Ritualistic murder

According to the pathologists' reports they had been kept alive for some time after they were reported missing, although the unusually cold weather in which the girls' bodies were exposed impeded fixing an exact time of death. The corpses showed ligature marks on the wrists and ankles, indicating that they had been tied or restrained. All the victims had been tortured with mostly small, shallow cuts and puncture wounds, none sufficient to cause death of itself.

The official cause of death was listed as blood loss and shock due to blood loss and exposure, although 14 year-old Bobby Peterson appears to have resisted his attackers and was beaten on the head with a blunt instrument and strangled into unconsciousness by strong hands with " fingernails like claws" which left marks on his throat. All the children's' bodies were " drained of blood".

Further peculiarities were observed in the PATTERN of the torture.

The two female victims had been tormented by repeated puncture wounds on the upper torso, thighs and buttocks, suggesting a sadistic sexual element in the killers' motivations, but the two youngest male victims, the Schuesslers, had been transfixed through the hands, wrists, and feet by larger weapons similar to nails or a carpenter's awl, inflicting wounds very similar to the so-called stigmata, the wounds of Christ.

The eyes and mouths of the boys had also been mutilated in a manner never publicly released.

Wealth

Another interesting forensic aspect of the case was that the boys' wounds contained traces of an unspecified GRAIN, of all things. Flour for the matzo?

Floor mat patterns imbedded in the flesh of one victim indicated that his body had been transported in a Packard automobile, a luxury car popular among the wealthiest people of the time which was no longer made and which indicated someone with money enough to buy and maintain such an upmarket vehicle.

What is interesting about these cases is not the unsolved murders themselves, but the view which for once we are given of the lengths to which the Jews will go to cover up suspected ritual murder cases. In view of the intense public interest in the case there was of course a lot of media reporting.