Chapter 2: The autopsy.
When the detectives had finished processing the church for evidence, they returned back to the combined police chamber and forensics laboratory in Marristown. The first car to reach the building, entered the back entrance and Albert Stone and Frank Baker exited the vehicle. With them, they rolled a stretcher. On this stretcher there was a black body bag. In this bag, the body of fourteen years old Thaddeus Jasper Dale lay. The body was brutally beaten, stabbed multiple times and a few body parts had been dismembered. The two detectives brought the stretcher with them into an elevator and went down to the basement, into Dr Stone's domain. They lifted the bag onto a table, where they opened it and let the body out of it.
One of Dr Stone's interns appeared, and he was clearly shaken when he saw the body. The intern's name was Neil Johnathon, and he was a workaholic. Dr Stone knew that he was having troubles with his family because he worked to much, but even when he offered the intern to go home early, the man would refuse. Johnathon gathered the equipment Baker had seen Stone use so many times before. Scalpels, magnifying glasses, jars and containers, tweezers and a little flashlight. He also found a tape recorder Dr Stone would use during the examination of the body, this could later be used in the police's advantage in court.
"Poor boy," Albert Stone said, and Baker knew he meant it. The room was completely silent, with Baker observing each and every move while Johnathon looked away as much as possible, because he thought it was too gross. Baker noticed that Dr Stone hadn't turned on the CD yet, either. It was truly a case out of the ordinary. Of course, Stone wasn't used to having dead kids on his table, but the fact that the killer probably was a serial killer, made it even more important to stay serious and to catch the murderer as soon as possible.
Without having to say a word, the three men started simultaneously to undress the body. There weren't very many clothes left on it, just the sweater, the shirt and to black socks. The pants was never found, neither were his boxer shorts.
"This is doctor Albert Stone with intern doctor Neil Johnathon and detective Frank Baker," The doctor said loudly after turning on the recorder. "We are performing the post mortem autopsy on murdered fourteen years old Thaddeus Jasper Dale. He was found bound and lifted into the air in Soothville Baptist Church the third of December, 2011. I have removed his clothes. These were a white shirt, a gray and black striped sweater, and a pair of black socks. These clothes will be further examined by technicians in the Forensics Lab."
Neil put the clothes in a white box and labeled it "Clothes - T.J. Dale." Frank Baker knew that it would probably be Bertha Daniels from Scotland that would perform the examination.
"This boy must have gone through a lot of pain," Dr Stone said with compassion in his voice. Baker wasn't used to hear that either. "When I look a the front of the body, I can see multiple signs of different types of violence. The body's eyes have been removed, probably been torn out by hand. He has a wound on his forehead, consistent to a blunt force trauma. His nose is broken, also caused by blunt force trauma. His tongue is cut. A lot of coagulating blood in his mouth."
The doctor had opened the dead boy's mouth, examining the severed tongue.
"The weapon used on the tongue seems to be a sharp, single-edged knife. The cut was performed while the boy was alive. The boy would have drowned in his own blood, if he hadn't died earlier from whatever ended up being his doom. I guess we'll have to find out.
He moved onto the neck, examining a large, horizontal cut right above the boy's Adam's apple. It was without very much blood, meaning it was not what killed the boy.
" A cut has been performed on the victim's throat post mortem," Albert said. " The slash sliced aorta in two. But the victim was already dead."
The doctor and the intern went on, looking at the victims abdomen.
"Multiple stab wounds and bruises on the lower abdomen. The knife may have hit the stomach, the liver, the gallbladder, the pancreas and the intestines. The bruises around the knife wounds imply that the killer used great force when stabbing the victim, like if he was beating the victim at the same time as he stabbed him. The killer has also cut off every finger from the hands, making it hard for us to take fingerprints and compare to the victim."
The final part of the "observation examination" was the worst. The groin. One bloody, nauseating hole of pain. Neil Johnathon looked away, and this time he didn't look back like earlier.
"Oh, God!" Doctor Stone exclaimed. "This is sickening, even for me. With a knife with teeth, the killer has removed the genitalia from the dead boy. Penis, testicles, prostate, everything is gone. During the process, it seems the aorta has been cut on the left thigh. This might be what killed him. He bled to death through the wound in the thigh."
Neil Johnathon fell backwards. He had fainted. Now, he lay on the floor with eyes closed. Baker hesitated a moment, but after seeing Dr Stone continuing to process the body, he joined in there too, leaving Johnathon alone.
"As you can hear, my intern just fainted. This is due to the highly nauseating view of what used to be the victim's groin. The killer has been particularly cruel." Albert Stone had control of everything. He knew how to handle the situation, even when his intern passed out. "Detective Baker, will you join me in turning the body around?"
