JonBenet hanging????

WY

Glad your skull didn't get cracked during your experiment, lol! Thanks for your thoughts on this. I don't have a maglite, baseball bat or golf club so it helps to get info from folks who do. I wanted to say that I had not thought about the possibility that someone put a blanket or something over her face before bashing her head in. Wow, now THAT is food for thought. To me, if that is near at all to what happened, it makes sense for than ever that no intruder did this. It would make perfect sense. Wonder if anyone at the BPD or anywhere else thought of this?

 

Okay

the blow could have dropped a 300 pound man. That's even more interesting, actually. There has been so much convoluted information surrounding the evidence in this case, and this is, of course, only someone's opinion, but say the statement was that the force of the blow could have dropped a 300-pound man.

I don't think children's skulls are as hard as a full-grown man's skull would be, so there would be more give. In fact, wouldn't a child's skull actually be harder to crack than a 300-pound man's skull? A skull is a skull. Would the fact that a man weighs 300 pound make his skull any different? Would it take more force to crack the skull of someone weighing 300 pounds than it would someone who weighs 200 pounds?

I am not an expert on velocity or any of that stuff, but I do know that glass breaks under force. Swing a flashlight, even a rubber-coated Maglite, and see if the lens doesn't break with a lot less force than it would take to crack a skull. Our skull as thick - some thicker than others, haha - and our creator purposely made them that way to protect our brains.

 

Have Thought About This A Lot, and....

I do believe that a rubber coated maglite was the murder weapon, or at least the instrument which caused the head injury....

I think a childs skull would be easier than an adult skull to fracture, not having reached the full growth and strength of an adult skull....but a Dr. or pathologist would, of course, have to confirm this thought...

The other theory that I have is that the maglite met JonBenet's skull with huge force while she was lying on a soft surface, such as a bed, rather than a hard surface or while standing erect....
With this scenario, the rubber coated maglite, if swung with sufficient force, could have caused the fracture in the skull without breaking the skin, and yet have caused the peice of fractured skull to be pushed inward toward the brain, and the head cushioned in the back to absorb the blow without the eruption of tissue outside of the head on the far sid of the skull....

If JonBenet's head were against a solid surface when it absorbed the blow, there most likely, with that kind of force, would have been far more visible damage from the blow pushing her head into the solid surface as well as taking the impact of the maglite blow.....

If both the maglite was a solid but buffered surface, (rather than a hard steel surface like a golf club) and the surface underneath the head was soft, then I think that the results that we see with JonBenet's condition as described in the autopsy is the likely result....the skull being crushed (for lack of a better word) between two buffered surfaces by extreme force....

 

I know

that JB wasn't a baby, but she was young. Here is what a physicist has to say about baby's skulls:

‘Babies, by and large, do not have fractured skulls from falling off a chair or changing table. There are these floating plates on a baby’s head that don’t knit for months, so the baby’s head is soft enough to accommodate a lot of mechanical deformation without generating high stresses. So they will be able to withstand blows which would fracture an adult skull. Babies are vulnerable, and fall over easily, so this way they don’t crack their skull each time.’

I'm trying to find something on a six-year-old's skull. I wish Cutter was around.

 

Here is a good website

on head injuries. I thought the autopsy called JB's injury a linear fracture. Apparently not much force is necessary to cause a linear fracture, but hers would surely also be called a depressed head injury, too, wouldn't it? I need to reread that autopsy - I've forgotten some things.

Here's the URL: http://www.emedicine.com/aaem/topic239.htm

 

Interesting points, all

I don't think the Maglite was damaged for the reasons Voyager said. JonBenet's skull was still growing, not as hard as an adult's. It's like cracking an egg. The damage is absorbed by the object struck, not by the weapon striking it. I think the blow simply contacted her skull at an angle, like in Dr. Spitz's picture, and therefore the edge was what actually made the contact, not the clear plastic.

