All right. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please be seated. All right. Mr. Bodziak, would you resume the witness stand. All right. Good afternoon again, Mr. Bodziak. Mr. Goldberg, you may continue.
Mr. Bodziak, before continuing with the Bronco carpet, I just wanted to clarify when we were talking about stride or gait analysis, was it your testimony that one of the things that made it easier for trackers to do this, that they are going over relatively long distances and seeing numerous shoe impressions, as opposed to a crime scene?
Yes, that the tracking I was referring to was--the examples I gave were, for instance, a missing child in that state park. Obviously that wouldn't be just a few feet, it would be--could be miles, and the same would apply to the other reasons for tracking.
Okay. Now, getting back to the Bronco carpet, I would like to mark as People's next in order, it is 397 for identification, another chart that is entitled "Bronco carpet."
Now, Mr. Bodziak, perhaps you could step down, and using this chart, can you tell us what you did in trying to make an analysis to determine whether or not there were any footwear impressions on this item of evidence?
Yes. On September 1st I came to the Los Angeles Police Department and examined this carpet and I was asked to attempt to enhance, that is, make it easier to see, the blood impression, particularly this area here, (Indicating), but any other area of the carpet as well, that might contain some blood and possibly a shoe impression. And by doing so I first treated the carpeting with what is known as a fixative and that is so that when the subsequent enhancement solutions contacted the blood, that is where it will not run away and just dissolve, but it will stay in its fixed position on that respective area of carpeting. I then treated the carpeting with luminol. Luminol is a material which reacts with a substance in the blood and it must be done in total darkness. And that was photographed. And when blood reacts with luminol you get a luminescence or a glowing in the dark, in layman's terms. And that was photographed. And then subsequent to that I treated the carpeting with a material called luco crystal violet, which also reacts with material in the blood, but which turns a crystal violet color, and that is now seen, since it can be done in normal light. That was photographed. And you can see the entire mat as well as the enhanced area. That is now seen as a dark violet area of staining and there is a lot of little drops, but also primarily this area here which is the entry point to the Bronco. In other words, if this door is opened, this is the part that you would step up into if you were getting into the car, into the Bronco.
Did you look at that area where a person steps up into if they were getting into the Bronco?
Yes. And after I treated the carpet with any chemicals at all, I examined the photographs which were taken immediately upon the acquisition of the Bronco, as well as the current condition of it, and you could see the reddish or reddish brown staining in this area, but not as clear as it can be seen now.
Okay. So both of the photos that we are showing here, do both of these show the carpet in its enhanced condition?
Yes. This is after the total enhancement process to your right on the chart shows the whole piece of carpeting that had been cut out of the driver's side on the floor, and to the left is an enlarged area to natural size of this approximate area, (Indicating), the area where the feet would be, if you were sitting in a seat.
Can you now tell us, and if you need to use either an overlay or a shoe to do this, one of our shoe soles, can you tell us what you did in order to try to make a comparison?
Well, as I had mentioned before, before the break, the blood, after going down the long walkway to--across the driveway to a possible car that was parked there, would not have an imprint in it from the bottom of the shoe, like it would have further back up the sidewalk, but instead it would have had blood up in the areas or grooves of the shoe between the design elements and possibly blood that was wedged in crevasses between the perimeter or even around the edge of the shoe and would have therefore still survived that distance, that far along. And what I did was take a test impression in a transparent form, such as I have previously showed, and I tried to put it--position it different ways over the impression where you would normally step up and enter into the Bronco to see if I could get any of the features in this enhanced impression to correspond with the Silga sole, such as I had with the other comparisons that I made. And I was not able to make--take an overlay and actually reconstruct the exact position of that shoe to the point where I could say it was absolutely the Silga design and even go farther and say it was the same. There just wasn't enough detail and of course it is not representing the normal design of the case, but it is just wherever there happened to be some blood up in the grooves and wherever the carpeting had to go up, it just randomly whipped down the--
Yeah. I did notice that there was this area here which could possibly have been a border of the shoe, and there also is some little what I call squiggles or little "S" shapes which might represent the curved areas between the design elements, but they weren't clear enough or reliable enough to make any kind of a positive determination.
Can you point out to the areas that you did just refer to and maybe draw in a little arrow, if you can do that without drawing over any significant portion of the photograph that would hide something that you needed to do in your analysis?
Why don't you just draw a little red arrow and try to avoid any areas that were significant in terms of what you looked at?
Okay. This area here, (Indicating), was the area that I referred to that might be the border of the shoe, and this area down here, (Indicating), where it changes direction, kind of like an "S" is an example of that possible--the negative area of the shoe.