When they turned the body around, both of them were shocked. Across Thaddeus Jasper's back, somebody had sliced a symbol unknown to both of them. It resembled a vertically standing rectangle, missing the right vertical line, or a capital letter "E" missing the middle horizontal line. It had been cut into the flesh after the death. The doctor was silent. He examined the wound, and then said: "The killer has had his time in decorating the body; he has sliced an unfinished, vertical rectangle, missing the right side. It seems to have been done post mortem, because there are little to no signs of blood in the wound. I'm moving on."
He examined the head and picked out a wood chip from a wound in the back. "Found a wood chip in a blunt force trauma wound in the back of the victim's head. Possible from the weapon used. I'm sending the chip to technicians for analysis." He put the chip in a little plastic bag Baker held out to him. "They'll be able to figure something out about it. That's for sure. The weapon seems to be a blunt, perhaps round object. The impact will have caused him having troubles seeing, if he wasn't blind already because of the eye removal. When I'm on it, the wound on the forehead is consistent to this wound suggesting the same type of weapon. But this wound on the back of the head will also be the one that knocked Thaddeus Jasper unconscious."
"Could this mean that the victim might not have been awake when he was killed?" Baker asked, forgetting this was being recorded for court. Doctor Stone smiled at him, and nodded at the recorder.
"Yes, there is a possibility that Thaddeus Jasper Dale didn't feel a thing after being knocked in the head, and was still unconscious when he was killed. But that is a very minor possibility. Judging from the defense wounds on palms and arms, and that his shirt was quenched in blood on both front and back, and that the actions perform on the boy was on this level of gruesomeness, I can almost say that he was for certain awake when he was killed."
Frank Baker looked down in disappointment. He was sad for the kid. Suddenly, it wasn't that bad to sit in a wheelchair after all. The doctor looked at him with compassion in his eyes. Frank Baker knew what Albert was about to do even before he had picked up the scalpel. The doctor cut the torso open and started examining. Baker felt sick, and Johnathon, that had just awaken, used three seconds to take in what he saw, before he lay down, kissing the floor, again.
"Man, this is a nasty soup," Dr Stone exclaimed, and Baker felt the urge to vomit. "The knife has hit the stomach, the liver and the pancreas. What a mess. Blood and stomach content is mixed together. The killer have made sure that Thaddeus Jasper would die, no matter what. I can count several injuries that would eventually kill mister Dale. First, you have the sliced tongue. The boy would have drowned in his own blood if it had lasted much longer. A slashed throat with a cut aorta would for sure kill him in a matter of seconds. Of course, the blows to the head might have course internal bleeding in the brain, that remains to find out. The cut aorta in the thigh is what I deem cause of death, he died of blood loss. Other reasons he could have died, was the damaged pancreas, liver and stomach. Without medical help, this would also have caused him to die eventually. Knife wounds in the abdomen could also result in him bleeding out. That is in a final count eight ways to die. The killer is suspected by the detectives to be a serial killer. I say he already is. He has killed Thaddeus Jasper Dale eight times."
Frank Baker had heard enough. He picked up the box containing the wooden chip and the clothes, and rolled his wheelchair into the elevator, keeping the box on the lab. As the elevator doors closed, he could see doctor Albert Stone with tears in his eyes use a surgical saw to open Thaddeus Jasper Dale's skull, and blood run through the cracks the saw made in the victim's head, confirming the doctor's suspicion towards internal bleeding in the head.
"I am going to die," Tonio LeBlanc thought before he turned his face to into the eyes of his kidnapper. He expected to find the eyes of a satisfied sadist or a furious, vicious killer, but instead, he found eyes red of tears. His kidnapper was crying. "I am a bad person," the kidnapper said, and for one moment, Tonio though he could be able to talk himself out of being killed. That was, before the kidnapper threw his knife into the young, black kid's neck. Tonio's life ran through his eyes as fast as the blood fossed out of the knife hole. Living in his poor house with his family, leaving it at age eleven, joining the Black Arrows, watching his little brother being shot by a member of a different gang. Becoming a Christian after meeting TJ. Becoming accepted for who he was. Celebrating his 15th birthday. One week later being with his friends in Soothville Baptist Church, having fun. Staying behind with TJ to clean when he heard something upstairs. Him going upstairs to check, and then facing the bat to the head. As he died, Tonio prayed to God for forgiveness, and that God should protect his best friend, TJ. He didn't know that TJ already was with his creator, and that he was about to meet them both in a short time.