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Sheaman3773 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong
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There are loads of fan-theories as to how they would know specifically; my favorite is, based on how confidently Dumbledore explains exactly what happened that night, that he used Legilimency on the newly orphaned Harry. Another fairly prevalent one is that the scar Harry has is unique for being the result of a Killing Curse, yes, but curse scars in general are not unique at all. They also could have used any number of detection spells--honestly, there are a multitude of options.
What I thought was wrong was that McGonagall explicitly said that the Killing Curse struck directly at the soul, severing it from the body. This is why victims of Avada Kedavra don't have a mark on them. But Voldemort's body was a "burnt hulk." Odd, that...
At this point in the story Harry has never even heard of Avada Kedavra, never mind what someone who's been AKed would look like.
[EDITED to add: The relevant question isn't whether there are in the Potterverse or the Methodsverse ways in which wizards might be able to know what happened that night despite there being no survivors other than the infant Harry, but what rational!Harry could reasonably have thought possible and plausible.]
Saying that a spell severs the soul from the body comes along with the strong implication of not killing someone via bodily harm.
He hasn't heard the incantation yet, that's true. But he just heard plenty about the Killing Curse.
edit: I'm fairly confident that the concept of magic forensics is not beyond him at the moment.
Besides, looking at it narratively, there has been way too long of a wait to find out what that meant for the payoff to be minor.
Could the "something wrong" have to do with the concept of the soul?
That's my bet: Harry doesn't believe in souls, but he swallows the explanation without a second thought.
He just heard plenty about the Killing Curse, yes. But that plenty doesn't include anything about what people who have been struck by it look like. I am not even slightly convinced that "it severs the soul from the body" carries a clear implication that it doesn't damage the body in the process. (Contrast "it removes the brain from the skull". If you heard that someone had had his brain removed, would you then be surprised if his head looked a mess?)
No.
However, the brain is a physical object. The soul is not. This is a rather significant difference.
edit: I'm not certain why I got downvoted. The brain is a solid object. If you remove it, it can be done in a way that leaves the rest of the head intact, especially when you factor in magic, but I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in the head looking like a mess.
The soul, on the other hand, does not have a physical component that we've found, so removing it would not necessarily result in any physical change (excepting the death of the target). Thus, the difference between the physical and the metaphysical object is relevant.
Furthermore, by way of example, if the Killing Curse killed by turning their targets inside out (or immolating them) I would expect them to say that it kills by making their internal organs external (or burning them to death) rather than specifically and explicitly saying that it strikes the soul directly.
Is this clearer?
I think the reason you were downvoted is the fact that a very large proportion of people on this blog (including Eliezer) believe that if their is a separate component we could refer to as a soul (or consciousness, or any similar concept), that it is entirely contained within the real world - that is, it is going to be some component of the brain instead of any sort of separate metaphysical property.
I don't think it's fair to downvote you for that, since the opposite is clearly the prevailing opinion in the HP universe.
However, given Eliezers extensive arguments against any sort of epiphenomena, I think it is highly probable that it was the mention of the soul that should have set off alarm bells for Harry, because SuperRational Harry shouldn't believe in a soul, at least not without major caveats.
I think the soul question is going to come up in the eventual direct conflict with Voldemort, and that it is going to be a Very Big Deal. It is the source of Voldemort's immortality, after all. It's the most important question Harry needs to answer, and he hasn't even asked it yet.
Ah, but Harry doesn't believe in the concept of a "soul" as anything other than the result of a physical brain. Thus, his interpretation should be focused on damaging the brain.
I think it more likely that Harry would think that it would still appear to kill without physical damage--the witches and wizards would take that as proof that the spell attacked the soul, and Harry would think that does something that we aren't sure of, but almost certainly it didn't actually attack a literal "soul." In my opinion.
And that would be his error.
I still hope to find that the kind of soul that Draco believes in --one that Muggles don't have-- will turn out to be something real (but of course not what Muggles mean by "soul", nor anything that Wizards really understand).
Yes, I recall that one of the books described the Killing Curse as leaving victims in apparently perfect physical health other than being dead.