Stop for a second. Can you take the rubber shoe and describe for us how it is that that is possibly consistent with the sole of the Silga?
Yes. Well, the--I don't know how well this can be seen with the light, but the--if you follow the grooves between the design elements, they change direction, so there is gentle curves between those design elements, and that would be the area that would be--still might be some blood in it at that point back down the driveway, that far from the actual crime scene. And these little changes of directions that you can see down here, (Indicating), as well as this border, and you really can't see any of them clear enough to make an overlay, but you can see something that suggests that, but there is just not enough detail to absolutely say that that is representative of the Silga sole.
Okay. Were you going to point out a couple other of these design elements that were consistent with this sole?
No. I think that these--these in here, (Indicating), probably show it as well as any, and actually there is--there isn't enough clarity throughout this whole thing to really point to it and say positively that is what it represents, but rather you are seeing a change of direction and that is what you would expect if there was some blood here and the carpet tuffed up. But there is also the phenomena of when you get into a Bronco that is up rather high and you step up into it with your shoe, there is going to be some movement in getting into a vehicle, and because of the thick nature of this carpeting, I wouldn't expect to see, necessarily, a clear rendition of--at that point of the shoe.
So I couldn't eliminate and I couldn't positively associate it with the Silga sole.
KEY QUOTEAnd just generally speaking, when we are talking about impressions on carpeting, what kind of problems are there or issues are there concerning whether you are going to get an impression on a carpet?
If you have carpeting that is stepped on right after stepping in blood, you will get impressions, but not as crisp and clear as you would on a smooth surface or on the concrete walkway, and again, it is going to be a factor of how thick the carpeting is. If it is the indoor-outdoor carpeting that is very smooth and tightly woven, you will get a better representation of the shoe than if it is a very thick shag carpeting which will give you all sorts of problems in reproducing the design from that shoe, so you have those variables as well.
Now, on the 1st of September when you were at the Los Angeles Police Department and you saw this Bronco carpet, did you see some other items there that you later on analyzed?
Okay. Now, before getting into some of the other items that you looked at in this case, Mr. Bodziak--and you can resume the witness stand.
Did you make any effort to assist law enforcement in trying to locate someone that might have sold the shoe to the Defendant, a Bruno Magli shoe?
Initially I obtained the distribution records from Mr. Peter Grueterich, who is the owner of the Bruno Magli store in New Jersey that distributed the shoes in this case, and that listed all of the shoes in size 12 and 13 which were sent out or distributed in 1991 and 1992. The reason included size 13 was this request was made before I ever had any samples of the soles from Silga, and I was just, as I had mentioned earlier, making that general specific determination of shoe size, just with the measurement, whereas later on I would have only needed to ask him about the size 12. But I went and requested those and I also requested a list of 40 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico which sold these shoes, and I provided that information, along with photographs of the Bruno Magli shoes which he had sent me, and provided them to the Los Angeles Police Department and to the FBI office in Los Angeles for the purposes of looking for sales records at those stores of those shoes.
To your knowledge was a salesperson located who could recall having sold a Bruno Magli shoe of either the Lorenzo or Lyon type to the Defendant?
No. To the best of my knowledge that was never done, because every store had a problem searching their records back that far.
And to your knowledge was any determination made whether or not these shoes were given to the Defendant as a gift?
In the cases that you have analyzed you said many of the shoes are not recovered; is that correct?
Specifically limiting yourself to the cases that you have analyzed where the shoe impressions are in blood, is it uncommon not to recover shoes?
Shoes are an article of clothing which are very personal to most people, and they--after we wear our shoes for a while they become comfortable and we do not like to give them up, and in most of the cases I receive which do not have a lot of blood in that case, either because it is a burglary or a shooting and the person wasn't near the victim, we find the shoes, because the person sees no reason to get rid of them and they are really not conscious of the shoes. In homicides where a lot of blood is shed and the subject steps in the blood and leaves bloody shoeprints, it is very common to not only not retrieve the shoes, but the bloody clothing as well, because it is obvious to the person who committed the crime that the clothing and the shoes are well covered with blood and that that would be incriminating and they usually discard them. In some of those cases we will recover that material from a dumpster or something, if someone sees them place it there, and then of course we would make comparisons to associate it with any suspect, but in a lot of the cases we never recover the clothing.
Okay. Now, sir, with respect to the other items that you looked at, I would like to start with the eyeglass envelope which has previously been marked as People's 32 for identification, if I might approach the witness.
Sir, showing you People's 32 for identification, can you unseal that telling us what you are doing for the record.
Okay. I'm tearing the yellow seal and I'm opening the envelope and inside encased in plastic is a white envelope with a pair of glasses inside.