Remember, cops use Maglites for a reason. Pilots use Maglites for a reason. EXTREME DURABILITY. With a long Maglite, you have a veritable weapon at hand, should you need it. So this built in durability and the 4 lb weight would easily dent a child's skull and crack it, it seems to me. Gosh, I need to get out Dr. Wecht's book again and reread what he said.

The reason I don't think the glass shattered is because it's NOT GLASS. It's some kind of plastic/acrylic. At least, mine is. Mine is a new model, though, since the first one I bought for studying this case ended up this year at my mom's and I left it there. Decided to leave it permanently for her--makes a darn good weapon, you know.

That's a really interesting point about JonBenet's head being cushioned by something, Voyager, absorbing some of the blow and keeping the skin intact. This would also work IF she was hanging at the time she was hit. I have pondered this with the hanging scenario, where the killer delivered the blow as she struggled and scratched at the garrote on her neck because when faced with the reality of her fear and pain, he/she decided to put her out of her misery. Of course...that is just ONE scenario and speculation which I cannot dismiss or accept totally unless I am convinced those "abrasions" on her neck above and below the garrote were or were not made by her own fingernails. Lou Smit says they were made by her. He also says she was stun gunned. Help me Jesuz!

But the most convincing element of the Maglite being the blunt force object is...John and Patsy's constant refusal to say IT'S THEIR MAGLITE. It's like Patsy on LKL with Thomas, when he asked if that was her paintbrush. She immediately started dodging and weaving: how do I know? Now, if your child was murdered thus, in your basement near your paintbox, with A PAINT BRUSH HANDLE on one of the weapons used on her, do you think you could take the time to look at a darn picture of it and decide if it was yours or not? Not Patsy. Same with the Maglite. The Rams won't claim it, sitting right there on their counter, same model as one given to John by his son, JAR...but will they just say, yeah, it's ours? Nope. Not even when they have to say we don't know what happened to ours, we can't find it. Waaaaaaay too much equivocating for parents looking for their child's killer. When they start evading, I pay attention, because in my opinion, they know what happened that night.

And let me add that I the more I see of the Rams and their associations and behavior, the closer I come to being able to imagine one or both of them committed this murder, start to finish. They're very good at projecting an image. That's why they were so successful. But behind that image, they have lied to the public repeatedly, on camera, in their book, in person, almost never flinching...until Walters asked Patsy if she would in fact take a polygraph exam. Patsy hestitated and looked down to her left ever so briefly.... Gotcha! The magic of rewind and slow-mo....

 

The lens on my Maglite

is glass. Apparently they make them with both, MJenn. That could be why the lens didn't break on the Maglite at the Ramseys if it was the weapon.

I always thought the Maglite was the weapon, but the more I thought about it, the more these questions bothered me. My daughter's police-issued Maglite could indeed be used as a weapon to smash a skull - I'll give you that. It's even sturdier than the one I have, and mine wasn't cheap by any means.

I don't know - I've got to leave this one open - I'm not convinced yet it was the flashlight. It could have been, but I still have these questions. Maybe I need to just take the loss and really smash that flashlight against something to see if it holds up without any dents or broken lens or bulbs. I can always go buy a new one, right?

MJenn, the RST loves to claim those marks on JB's neck are fingernail gouges, but Meyer's report was pretty thorough, I thought, and surely he was capable of discerning fingernail gouges as opposed to petechia. I don't think those are fingernail marks at all. I was going to send you to a website that showed several methods of strangulation, including one where the woman had gouged her neck with her fingernails trying to get the rope off. It looked nothing like JB's neck. But, dang it, the site has been taken down.

BTW, talking about stun gun (marks) - check out this picture of a woman who was strangled manually - note the "stun gun marks" (not) that are actually finger marks.

http://uhsweb.edu/~lulo/lulo0002.htm

 

Oh, that was ooeeyyy.....

OK, like you, WY, my jury is still out. But have no fear, I do not believe in the stun gun theory.

