I know almost nothing about guns except they’re dangerous. I suppose that’s why I’ve never written a mystery in which the murder weapon was a gun. But in the recent murder trial(s) of Raynella Dossett-Leath, the weapon posed a very great mystery, which I have yet to solve to my satisfaction.

The issue: Which of the three bullets fired from the Colt .38 revolver was the fatal bullet? Obviously, David Leath could only have killed himself with the third bullet. If the first or second bullet killed him, it had to be murder.

Essentially, as I understand the situation (from my memory of the trial broadcast by CNN in early 2009):

• three empty casings were found in the cylinder
• three bullets were fired (one found in the headboard and wall, one in the mattress and on the floor, and one in the victim’s skull)
• the gun was loaded with two types of shells (2 of the 3 were Remington brand)
• the casing found under the firing pin (the last one fired, obviously) was not a Remington shell
• the bullet in the victim was a Remington

This would be a slam-dunk murder, except for certain anomalies between the autopsy report (at least in my very-uninformed, mystery writer’s opinion) and in the testimony of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s ballistics expert.

The Crime Scene

As I understand it—through a glass darkly—the detective found the victim’s body in bed, lying more or less on his right side, his left arm across his body, the revolver in his left hand, and a bullet wound more or less over his left eye. Blood covered the right-hand side of the bed, possibly obscuring the bullet hole in the mattress there. The bullet hole in the left side of the headboard was visible, though.

Within an hour of the 911 call reporting the discovery of the body, the detective called the county medical examiner’s office and reported that three empty casings were found at the scene (the autopsy contains this information): “Detective Moyers stated three (3) casings were found at the scene, still in the weapon that had been fired. The weapon was a Colt revolver.”

This is the first anomaly: How did the detective know there were three empty casings in the revolver if the gun was still in the victim’s hand when later the CSI unit photographed and videotaped the crime scene?

Colt .38 Revolvers

In the mystery fiction I’ve read, the issue of spent casings is always important, but it’s usually because the casings are found on the ground where they were ejected from the murder weapon. So, at first I naturally assumed these casings must have been found somewhere on the bedroom floor around the victim. However, that would have meant that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation must have found a way to match the casings with the three bullets.

However, every mystery writer knows that crime labs may be able to match bullets with guns, but there’s no way to match casings with bullets unless the shells are of different types. Of course, in the Dossett-Leath case, the bullets were of two different types.

However, to declare that the fatal bullet was not fired last, the crime lab would have had to match not only the casings with the bullets but also the casings with the chambers in the revolver’s cylinder—and that’s impossible, too. (I won’t go into why just now.)

Then I learned that revolvers don’t eject their casings when a bullet is fired. The gun’s operator must manually eject the casings.

Colt Revolvers in Action

The easiest way for me to illustrate the operation of a Colt revolver is to direct your attention to several YouTube videos.

An overview of a Colt revolver (specifically a Colt .38 detective special, about 5 minutes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFRq2wrKa_k 

Firing of a WW I Colt revolver (showing loading of bullets, about 2 minutes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8mzlJdglw 

Firing of a double-action Colt revolver by a teenager (note that he fires 7 times to be sure all the bullets have been fired, also note no casings self-eject): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Cb0_5LBys&NR=1 

Loading a single-action revolver (about 1 minute): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfaaZDjxNw0&feature=related 

Most importantly, unloading a double-action revolver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02tGhg98uUo 

How Did the Detective Know 3 Casings Were Empty?

Disclaimer: I know nothing about guns but what I observed in the above YouTube videos.

But, to me it looks as if the only way the detective could have known within less than one hour on the scene that there were three empty casings in the revolver’s cylinder was by removing the gun from the hand, opening the cylinder, and manually ejecting all the casings and shells—all of them. If he only ejected the casings he thought were empty, he might have been wrong about the number of empty casings.

He could safely assume the casing under the firing pin was empty. And I suppose he could have had enough experience with revolvers that he could eyeball a cylinder and tell which were empty casings and which were not. But the position of the gun in the victim’s hand surely obscured his view.

If he removed the gun from the hand and opened the cylinder, he might have noticed there were casings of two different manufacturers. That might have piqued his curiosity. But, surely, police procedures would prohibit him from ejecting the casings and shells at that point. He had plenty of time to do that after the CSI guys arrived, documented everything, and collected everything properly (without destroying evidence), including the gun with the shells and casings intact.

At this point, of course, my lack of knowledge prevents me from saying with confidence that the detective must have ejected the casings before he determined that there were three—and only three—empty casings in the cylinder.

Furthermore, perhaps the CSI unit arrived promptly and had already documented everything within an hour of the body’s discovery. However, I could swear I remember it coming out in the first trial that the CSI unit or at least the videographers were late to the scene. (Perhaps someone can comment on this and correct my memory.)

The Casings Had to be Ejected

It seems to me, the only way the county medical examiner’s office could have noted one hour later that the detective found three casings at the scene is if someone ejected them from the gun in that first hour—whether it was the detective or a CSI guy. Otherwise, at best I feel the detective would have had to tell the medical examiner’s office that he suspected there might be more than one empty casing.

This is the second anomaly: the person who testified about the significance of the sequence of the casings in the cylinder was not the person who ejected the casings; it was a ballistics expert from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He testified that when the lab received the gun, the casings were in the cylinder in that suspicious sequence.

That means—obviously—that after the casings were ejected, they were later replaced in the cylinder in that sequence before the revolver was shipped to the TBI.

How did the judge and jury who convicted and sentenced Raynella Dossett-Leath to life in prison know for sure the casings were replaced in their original positions? Were the detective, CSI guys, and ballistics expert all cross-examined about this? Were crime scene photos of the open cylinder taken before 12:30?