The Ruler...(fanfare of trumpets)....is 2.75 cm wide!

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The diagram at the left shows a close up of the 'back wound' autopsy photo. An 'extra' ruler has been added, which is merely the lower end of the ruler from the same picture, in which the calibration marks are clearer.

The 'left hand' ruler (as seen) appears to have the marking 'centimetres' or perhaps 'millimetres' printed vertically above and to the right of the index finger in the picture.

The purple line shows the back wound distance beneath the lower neck crease, which has been measured on the original photos.

The Back Wound Measurements

The back photo has been used to provide a measure of the distance from the lowest of the creases below the neck down to the back wound. (See photo, right).

John Lattimer & Cyril Wecht have provided measurements for this distance .Lattimer had the wound 5cm below he fold, Wecht has 5.7 cm., both based on seeing the original photos, where presumably the ruler is more clearly visible.
(Forensic Science, 3, 1974) We can use these figures to get the size of the ruler. (See above).

The ruler is presumably metric. (All the autopsy measurements are metric). It can be seen that 11 'units' on the ruler cover between 5 (Lattimer) & 5.7 cm.(Wecht) , where I am taking the measurement to the midpoint of the back wound. The ruler would then in fact by this scale be between 29 mm and 33 mm wide. The best option would seem to be that each division is 5mm, and that on that basis, from the picture above, we can see that the ruler would be 2.75 mm wide.

The Dox Ruler..

To the left is a cut out of the ruler from the Ida Dox copy of the autopsy 'back of the head' colour photo. Luckily she made the calibration marks rather more clear than they are on the photos themselves. It is not immediately apparent what unit of measurement each division represents.Again, comparing (on her drawing) the calibrations with the known (ish) back wound location, we get 11 divisions = 5 (Lattimer)or 5.7 (Wecht) cm. The most reasonable conclusion seems to again to be that each division represents 5mm. This would make the ruler about 2.75 cm wide.

In short, Dox seems to have faithfully copied the calibrations, and the ruler is most likely 2.75cm wide.

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