Networked Knowledge - The case of Henry Vincent Keogh
Affidavit of Professor Maciej Henneberg - for the Medical Board of South Australia

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I am the Professor of Anthropological and Comparative Anatomy and currently the holder of the Wood Jones Chair in that respect at the University of Adelaide. I am the Convenor of the Academic Board of the University and Head of the Department in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at the Medical School at the University Of Adelaide. I am also Editor of the Journal of Comparative Human Biology ‘HOMO’, published by Urban & Fischer, Verlag, Elsevier Germany.

I am an anatomist and biological anthropologist and have been serving as a forensic expert witness since 1976 in the courts of Poland (1976-84), Texas (1984-86), South Africa (1986-1996) and since 1996 in Australia. I have examined written statements of Dr Manock arising from his work on the autopsy of Ms Anna Jane Cheney. I have also seen some of the written and photographic evidence which had been available at 2000.

I refer to the statement by Dr Manock at the committal proceedings when he had stated:

I was at no time looking or thinking that the death was accidental because I could find no explanation as to why she would drown.

At the second trial, Dr Manock testified as follows:

If the person is sitting at the plug end of the bath and an arm is put underneath both legs to grip the left calf, either by simply lifting or lifting the leg and pushing the head, then the head could slide under the water. At this time, the edge of the bath could cause bruising to the back of the neck or the muscles attached to the base of the skull. If the movement is then continued and the legs are folded over entirely, this would have the effect of trapping the arms by the sides of the bath and the top of the head would then be against the top of the bath and that would give a flat surface that could cause the bruising to the top of the head. The left leg has been gripped. However, the right leg is merely encompassed by the arc of the arm and can move. If it thrashes around, it will bang itself against the edge of the bath and may produce bruising along the border.
Trial Transcript p 167 lines 6-22.

It is my opinion that if a forearm was put under the lower legs of a person sitting in a bathtub and then lifted unexpectedly it would have encountered the counteraction of the flexors of the knee joint and extensors of the hip joint. These two groups of muscles are known to be amongst the strongest in the human body. They are much stronger than flexors of the forearm that would be used to lift the legs. The discrepancy in strength between knee flexors and forearm flexors occurs irrespective of sex. An average male’s arm muscles are weaker than the average female’s leg muscles. Flexors of the knee and extensors of the hip are used to keep the human body in an upright posture, hence their strength. The right leg of a potential victim would be free to kick forcibly against the face and torso of any potential attacker. 

Anybody can test my opinion by doing the following exercise:

Sit a female on the edge of a desk or a table with her lower limbs hanging down. Get a male to grasp her left calf with his right hand while his forearm passes under both lower legs. Then ask the male to use all of the force of his upper right limb to lift the female’s lower limbs upwards while she is instructed to resist with all her power.

A grip of an attacker close to the middle of the calf is bio-mechanically ineffective. A gripping hand tends to move to the narrowest point of the limb to ensure power to the grip. Thus the hand of the attacker should lock around, and bruise, the ankle rather than the calf. The right leg, being encompassed by the arch of the attacker’s upper limb cannot bruise itself against the bath’s edge because the very upper limb of the attacker protects it from such action.

The upper limbs of a person sitting in a relatively shallow bathtub, upon being attacked by a grip on a leg, would easily be abducted away from the torso and lodged against edges of the bathtub, thus preventing any attempt at sliding the head under water. Even if, impossible as it is, the head was pulled under water, the upper limbs would be free to move upwards with hands gripping the edges of the bathtub or hitting the attacker. It would not be correct to say that the arms would be trapped by the sides of the bath as Dr Manock has suggested.

In expressing his theory Dr Manock referred to the ‘flotation-effect’, or the fact that the body of the deceased would have been virtually weightless and this would, in his view, have made the execution of the theory easier. For example:

Q. Leaving aside any push with the left hand on the head, would the simple action, in terms of bodily mechanics of gripping the left leg and pulling it up and over, achieve the same result of the head going down.

Dr Manock: Yes, the pressure on the head is really unnecessary because if the body is in water then it is virtually weightless and such a manoeuvre is quite simple to perform.
Transcript p 168 lines 22-25.

It is my opinion that in a shallow bathtub, any such flotation or weightless effect is negligible because the body would be resting on the bottom of the bathtub. If moved, it will quickly come into contact with the sides and bottom of the bathtub and that will provide a reliable fulcrum for the body’s muscle actions which would be resisting the attack.

Sworn and signed by the said Professor Maciej Henneberg.

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