Model of 'collapsed' skull of elderly victim shown to murder trial jury
A forensic pathologist has told a jury she found ten separate injures on the head and body of an elderly man killed in his own home in Kettering.
Please note this story contains extremely distressing descriptions of injuries that are necessary to report in the interests of open justice.
On day four of a Kettering murder trial, the court was shown a 3d printed model of John Boyle’s skull which showed the left-hand side almost completely ‘disintegrated’ by ‘multiple blunt force injuries’.
An expert witness told the jury she could find no remaining evidence of Mr Boyle’s left eye, and his skull was fractured into multiple pieces.
John Mills, 46, is standing trial for the murder of Mr Boyle in Kettering last October.
During Friday’s (November 6) evidence, Dr Frances Hollingbury, a Home Office forensic pathologist, outlined what she found when she examined Mr Boyle’s body on November 10, two days after it was found at his home in Kettering.
She said that bloodstain pattern analysis suggested there had been at least three blows to Mr Boyle's head as he lay in his bed.
‘Vulnerable’
Describing Mr Boyle as ‘vulnerable’, Dr Hollingbury said that before his death, there had been a decline in his mental health and that he had recently been diagnosed as suffering from psychosis.
Earlier in the trial the jury was told that in June 2025, Mr Boyle had diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had begun cross-dressing before his death, increasing his vulnerability.
Dr Hollingbury said her examination had identified serious wounds to the left hand side of his head but no evidence of defensive wounds on his arms or legs. There was soft tissue damage to his head, chest and neck. She said: “There was disruption to the left hand side of his face. I couldn’t identify the presence of his left eye.”
The jury was not shown photographs of Mr Boyle’s injuries, but they were handed computer-generated images. They showed wounds and skull fractures covering almost the entirety of the left of his face and side of his head, including open skull fractures exposing brain tissue above his ear.
‘Multiple blunt for injuries’
Dr Hollingbury said she found ten separate wounds, which she listed to the jury.
They included and 18cm wound from the scalp to the bridge of his nose, exposing a shattered skull, a disrupted orbital and the exposure of his brain.
She said the tear in the skin was the result of a ‘blunt impact’ .
"The skull was in multiple pieces at this point and there was disruption to the eye socket and the brain.”
Injury number two was a 2.2cm cut to Mr Boyle’s head, and the third injury was a cut to his temple.
The fourth injury she found was a 6cm laceration above his left ear. And a fifth laceration behind the ear measured 8cm x 5cm.
In the same space as that laceration was a sixth injury – a large area of grazing.
There was also an abrasion to his tip of his nose, and a large area of purple bruising to his right temple.
The ninth injury was a large bruise across the right side of his scalp. A final injury, a small scratch, was discovered on his left hip.
She said her external examination showed multiple blunt force injuries.
‘We have got no evidence of that’
Prosecuting, Andrew Vout KC, asked Dr Hollingbury if the neuropathy showed whether Mr Boyle had been alive after he was hit on the head.
She said: “There’s no evidence to suggest he’s survived for any period of time after this head injury was sustained.”
She was also asked about microglia, cells which respond to any injury to the brain in an attempt to begin repairing it.
Dr Hollingbury said: “Microglia cells are the brain’s response to injury. We have got no evidence of that response in Mr Boyle’s case.”
Baseball bat
Dr Hollingbury was asked about the potential murder weapon. She said that the injuries suggested he had been hit with a ‘relatively broad’ weapon with a ‘curved end.’
She said it could possibly have been a baseball bat.
She added that bruising to the right hand of his head could have been caused by his head hitting a flat surface when he was struck to the left-hand side of his face.
When asked about whether Mr Boyle had defended himself against the attack he faced, she said she had found ‘no such evidence’ or any injuries that would suggest so.
‘It’s all collapsed down’
The jury was then shown a 3d printed model, around 85 per cent the size of Mr Boyle’s skull, which was constructed using CT scans after his death and showed the extent of his injuries. They were also able to handle the model.
Mr Vout explained to the jury that the right side of the skull was ‘more of less intact’.
But, he said, when the skull was turned around to show the left-hand side : “That’s completely disintegrated on the other side.”
Dr Hollingbury said: “The whole of the integrity of that side is gone.”
"A very large portion of the left side of the skull is gone?” asked Mr Vout.
"Yes, it’s all collapsed down,” she replied.
The charges
Mills, of Marriott Street, Northampton, denies Mr Boyle’s murder, the theft of Mr Boyle’s car, and a separate burglary on November 8 at another address in Kettering.
He has already pleaded guilty to four further charges. He admitted taking Mr Boyle’s Vauxhall Astra without consent; conspiracy to steal from Mr Boyle; and two counts of fraud involving the use of a bank card belonging to an elderly female victim. Mills admitted using her card at a shop in Avondale Road and at Sainsbury’s petrol station on November 8 last year, days after the alleged murder.
The second defendant, Jordan White, 28, of Victoria Street, Kettering, previously admitted conspiracy – with Mills – to steal from Mr Boyle between October 24 and November 9. She is not on trial for murder and will be sentenced for the conspiracy at the conclusion of these proceedings.
The trial continues.