Here's another thing that bugs me: I WANT TO KNOW WHAT DID THIS--the triangular bruise on the front of JonBenet's neck. Fingers seem to be the obvious answer, with the mark being made while the killer held her as he/she pulled on the paint brush handle. He/she would have to hold her with one hand while pulling with the other if she was lying on a surface or something, otherwise, there would be no way to get the tension needed on the cord to tighten it. But it is such an odd shaped bruise, with that precise fan-shape at the end, that it gives me pause. As your picture showed, WY, finger marks are not that shape and seem more irregular. Of course, that's not to say it can't be finger marks. But I'm adament: I want to know what made that mark.

Could it be something she was laid down on? One thing that always pops into my mind is...a golf club head. An iron? I don't know golf terms that well, so MOOOOOAAAAAAB, where are you?

 

No, finger marks

did not cause that triangular bruise or mark on her neck.

I wish that awful website was still up, because there were so many strangulation pictures on it. I saw several with that extensive bruising like that. IOW, it didn't seem that unusual to have that kind of large hemorrhagic area in a strangulation using rope or twine, whatever, and in the pictures I saw, it definitely was caused solely by the strangulation. Sort of a large petechia. That site had pictures of people who had gone through windshields, been in plane crashes, been accidentally strangled in kinky sex - anything and everything. It was pretty gorey, but I learned a lot from it. The pictures were especially helpful, especially when comparing them to the pictures of JB's neck.

 

Interesting posts here

A lot of interesting posts here. I still think JonBenét was pushed and fell down the stairs or into the tub or something as solid as that.

MJenn ...please read private message

 

Well, heck, look at this....

OK, WY, you got me to looking up my bookmarks to autopsy and death photos web sites...and for anyone who has ever entered this territory as an amateur, you know it's grim. But look at this site...about 3/4s of the way down the VERY LONG AND SLOW LOADING PAGE WITH MANY GREAT LINKS...there's a section on hanging...and JonBenet's autposy is linked in a group of links to hanging pictures. I can't wait to see what this guy has to say. One thing I have skimmed: hanging would account for some of the missing congestion of the face and petechia in the eyeballs. Or were there petechia in the eyeballs? You'd think I'd know that darn autopsy by heart by now.

But I have to do some real life right now, so if anyone wants to pick up the baton and run with it until I can get back to this, here's the link--WITH A CAUTION: the graphic pics have to be clicked on at this site, but some of them are really really really hard to look at:

http://www.pathguy.com/lectures/env-23.htm

 

MJenn

There were no petechiae on the scleral surfaces of the eyeball,only the conjunctiva.A thumb mark with fingers splayed and thumb allpying pressure kinda sideways flat on the surface might have caused that mark.Allowing the perp to pull right handed on the cord.I'm not as good as you in supplying descriptions!I am torn between a baseball bat and the maglite as to the weapon that made the head blow.Maglite could have been cleaned as to appear to be the weapon,inorder to deflect suspision from the bat.

 

Petechia

I can't remember about JB's eyes, but weren't there petechia on or around JB's heart? I vaguely remember reading that, I think it was in her autopsy report. I also remember that would indicate suffocation, which could be caused by strangulation. There may also have been petechia on her lungs, but I don't remember that - it seems as if there should be if the heart was affected. The petechia on her heart got my attention, because in all my readings, I don't believe I had ever learned that suffocation could cause petechia on a heart.

 

OK, you're up, Gecko and WY...

I have no doubt she died of strangulation. But here are some quotes from the website at the url I posted above. This is way over my head.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This accompanies a photo of eyeball with this kind of petchial hemorrhages:

"Mechanical asphyxia, including strangulation, can be marked by the appearance of petechial hemorrhages on the conjunctiva, as shown here. However, such a finding is not specific for this injury and can be seen with other conditions. Of course, finding ligature marks on the neck, hyoid bone fracture, and/or soft tissue hemorrhages in neck and larynx may help to determine the mechanism of injury."

"STRANGULATION: Occlusion of the blood flow and/or air passages in the neck by external compression.


