I made a mistake.

It took some debate with an analyst but I think I can agree that the blood on Robin's right shoe came from his own wound. There was always the argument that because Robin's footprints were found throughout the familicide scene he wasn't wearing shoes during the time he killed his family. However, I've long thought that Robin went back to finish off the killing of Laniet, and when he did he may have already changed and put on his shoes with his bloody socks and clothes discarded in the wash, 'cleaned up' such is the characteristic and common ritual of familicide. I considered this could have happened and may have explained the shot to the top of her head that was fired through fabric. Robin could have been 'sated' and exhausted by then, perhaps sobered by the reality of what he'd done and unable to 'face' to 'face' that final shot. The blood on Robin's shoe was his with a DNA mix of another, not  a totally insurmountable hurdle for my thought but certainly making it difficult really, but a forensic scientist might have another view of that.

I remembered writing earlier about Robins dna found inside the rifle barrel and silencer and thinking the travel of that dna was relevant to it's entry or vacuum into the barrel before the pressure equalised with that outside the barrel. Of course the force of the initial discharge of dna back through his wound would have also had impact on where that dna contacted inside the rifle. Now I think that when Robin's head separated contact with the silencer tip just after he shot himself, and as he and the rifle were falling, that some of the initial discharge deflected off the silencer and toward Robin's right, the bulk however, after the separation spread airborne falling across the floor some also settling on the alcove curtains.

None of this removes any doubt that Robin killed himself but explains, to me at least, a reason why some of the blood went the 'wrong way' across his shoe - a the way a high speed water jet will deflect. As I pointed out in my last blog on this below, the initial finding of the blood destroyed the Crown's theory of Robin kneeling, praying or sitting on the floor when he was shot. Something else, with appropriate care and consideration, the original investigators shouldn't have overlooked and wouldn't have overlooked had they taken the time and not been consumed by impressions of behaviour rather than evidence. This underlines again the stupid haste with which the Dunedin Police convinced themselves of David's guilt, before they knew the evidence or even had lab tests and results. I say 'stupid' but maybe it was deliberate.