Blow to skull killed Packham

Report suggests she fought off her attacker

GILL PACKHAM died after she was hit hard with a blunt object on the right-hand side of her head, which broke her jaw and fractured her skull in a number of places.

The post-mortem report on the Constantia mother of two, who was found face down in the boot of her burnt-out BMW on February 22 last year, does not speculate how many blows rained down on her head to cause those injuries. But the force was brutal enough to cause brain trauma.

“Fracture of the lower jaw on the right-hand side associated with acute haemorrhage into the upper neck soft tissues,” reported state pathologist Dr Itumeleng Molefe in her chief post-mortem findings.

“Signs of blunt head injury with depressed and hinged fractures of the skull, meningeal haemorrhages, and injuries to underlying brain.”

Molefe’s report was handed into evidence on Monday at the start of wife-killer accused Rob Packham’s trial after he made a number of admissions.

These include that he accepts the post-mortem findings and cause of death: “Unnatural: blunt traumatic head injuries and the consequences thereof. The body was burnt post-mortem.”

Molefe was able to determine the latter after finding no soot in Gill’s airways and no traces of carbon monoxide in her blood.

She reminded us how petite Gill was: 1.5m tall, just 47kg and a BMI of 20.9. Then the reminder that this was not a medical aid printout. “Despite the charring, appeared to have been lean.”

Molefe also reminded us that before her murder Gill was a woman on her way to work before she was cut down in her garage and then dumped face down in the boot of her BMW.

Although 90% of Gill’s body was charred from an accelerant that smelt like petrol, Molefe gleaned that she was wearing matching light green underwear, a black and white checked shirt and “remnants of what appears to have been a pair of black tights present around the left knee”.

She said some of Gill’s clothes were torn. But she found no evidence that Gill was sexually assaulted.

She discovered traces of a plastic arm brace that reveals Gill was nursing a fractured left hand. Molefe also uncovered “suspicious contusions” to Gill’s left forearm, which suggests she may have tried to ward off her attacker.

For a further analysis of the wounds, Molefe turned to Dr Louise Friedling, a UCT forensic anthropologist.

Packham may have been burnt beyond recognition by her killer, but the desecration of her body was not enough to silence her, Friedling said.