"In any strangulation, death is due to lack of oxygen to the brain. While the carotids are easy to compress, it takes severe twisting of the neck to occlude the vertebral arteries. Nothing you can do will occlude Batson's plexus, which is an important part of the venous drainage of the brain.

"In hangings, the pressure is often great enough to prevent most arterial flow to the head, and therefore, you will not see petechiae. In fatal ligature and manual strangulation (not necessarily suffocation), there will always be petechiae on the conjunctivae. The finding is by no means specific; you can see petechiae here in death from right-sided heart failure, after vomiting, or even from lying face-down after death. "

"Hanging: Compression of neck structures is secondary to a noose tightened by body weight. Review of the anatomy: Forens. Sci. Int. 56: 65, 1992.

"Most of these are suicides. The weight of the head (12 lb) slightly exceeds the weight required to compress the carotids. The victim may be fully suspended, upright with legs on the floor, kneeling, sitting, or lying down. It takes 33 lb of pressure to compress an adult's trachea, so this usually doesn't happen in a hanging. Sometimes, death is due to the tongue being forced upward to occlude the airway.

"You'll usually find the noose above the larynx. Look for marks, unless the ligature is soft and the body was taken down soon after death.

"After most hangings, you'll see a protruding tongue. Don't expect always to see deep injuries in the neck, or petechiae around the eyes (why not?)

"Tardieu spots are small hemorrhages resulting from the weight of a column of blood rupturing blood vessels after death. These can be impressive in the lower extremities of a hanged body."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a url WITH PHOTOS OF HANGING VICTIMS: CAUTION! IT'S GROSS. But there are some things written here that may explain some things. If someone can interpret it for me....

http://www.pathguy.com/~dlaporte/hanging.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the url to the long page with JonBenet's autopsy url included in this section on hanging. It's about three quarters of the way down the page:

http://www.pathguy.com/lectures/env-23.htm

 

WY.....

I do not remember the mention of petechia around the heart or lungs mentioned in the autopsy report....hmmm wonder if Dunvegan has downloaded a copy of the autopsy report in the JonBenet archives...will have to check later today when I have time....

However, that would certainly go along with my theory of what happened in the murder of JonBenet....

I believe that JonBenet was strangled during the commission of a sexual perversion crime.....I believe that the person committing this crime was not intending to kill her, but accidentally pulled a knotted piece of cloth or knotted scarf too tightly during a sexual act cutting off her airway and causing near a near fatal condition, which included convulsions, damage to the trachea, and temporary cessation of breathing, and irregular heartbeat.....

I think that the perpetrator, realizing JonBenet's condition was either fatal or permanently damaging, then decided that she was beyond repair to a normal condition and made the decision to make sure that she would be silenced forever....

The maglite flashlite was probably at hand and looked like a fairly silent but deadly weapon with which to complete the deed, and was brought down with huge force onto the side of JonBenet's silent little head, cracking her skull and dislodging a piece of the bone and pushing it into her brain where the edge of the Maglite met the skull during the powerful blow....the killer was then sure that JonBenet would never report the horrible sexual assault to anyone....

I believe that the assault happened in JonBenet's own bedroom, and that the reason that there was no evidence on the exterior of JonBenets head that there had been a deathblow to her skull, was that her skull was smashed between two cushioned objects during the tremendously forceful blow....the rubber coated maglite and the mattress and bedding on which she was lying.....

Gradual, accidental strangulation during a sex act first with the effect of cutting off a great deal of blood flow to the head, and then the purposeful final death blow which resulted in immediate death due to brain trama, but with very limited bleeding because of the restricted blood flow.....

The rope ligatures and hand bindings were just staging and window dressing to throw the police off of the "gentle" strangulation by knotted scarf or cloth....they were not part of the weapons of murder.....The paintbrush and it's particles later found in the vaginal canal were also part of the later staging and not part of the death and torture......they were also used to cover up earlier sexual damage that JonBenet encountered in the month or so before her death.....

