Two leading pathologists are at odds over whether a hairdresser's comb was used in an attack on two women who were fatally stabbed in a Portland hair salon, at a fresh inquest into their deaths.
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Margaret Penny and her hairdresser Claire Acocks were killed at the Old London Coiffure hairdressers in Portland on May 3, 1991.
Mrs Penny's husband, Robert Penny, was last year charged with the women's murders, with police alleging he had arranged for someone to murder his wife, but he died before his committal hearing began.
A fresh inquest began at the Coroners' Court on Wednesday, to examine whether Mr Penny was involved in the women's murders.
One allegation being looked at is the claim that a few hours after the women died, Mr Penny told his children that a hairdresser's tail comb was a weapon used in their murder.
An initial 1995 inquest into the deaths was inconclusive.
The court heard that tail combs – combs with handles made out of metal skewers or plastic which formed a point at the end – were used in the Portland salon to part customers' hair, including when colouring it.
A leading British pathologist, Dr Nathaniel Cary, was shown photos of the women's stab and puncture wounds, and said in reports for the inquest it was "both possible and plausible that injuries in both deceased could have been caused by a rat's tail comb or a similar comb used in hairdressing".
Senior Victorian forensic pathologist Professor Stephen Cordner, who performed the initial autopsies on Mrs Penny and Mrs Acocks days after they died, said he had never previously considered a tail comb was involved.
He "struggled to agree" that this was used because the wounds were too shallow. He could not speculate what weapon other than a knife was used, beyond observing that it may have been a blunt object.
Professor Cordner did not think he had mis-measured the depth of the wounds at the time.
The wounds were indistinct, unlike, for example, gunshot wounds, he said. He had not seen similar wounds before he conducted the autopsy or since then.
Video footage of the crime scene was played to the court, showing a plastic tail comb on a chair near the women's bodies, and a blood-stained piece of tissue which counsel assisting the coroner, Peter Matthews, said contained mixed DNA of Mrs Penny, Mrs Acocks and at least one man.
While Dr Cary said that abrasions around the puncture marks could have come from the women's clothing, Professor Cordner was not convinced, given they were all rectangular, rather than "random" shapes.
Some of the wounds may have been caused by a knife, he said.
Mr Matthews said that Mr Penny's children had long suspected he may have been involved in their mother's murder.
They told police in 2013 that when they asked their father how he knew a tail comb was involved, he said that someone else must have told him.
The salon's owner, Kay Edwards, was one of the first people to find Mrs Penny and Mrs Alcock's bodies lying on the floor in 1991.
She fled after seeing their legs, and had not known a tail comb was a suspected weapon until years later.
While she had visited Mrs Penny and Mrs Alcock's widowers after their wives were murdered to offer her condolences, she told the court she could not remember saying anything else.
The inquest before Coroner Jacqui Hawkins continues.
