Page 95 of Fifty-Fifty

‘And yet they didn’t ask about their father’s condition when police and ambulance arrived? Why is that?’

‘They knew he was dead already,’ said Soames.

‘Why do you think they knew he was dead?’

‘One way is putting a twelve-inch knife through both of his eyes. That’ll do it.’

Kate objected, the judge nodded.

‘Let’s move on, shall we? I’d like to have photograph E.3.8 on screen, please,’

said Dreyer. And sure enough the screen was soon made up of a picture from a

horror movie. A wider shot of the decimated corpse of Frank Avellino lying on

his back, in bed.

‘Can you describe the scene for us, detective?’

‘This is the master bedroom on the second floor of the deceased’s property in Franklin Street. The photo was taken at the door to the room. There were no lights on in this room when the patrol officers arrived, they turned them on when they saw the dark staining on the carpet around the bed. You can see multiple footprints. One is patrolman Jacobs – wearing standard NYPD issue boots. The tread is distinctive so we can pick it up easily at this type of crime scene. He had felt for a pulse on the victim, found none. The other sets of bloodied footprints surrounding the bed belong to Sofia Avellino and Alexandra Avellino.’

The jury focused their attention on Soames, and only a few occasionally flicked a glance at the photograph.

‘Can you describe the condition of Frank Avellino’s body when you arrived?’

Clearing his throat, Soames took a sip of water before he spoke. As if he was steadying himself for what was to come.

‘My partner, Detective Isiah Tyler, we’ve been together now for five years.

We’ve seen some things in our time. Nothing like this. Tyler saw the body, and

had to leave the room. There was a very strong smell from the blood, and the body. We were used to that, but we weren’t used to seeing wounding this extensive on a victim. At first I thought the victim had been shot point-blank, center mass, with a shotgun. Then, when I got closer, I saw it wasn’t a gun wound. These were individual strikes with a long-bladed knife. Most were stab

wounds, and I think I lost count when I hit forty. There were slashes with the knife too. As you can see, part of the victim’s nose has been cut away, there are horizontal slashes across the throat and …’

Soames stopped talking, looked down, then looked up and continued.

‘… and the sternum. There were stab wounds to both eye cavities, and the eyes had eight-ball hemorrhages due to massive trauma. It looked to me like any number of those wounds could have proved to be fatal. Yet the killer continued

to mutilate the body. There were two wounds which were significant in the investigation.’

‘Which were?’

‘A stab wound to the chest, which I saw had a long brown hair protruding from it. And a bite mark on the victim’s chest.’

‘Tell us about the stab wound first,’ said Dreyer.

‘I used a set of pincers, and carefully removed the hair, while the crime scene forensics officer looked on and photographed it. The hair had been stuck, deep in the wound, as you can tell from the blood staining on the last two inches of the hair. The hair was sealed in an evidence bag and submitted for further testing.’

‘And the bite mark?’

‘It was photographed and was the subject of specialist analysis.’

Dreyer turned the pages of notes on his desk.

‘In your experience as an NYPD homicide detective, would you say these wounds were inflicted by one person?’

‘That’s impossible to say. It could have been a single assailant, or two or three. From the looks of it, they used the same knife. The knife we found on the floor, by the bed.’