Person doing a backbend or hanging upside down in dense foliage

[Enchanting_eyes]

Now for I know for certain that there is a knot/bump above his right eyebrow, while it doesn't look recent as in done within the past moments before the picture was taken, it doesn't seem that old either and it seems that there is a pattern on it like an old plug would look ( you know a circle and two horizontal lines ) cept the lines are vertical on the bump. It just seems odd but maybe I have been looking at it too long.

The right eye to me looks normal; IE: it's not sunken in, or detached. The eye does look a bit puffy or swollen as if the person may have been drugged or exhausted at the time of the picture. The eye color appears to be brown to me.

I see no ligature marks around the neck, it looks like normal folding in the neck, when the neck is straight it will look like something was around the neck when there wasn't. To me it looks just like that, heck my neck does the same thing.

The person does not seem to be dead to me, I have seen plenty of bodies in varies states of decomp and while the person doesn't seem to be there, they don't seem to be dead, again I think this person was drugged in the picture. Once rigor mortis hits, it would be very hard to get a person in that position without breaking some bones unless it was done withing a very narrow time frame after death while the body is still somewhat pliable, but I don't see any other signs of death.

As to why this person is in the position, I have no clue I can guess and that is about it so my guess would be the person is trying to show they can do something and the picture was taken.. Like the photographer said " I bet you can't do a back bend or flip" and the person was like "Oh yeah well watch this" and did a back bend or flip.

You know I just don't know if this person is male or female, everything says it is a male. Even though some women of the time did not shave there armpits, the hair would be thicker and bushier, the hair under this persons arms resembles hair under a mans arm, thin and not as bushy. I really can't tell if there is an Adams apple or not, there seems to be one however it's small and it could be a woman whose larynx protrudes out a bit, like in a thin womans neck. But I am leaning towards that this is a picture of a man, the different features just seem to be male not female, unless it was a butch female or a hermaphrodite.

 

[punklove]

Now for I know for certain that there is a knot/bump above his right eyebrow, while it doesn't look recent as in done within the past moments before the picture was taken, it doesn't seem that old either and it seems that there is a pattern on it like an old plug would look ( you know a circle and two horizontal lines ) cept the lines are vertical on the bump. It just seems odd but maybe I have been looking at it too long.

I posted photos of the bump in this post if anyone wants to see:
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foilage

The only thing about the photo that confuses me is that it just doesnt seem like the natural place someone would do a backbend. Id think most people would look for an area that was a bit more cleared not somewhere that there is so many trees/vines/weeds directly under them.

 

[Enchanting_eyes]

Do you see something strange on the bump?

I see something strange on the bump and to me it looks like a marking of an old power cord/plug. I swear when I was kid we had a cord that would make those exact same marks. I'm having trouble finding a picture to describe what I am talking about, ok so I just drew one in paint.

That would be the part where the prongs would be plugged in. This is what I am seeing on the bump, like someone pressed it into the persons skin.

 

[Filly]

I know squat about rigor mortis but recall looking it up when we first posted these photographs.




http://chemistry.about.com/cs/biochemistry/a/aa061903a.htm


So at some point you stop being stiff. Did he go back later to this body and pose it? Can't be right? Then the body would be decomposed. It looks like blood has started to pool to me.


Oddly I was posting about how I fractured my skull as a kid and it's basically in the same area this person has the bump. Almost. It would take a hard forceful blow to cause that I think.

 

[Enchanting_eyes]

OK I am going to try to explain the different stages of mortis and decomposition. Please note, I just worked in a funeral home and I am by no means an expert, I just asked a lot of questions and watched the directors do there thing, you can actually learn a lot that way and I did.

There are six stages of death:

Pallor mortis starts at the onset of death and is the paling of the body, there isn't any blood circulation and what starts to happen is the blood is going to pool at the lowest part of the body or livor mortis.

Algor mortis is the reduction of body temperature immediately following death, the body temp will decline until it reaches the temp of the surrounding area where the body is.

Rigor mortis is the stiffing of the limbs, there is a chemical change in the muscles that cause limbs to become stiff. This occurs about three hours after death and it will gradually loose the stiffness over the course of three days, where in the body will become a bit more pliable.

Livor mortis is the pooling of the blood to the lowest part of the body causing what looks like really bad bruising on the body and it starts about 30 minutes after death. You get the discoloration because something ( ground,chair some object ) is pressing against the body causing blood vessels to become compressed.

Decomposition is where the body tissue starts breaking down and where insects enter the picture. There are five different stages of decomp and here they are.

The fresh stage occurs during the first few days of death. What is happening is cellular and tissue changes start to occur, also the destruction of organs and cells occur due to a chemical process I can't recall at the moment. This is also when algor mortis occurs.

Putrefaction..during this stage discoloration,bloating and odor occur. What happens during this stage is bacteria is breaking down causing the greenish color on a body, also gases enter the abdomen ( forcing liquid and feces out.) neck and face causing swelling.

Black putrefaction is where the gases escape the body and it turns from a greenish color to black, also this is where insect/bug activity increases. It happens about 7-20 days after death and the end result is bones.

Butyric fermentation this is where the body will become mummified, the body dries out and loses the odor, the body will also start to look a bit waxy or cheesy. In order for butyric fermentation to occur,the body has to go through putrefaction and black putrefaction.