Make sense to anyone else?
Voyager

 

Sounds reasonable to me. Especially since Smit's release of the autopsy pictures last May showed a lower bruise line, at the base of her neck, below the final ligature found on JonBenet's neck. Some explain this as where the ligature was orginally tightened when the strangulation first began, before it rolled up the neck to it's final resting place.

One problem I have with this theory, which I have read put forth by others, as far as there being a first strangulation, then the garrote as staging, is that the garrote has petechial hemorrhaging above and below it, with "abrasions" above and below it as well. Those "abrasions" are interpreted by Smit to be JonBenet's fingernail marks. But the petechiae seem pretty hard to refute: if she were already dead, her heart not pumping, no petechie would be present around the garrote, I thought.

And was her trachea damaged? I thought not. Maybe I'm thinking of the hyoid bone. Gotta' run now, but here 's a url to the autopsy report from the autopsy site. Maybe this will help. I can look this up later since I have a copy of the report if you can't read the one at this url too well; it's a scan, I believe:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jonbenet1.html

Oh, but I do buy the erotic asphyxiation for many reasons. Though there is one sticking point on the unintentional results: those who practice this use padding of some sort to eliminate bruising and embarrassing questions about bruising: towel around the neck, etc. Well, if you go to the medical examiner's website I posted, there is a section on autoerotic asphyxiaion which explains this. If the killer was practicing this on JonBenet, why wouldn't he use padding, for surely someone would notice bruises on her neck and ask questions. Even "soft" strangulation could not guarantee no bruises or red marks at all. This would be high risk behavior, indeed. This makes me think this was no accident, that the killer, if this is what how she was killed, knew she would not be able to answer questions about marks or bruises on her neck. If JonBenet had been sexually abused before...and I believe she was...the killer may have intended to shut her up from the start. Premeditatated murder.

 

That has been my

foremost belief, too - that someone miscalculated during a sex game and accidentally strangled her. The petechia would be there, MJenn, if she was still alive when the final, intentional strangling happened. I don't know if you or Voyager read Wecht's book, but I thought he made a very good case of the ligature around her neck cutting off signals from her brain, through the vagus nerve in her neck, and to her heart. That would have stopped her heartbeat, I believe, and made it appear as if she had expired. At that point, she could have been revived had anyone tried, but Wecht's theory was that they thought she was dead and then the real staging began.

I too think she was killed in her bedroom, Voyager, but isn't it odd that no one in that house heard a thing? Must be heavy sleepers....

And, then I go back to the bedwetting theory - I can also see Patsy going into a rage and whacking JB, but that is a secondary theory to me. There is no way I will ever believe that one parent did it by him/herself - at least not the staging part of it. If it had been only the sexual molestation and the strangulation, it wouldn't have been so confusing, but they had to throw in that head bashing. Now it gets convoluted. It could go either way - was the head bashing staging? Or was it the result of someone's losing their temper?

Voyager, I am pretty sure I read that about the petechia on her heart, but you know... I have those senior moments from time to time, LOL. I'm going to try to find it.

 

Autopsy report

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jonbenet1.html

 

On page 6-7

of autopsy report, it speaks of occasional scattered subpleural (which, if I remember my medical terminology correctly, means under or beneath the pleura of the lungs) petechial hemorrhages. It also says there were scattered subepicardial petechial hemorrhages over the anterior surface of the heart. I'm certainly no expert, but that tells me there was some life left in JB when she was strangled, either for staging purposes, thinking she was dead and wanting to make it look like someone violently strangled her purposely to kill her. Petechia do not appear in lungs or heart unless there has been suffocation/cutting off of oxygen before death. If strangulation was the intended cause of death, it seems there would have been much more severe petechia in that area. This really does sound like a "gentle" strangulation to me with the rope being used as a prop in staging.

Do you think we will ever know what happened that night? The only way we will ever know is for the killer to confess. I don't see that happening.

On those picture MJenn has in her post above, it says the extreme red mark was made after death? Did I read that right? I thought it said there was bleeding in that area and red marks were post-mortem.