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. (14)