICHARD: From the time that he ate the from to the time that he died.

DR KLEPP: It is extremely difficult.  I have brought with me today a reference by Bernard Knight who is possibly the doyen in the world in forensic pathology.  If you would just like to hear the first sentence of his article of stomach emptying: "With one exception this controversial topic could be dismissed summarily as being quite irrelevant".  There are so many different factors that one cannot put much emphasis on the actual level of digestion of food and linking it, in other words estimating that interval.  So in other words, I found it undigested, he might have been shot five minutes after eating the food, but he could also have been shot an hour or two hours later.  I cannot exclude that.

MR RICHARD: So that means that the impression that I was under from conversations that death was within an hour of him eating of the meal, is incorrect?

DR KLEPP: I spoke to you as you know, telephonically a week ago and you put the question to me and since then I have gone to the references and this is what I found to be the overwhelming feeling.  In a normal individual a meal would take about two hour to be digested and pass through in four hours, but due to various factors, for instance if you've eaten a fatty meal it's retarded, it you are stressed it's retarded, if you've had a lot of fluid with your meal, the movement through to the intestines will be speeded up.  Because of these various factors one cannot be categorical, but usually undigested means that you've died soon after being shot, but as I say, with the exceptions that I have mentioned today.

MR RICHARD: So I cannot give any indication as to how soon?

DR KLEPP: I'm afraid not.

MR RICHARD: Unlike last week, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: I think one can make it even more difficult for you.

DR KLEPP: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: It is possible, and I stress now that I am not making any finding on this, that this young man arrived on the scene and suddenly to his horror discovered somebody there whom he was terrified of...

DR KLEPP: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: ... and that he remained in the company of this man for some time ...

DR KLEPP: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Before he was shot.

DR KLEPP: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Now that would, what you've just told us, lengthen the process of non-digestion if he was under a state of stress for the whole time, you couldn't estimate at all?

DR KLEPP: Absolutely not, I agree with that wholeheartedly.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

MR RICHARD: Thank you, doctor.  Do you recall how the man was dressed?

DR KLEPP: I did not have any clothing on the body, the clothing is usually removed prior to the post-mortem examination by the police.  There was no clothing on the body when I examined him.

CHAIRPERSON: ...(indistinct)

INTERPRETER: The speaker's microphone is not on.

CHAIRPERSON: ... and things of that nature, that's not part of your function?

DR KLEPP: No, the clothing is usually removed off the bodies before I get the body.  If a gunshot has gone through the clothing, the investigating officer would then submit that piece of clothing to be examined for residue.   On occasion we do get bodies with clothes on if it's deemed prudent.  I remember with Stompie, Stompie had his clothing on when I examined him.

MR RICHARD: Did you examine the surface of his skin on his side at any point?

DR KLEPP: I examined the whole of his body.

MR RICHARD: Did you notice anything on his skin?

DR KLEPP: If we could just go back.  Paragraph 4 of my report is a description of the external appearance of the body, I think we've gone through 1 and 2 which is the gunshot wound through the head, I found blood exuding from the nose.  I then got - number 4
"Scattered areas of abrasion which involved the forehead on the right side, the upper and lower eyelids of the right eye and a few over the right zygomatic arch, which is the cheekbone, they appeared punctate"
I'm sure you don't want me to go into that.  You're asking about on the right side of his body?

MR RICHARD: Yes.

DR KLEPP: Then there were - some of those look graze-like.  Then we had the other gunshot wound on the arm, which is wound 5, and I found the bullet at 6.  Then we carry on to the annexure
"There were abrasions which extended from just below the bullet wound ..."
No, that's on the arm again.  
"There was bruise with associated abrasion below the gunshot wound.  There was a scratch abrasion at the dorsa aspect of the right hand and there were two abrasions over the right shoulder superiorly."
So to answer your question as to whether there were abrasions on his body, there were none.

MR RICHARD: And you wouldn't have noticed any residue of sticky-tape or ..."

DR KLEPP: Stick-tape I wouldn't be able to pick up.  Do you mean if stick-tape had been on an individual?

MR RICHARD: Yes.

DR KLEPP: I found nothing on the body which made me suspicious of a gummy material on the body.

MR RICHARD: Now let's return ...(intervention)

DR KLEPP: But again the bodies can sometimes be washed off if they are grubby.  The body may have been washed off prior to my examination, but they shouldn't actually have washed off anything which looked remotely suspicious.

CHAIRPERSON: The sticky-tape you've been asked about, there's a suggestion that he had a radio transmitter strapped onto his body with that tape that one uses for that purpose, and that this was pulled off him some time before he was shot, some hours before he was shot.