Sir, did you look at the envelope, the shoe pattern, if there is one, on that envelope?
And are there any difficulties that would be encountered in terms of depositing the shoe impression on this kind of item?
I mean, what kind of shoe impression are you going to get? A high quality impression, a not so high?
Well, you could get a reasonably good quality impression, depending on a lot of factors. In this particular case there is just a small partial fragment that is maybe an inch, inch and a quarter long, and representing just two of the design elements of the Silga sole, as well as the evidence of the double border.
Were there enough design elements there for you to make any kind of a positive determination?
Only to say that the design on this envelope is similar to the components of the Silga shoe, but it is not large enough, it is too small to associate with a previous portion of any of the soles or to determine if it is a left or a right or a particular size.
With respect to item no. 86, which you first saw on September the 1st at the Los Angeles Police Department, did you have the opportunity to look at that in more detail at your laboratory?
Umm, the dress was examined initially, just visually, then it was examined with various light sources not visible, ultraviolet and infrared range. And based on that screening under the different wavelengths of height, the dress was photographed with infrared film, and the reason for that was that the black color of the dress became very light and therefore the resultant blood impressions on the dress became relatively dark and were easier to see.
Your Honor, I would like at this time to mark as People's next in order, that would be 398, a board entitled "Nicole's dress" or dress board LAPD item no. 86.
Mr. Bodziak, maybe you can step down and illustrate for us what conclusions you drew regarding this and how you came to those conclusions?
Okay. On the left-hand side of the chart is just a regular copy shot of the front of the dress, just showing what the entire dress looked like, and you can see how small it is in contrast to its regular size because of this ruler. In the center is a natural size photograph, meaning it is the actual size of the dress, again of the front of the dress, and in this area you can see in the center front an impression, and to visualize that impression, to further enhance it--
Hold on for a second, Mr. Bodziak. Now, in the middle photograph are we looking at the front of the dress or the back or what portion?
There is a seam here, but it is the front of the dress. You can see the zipper going down the back.
To enhance it, I photographed it with infrared photography and the result of that is the picture which is also natural size which is on the right side of the chart and it has now turned the or rendered the black color of the dress a very light color, but it has not had any effect on the blood on the dress and so the blood now appears dark.
So basically this infrared has simply changed the contrast, so to speak, in order to be able to visualize this better?
Yes. The dress is recorded on the film as light and the blood is recorded as dark.
Okay. I found three areas of a heel print on the front of the dress and those areas were the top left corner of a heel, the curved border, and the flat edge on the right of the heel, and I prepared an overlay over this to show those three features, because those features are also found on the left Silga sole that I have previously been describing this morning. Namely, because the cut-off nature of the medial side of the heel, the pointed nature of the left side, and the curve in between, those same features appear on the dress. The impression was too limited to make any further comparison, so I cannot say that it was made by a Silga sole, but I can say that there was an impression which did share those three features. Even though that is limited, they are there.
KEY QUOTEOkay. And in terms of a dress that is being worn by a person at the time that the shoe is impressed onto the dress, what kind of an impression are you going to get, given that a person is somewhat rounded?
Well, this particular dress is a stretch type dress so when it is worn it is a different size and shape than when it is just laying out like it is here, so even though these are natural size photographs of the dress, there is no way to reconstruct the exact--exact--excuse me--exact shape and size of this particular area. Nevertheless, the overlay of the--in this particular case, the size 46 heel, left heel, fits into the--as far as the point of the heel on the left and the cut-off area on the right fits that very well, but the curved area in between is a little distorted, which is very likely because of the stretching effect of the dress. So there is nothing here to suggest that this absolutely was the Silga sole of this size. There are other shoes that have curved heels and also cut-offs and points, but based on the limited things we can see, it could have been made by this sole as were the other impressions.
Okay. Thank you. And you can remain there because we are going to switch to another chart shortly. Mr. Bodziak, did you also have occasion to look at some autopsy photographs of Nicole Brown in this case?
And was there one photograph in particular which you looked at in order to determine whether there was a shoe impression on that photograph?
And I would like to mark as People's next in order, that would be 399 for identification, a board that says "Autopsy photograph of Nicole Brown." It is one that has already been introduced into evidence, one of them has. I don't know whether this is something the Court blocked out.
Now, Mr. Bodziak, I direct your attention to 399 for identification. Are these two autopsy photographs that you saw?
The one on the left is one that I saw. The one on the right is an improved visualization of that same photograph.
Okay. Is this another situation in which something was done to change the contrast essentially in order to bring out certain features so that they could be seen more readily?
And with respect to these photographs, can you tell us what you did to determine whether there were any shoe impressions on those depicted on the photographs?
