Vail had started early in the trial introducing evidence and testimony implying that Stampler was not alone in the room at the time of the murder. He maintained that his client had blacked out and did not know who the mystery guest was, a contention that was hard to prove but even harder to disprove. William Danielson, the ME, filled in the blanks in his version of the killing, guided by Venable.
The first major battle came when Vail tried to keep photographs of the crime scene out of the testimony as prejudicial. He was overruled. The original photographs, unfortunately, were part of the physical evidence that had been misplaced or lost years before, and the copies of the pictures, which were attached with other documents at the end of the transcript, were of poor quality and told St Claire nothing. On the witness stand, Danielson went into detail of all the gruesome aspects of the crime, using a combination of photographs, physical evidence, fibre samples, bloodstains, fingerprints, the number of stab wounds and their locations, the results of certain kinds of wounds, the difference between a stab, a puncture, and an incision, and so on. Venable was painting a mural of horror.
As St Claire read the description, his mind flashed back to the coroner's description of Linda Balfour's body. '… victim was stabbed, cut, and incised 56 times… evidence of cadaver spasm, trauma, and aeroembolism… significant exsanguination from stab wounds… throat wound caused aeroembolism… evidence of mutilation… accomplished by a person or persons with some surgical knowledge…' St Claire's nudge was really kicking in, promoted further by Vail's clarification.
Then Vail attacked Danielson's assertion that this throat wound was the one that killed Rushman, once again pursuing the possibility that someone else was in the room with Stampler when the bishop was killed.
St Claire frequently stopped to scribble notes to himself. He wrote, 'Was another person in the room? Ask Vail? Stenner?' And why was Vail making this point if Stampler was pleading guilty? Was the insanity plea a ploy of some kind? St Claire kept ploughing through the encyclopedia-sized transcripts, skipping occasional exchanges.