[Murder weapon in a homicide case--signal pen or bullet pen gun?]

Report about a homicide case, where a female taxi driver was killed by a shot through the neck. The partly confessing perpetrator maintained that he had shot the woman by using a signal pen loaded with a signal cartridge. The lethal injuries were not compatible with the averment of the perpetrator. Shooting experiments were performed using the signal pen loaded with signal cartridges as well as using the signal pen connected with a short barrel (= pen gun) and loaded with small-bore bullets (cal. .22). Shots were done through a flash ranging chronograph and to the cervical spines of slaughtered calfs. The ballistic data compared with the wound morphology led to the reconstruction of the homicide.