Forensic expert heard in trial for murder

Forensic expert heard in trial for murder

JAKARTA (JP): A woman and her three children, who were cold-
bloodedly murdered last October, were confirmed to have died from
stab wounds, experts told a court hearing yesterday.

"Victims were clearly wounded by sharp weapons though we can't
precisely say which weapons were used to create which wound,"
Sidhi, a forensic expert from the Cipto Mangunkusumo hospital,
told the East Jakarta district court.

Sidhi and his colleague Budi Sampurna were witnesses in the
trial of the main suspect, Philipus Lejab.

The two witnesses, however, told the court that wounds caused
by sharp weapons are not always fatal.

"It really depends on which or what organs were wounded in the
stabbing," Sidhi said.

The nine wounds suffered by 3-year-old Citra Utami, for
example, including the almost severing of her neck, were serious
but it was the eight centimeter-deep wound through her heart that
was fatal, he said.

The experts told the court that there are ways to distinguish
whether victims were alive or dead when mutilated.

"A human body will wound differently," Budi Sampurna, the
forensic expert who signed the victims' medical record said.

"There are different patterns of blood absorption throughout
the body when victims were stabbed or wounded while still alive,"
he added.

The victims were killed in their house in the Bambu Apus
subdistrict of East Jakarta on Oct. 2 last year. Five suspects
are being tried separately by three panels of judges.

The crowded court hearing was pervaded by public emotion which
thwarted the defendant's team of lawyers and witnesses in their
defense of Philipus. Several times judge Sunarto had to bang his
gavel on the table to remind the crowd to behave.

Two of Philipus' relatives, Lucia and Susana, also testified
yesterday.

Meanwhile, the team of judges refused prosecutor Saleh
Abdurrahman's plea to add two security guards to the list of
witnesses following the defense lawyers' objection that the
guards were not directly linked to the murder.

The guards were proposed by the prosecutor who said that they
had written a letter to him saying Philipus' wife Suparmi, who is
also a suspect in the murder, had told the guards that she
retracted previous police reports following her lawyers's advice.

Suparmi retracted police reports in a Feb. 29 court hearing.

All three court hearings were adjourned until next Monday.
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