Yes a bullet through the heart would have ended the affair in 30 to 45 seconds according to forensic experts not 4 1/2 minutes latter as was the case with Pratt
I not only read what Doc posted but if you had payed attention you would have noticed that I have the complete forensic report that Doc referred to by Dr. Franklin Anderson
jwp, it's refreshing to come across another person who's read Dr. Anderson's book. Considering how often people want to talk about this case, you'd think more people would have bought and read it.
I've discussed the case at length, and Dove's shot in particular, with Dr. Anderson and other trauma specialists. There is a general consensus that Platt probably wouldn't have died any quicker with any other shot in the chest.
As far as that goes, most of us don't believe he lived 4.5 minutes after sustaining that wound. The timeline of the gunfight is not by any means certain, as Dr. Anderson points out in his book. We only have estimates from the participants, and given the nature of human physiology, it's most likely that Platt died less than 3 minutes after receiving the wound that killed him, and possibly less than 2 minutes. Two minutes was more than enough time, however, for the events we know to have happened to happen.
Contrary to what many people think, the common impression that a handgun bullet shot in the heart will kill faster than a shot into the Great Vessels (the aorta, vena cava, and pulmonary artery/veins) is false. Handgun bullets, being low energy projectiles, will "pencil through" the tough, fibrous muscle of the ventricles. A ventricular heart wound doesn't bleed very fast at all. I have seen patients with ventricular gunshot wounds survive more than once. A GSW that transects the aorta or atria will cause much more rapid exsanguination, the pulmonary arteries somewhat less rapid.
We know that Platt had something in the order of 1.5 liters of blood in his right thoracic cavity on autopsy. Transection of the pulmonary artery and vein would result in that level of blood loss in less than 3 minutes easily. That, plus the large quantity of blood he lost from his other wounds (Anderson's book shows that crime scene photos, which look like somebody splashed a couple of buckets of pig's blood around a movie set, and ALL of it was Platt's) suggests a less determined and physically conditioned person, in other words an average normal person, would have ceased to offer violence in less than a minute. Not so Platt, who was superbly trained, conditioned, and utterly unafraid to die fighting.
