A test bullet does not have to duplicate the exact position and angle of a bullet in a forensic case to incur approximately the same amount of damage and loss of substance as the damage and loss alleged for the real-case bullet. Otherwise, experts would never bother conducting wound ballistics tests, not to mention the fact that you don't have most of the information about CE 399's alleged journey in the first place.
Dear Michael "Useful Idiot or Worse" Griffith,
It's not the "amount of damage and loss of substance" that's the critical issue, here, but the unusual
location of said damage (or lack of same) that's exhibited by CE-399. In other words, the flattening of the rear 1/3 to 1/2 on one side, the longitudinal twist, the compression at its base, the loss of 3 to 4 grains of lead core, and the absence of damage to its nose.
If the boys at Edgewood Arsenal (or wherever) were to fire a trillion or so Carcano bullets through a trillion or so blocks of ballistics gel, they might get lucky and have one of them not only smash the rib of a pig or some such thing about three feet away, but then smash the radial bone of a corpse another couple of feet away and end up with a bullet damaged approximately the way I mentioned above (and, of course, with no damage to its nose).
It appears that the boys at Edgewood Arsenal (or wherever) were unable or unwilling to do that, though, and settled for the genius idea of firing bullets directly at cadavers' wrists, instead. Or did they fire them through an intervening bale of cotton first?
Bottom line: The fact that they were unable to even approximate the damage to CE-399 is circumstantial evidence that CE-399 wasn't fired
directly into JBC's wrist.
-- Tom
