Exhumation of the skeletal remains showed signs of what appeared to be blunt force trauma to the skulls of two of the men, with no other noteworthy disturbance to their skeletal remains aside from those made during their butchering. All skulls had damage to varying extents to their upper craniums, with fabric fibers being found within some of the skulls themselves, suggesting that their heads were possibly covered with a blanket at the time of their deaths. The three other skeletons showed defensive signs of hacking marks across the radial and ulna bones of their forearms (Shannon Bell being one), which one could sustain whilst shielding his face and body from an attack. Although Packer claimed that Bell had murdered the others with hatchet blows to the head, in his second version of the story, he never claimed that he had to fight off Bell with the hatchet in any rendition. In one version of his story, Bell had charged at Packer with Swan's rifle, and Packer shot him. In Packer's second official version of the story, he claimed he finished off Bell with a hatchet blow to the head, but that was the extent of his claim in regards to the hatchet. All five of the skeletons had numerous differing post-mortem injuries to them, including depressed fractures, butterfly fractures, butchering trauma, and hacking trauma, which seems to contradict Packer's claims of "minimal cannibalism".