Well, the one on the left, which is the natural light photograph of the back of Nicole Brown, there is a contusion area, an area which is reddened in which I recognize as a contusion. This is something that I normally examine. And one particular part of that impression has a very, very straight line, and perhaps if I drew several little arrows so it would be easy to follow the line somehow, but I don't know how well it can be seen, but it is a very, very smooth line which would represent about the middle of the back of the heel or toe around about ninety degrees. And because of the straightness of that line, I would interpret that as being either a toe or a heel impression, the beginning of a contusion as a result of contact with the shoe and the skin.
And you have been referring to the photograph on the left of this board which appears to be the unenhanced photograph; is that correct?
Would you like to use a pen or can we use an overlay for the purposes of illustrating what you just testified to?
I think the overlay should be included as a sub item of 399, so we will make that--the overlay 399-A.
Okay. This is going to be hard to write on, your Honor. Actually I have two overlays. Can we make the larger one 399-A and the smaller one 399-B?
Mr. Fairtlough just gave me a pen that he says will write on this, so I'm going to place that on with the Court's permission, just to make it easier.
Sir, I'm going to hand you what we've marked as 399-A for identification, and perhaps using the unenhanced photograph you can indicate for us by placing that on.
Okay. With regard to 399-A, I place the curvature of the raised area, which is the inner border, the area which would apply most pressure to the skin, and I will place that over the curvature, okay, and that would be one--if it was the toe of a left shoe, this would be one way in which this curvature would correspond with the curved area in the toe of the shoe.
And now if you could take the smaller one, perhaps you could place this on in the position where the curvature would be represented on the enhanced version, but going the other way, since you are indicating it would be a toe or a heel.
Yes. If it was the heel, it would have to be in the other direction, and so again--thank you--we will place the raised inner border of the heel over this and we will tape that to the photograph. And now by moving this up and down you can see how this curved area is very, very straight-edged, coincides with the same contour and general size and shape features of the curvature of the heel as well, so it is a very limited mark. But it does have two features that are important. One is that it is a very, very straight line. It is not like a rock or a stick or something that would be fallen on or would be an unnatural type of event, but rather something that is more likely to be a man-made object, such as a shoe, and the curvature of that does coincide with the curvature of the heel and toe. Even though that is limited, there is not enough other features to make any further comparison.
Well, the only area that really can be relied upon is that curve, and there is nothing inconsistent about that curve, but there are no other features which are reliable enough to include in this.
Now, Mr. Bodziak, do you have some training and experience, over and above what you've already talked to us about, in the area of patterned injuries that you could just briefly relate, that is different from what you've already said with respect to shoeprints in general?
I have a lot of experience, because this is--the photographs of contusions from autopsies of victims is one of the regular types of footwear impressions which I have been trained to examine and have been training for over twenty years. In addition, I have listened to presentations of forensic pathologists, I have taken courses by forensic pathologists in blunt force injury and pattern injury, and have conferred with them on several occasions with regard to my observations and have found that mine and theirs agree as far as interpretation.
Was one of the portions of your book dealing with patterned injuries in the case of shoeprints?
And Mr. Bodziak, perhaps if you could, could you show this board to the jurors so that they can see it a little bit better and point out to them the curved area on the enhanced photograph that you aligned it with the heel, just so that they can all see it.
I actually need an extra hand, but I will try to do this. The straight curved edge is this edge right here, (Indicating), and it coincides with the curvature of the heel. And the curved straight edge--I said straight edge. It is a curved edge but it is very man-made like, not rough, but very consistent, corresponds with that respective portion of the heel or in the case of the toe as well. This particular edge here, which may be a curved contusion from the heel, corresponds with this respective area of the heel of the shoe, (Indicating).
Mr. Bodziak, based upon your analysis of all of the items that we've discussed today, was there any indication that more than one pair of shoes was involved in this crime?
And based upon your comparison of the Bruno Magli shoe with the Defendant's Reeboks, can you include him as a candidate who could have worn the shoes that created the impressions in this case?
Yes, I could include him as a candidate for possibly having worn those shoes.
KEY QUOTEI couldn't eliminate and I couldn't positively associate it with the Silga sole.
In homicides where a lot of blood is shed and the subject steps in the blood and leaves bloody shoeprints, it is very common to not only not retrieve the shoes, but the bloody clothing as well, because it is obvious to the person who committed the crime that the clothing and the shoes are well covered with blood and that that would be incriminating and they usually discard them.
Yes, I could include him as a candidate for possibly having worn those shoes.
I found three areas of a heel print on the front of the dress and those areas were the top left corner of a heel, the curved border, and the flat edge on the right of the heel... those features are also found on the left Silga sole.