Dry decay is where there is nothing left on the body but the skeleton. This is when skeletonization occurs ( the last stage of death ) and what will happen over the course of years/decades/centuries is the bones are going to decompose and leave nothing behind to indicate there was a body there.

All that said.. There are deciding factors that are going to determine the rate of decomposition of a body. You have location, weather, animals, how the person died, if they have been embalmed, if they were buried, is there enough oxygen to the body, if there was any trauma to the body and so forth. Yeah there is a lot of factors that weigh in during decomp.

I hope this has helped to try to understand the process of death and decomposition. Again I am not an expert, just worked in a funeral home and listened.

 

[Filly]

OK I am going to try to explain the different stages of mortis and decomposition. Please note, I just worked in a funeral home and I am by no means an expert, I just asked a lot of questions and watched the directors do there thing, you can actually learn a lot that way and I did.

There are six stages of death:

Pallor mortis starts at the onset of death and is the paling of the body, there isn't any blood circulation and what starts to happen is the blood is going to pool at the lowest part of the body or livor mortis.

Algor mortis is the reduction of body temperature immediately following death, the body temp will decline until it reaches the temp of the surrounding area where the body is.

Rigor mortis is the stiffing of the limbs, there is a chemical change in the muscles that cause limbs to become stiff. This occurs about three hours after death and it will gradually loose the stiffness over the course of three days, where in the body will become a bit more pliable.

Livor mortis is the pooling of the blood to the lowest part of the body causing what looks like really bad bruising on the body and it starts about 30 minutes after death. You get the discoloration because something ( ground,chair some object ) is pressing against the body causing blood vessels to become compressed.

Decomposition is where the body tissue starts breaking down and where insects enter the picture. There are five different stages of decomp and here they are.

The fresh stage occurs during the first few days of death. What is happening is cellular and tissue changes start to occur, also the destruction of organs and cells occur due to a chemical process I can't recall at the moment. This is also when algor mortis occurs.

Putrefaction..during this stage discoloration,bloating and odor occur. What happens during this stage is bacteria is breaking down causing the greenish color on a body, also gases enter the abdomen ( forcing liquid and feces out.) neck and face causing swelling.

Black putrefaction is where the gases escape the body and it turns from a greenish color to black, also this is where insect/bug activity increases. It happens about 7-20 days after death and the end result is bones.

Butyric fermentation this is where the body will become mummified, the body dries out and loses the odor, the body will also start to look a bit waxy or cheesy. In order for butyric fermentation to occur,the body has to go through putrefaction and black putrefaction.

Dry decay is where there is nothing left on the body but the skeleton. This is when skeletonization occurs ( the last stage of death ) and what will happen over the course of years/decades/centuries is the bones are going to decompose and leave nothing behind to indicate there was a body there.

All that said.. There are deciding factors that are going to determine the rate of decomposition of a body. You have location, weather, animals, how the person died, if they have been embalmed, if they were buried, is there enough oxygen to the body, if there was any trauma to the body and so forth. Yeah there is a lot of factors that weigh in during decomp.

I hope this has helped to try to understand the process of death and decomposition. Again I am not an expert, just worked in a funeral home and listened.

Holy smokes. Thank you EE. I'm taking your word on that. You explained that all very well.

 

[WildHuncher]

This is just to clarify what the people who see injuries are reacting to. There are 3-4 streaks of blood coming down from one eye. (They go UP in the attached pictures because the pictures are flipped.) There's another blood trail going from the nostril or mouth--somewhere behind those @#$%^& leaves--down across the the nose toward the others.

There's also reddish discoloration above the near eyebrow. I think it's pooling from hanging upside-down after death. In shadow within the livid region is a dark mass--invisible without turning up the brightness--resembling a bruise or gash.

A flush from exertion would not explain these features. They're all wrong for that. Limited area, high contrast. People don't get deep red at just the tops of their foreheads when they strain. Then, there's a small clump of head hair that defies gravity by refusing to hang down like the all the rest. It's plastered to the area where the blood trails go.

The dark region on the neck is faint but it's a sign of choking which may have been the cause of death. A shadow border bisects the discoloration so that you can't tease up the contrast on one side without losing all detail on the other. Nevertheless, you can highlight each side, one at a time. I have done this.

The mark goes all the way across the neck and does not look innocent. I think it's from some kind of wide cloth like a towel. Choking hands would leave an uneven, blotchy impression. A rope or belt would leave a deep, narrow trench preserving the surface texture of the object.

This person has been hurt by someone--I wonder who?--and has been bleeding while upside down prior to the picture being taken. This would not look innocent even if the photographer were not Rodney Alacala. If the dark blotch on the forehead is blood pooling, this person is definitely dead. Given that the photographer IS Alacala, I'd say even if it's only a bad bruise the person was dead before the session was over if not yet in the photo.

For the sex of the person, there's a bit of windpipe but nothing so protrusive as a male adam's apple. The impression that there are breasts starting to swell at the edge of the frame is supported by how the picture is cropped.

There are lots of ways to edit a picture. It's lamentable that the police staffer preparing the photos for release was a one-trick pony who only knew how to crop. A lot of important information has been lost from the pictures that featured nudity. That's why we have these crazy discussions on at least three threads about whether this person or that person is male or female. (I'm seeing "female" pretty much every time, BTW.)

I'm not sure now if the person is being hoisted by Alcala as I proposed in a sketch earlier. (This still seems possible.) Her weight could be draped across something or perhaps supported by a rope. I don't see bridging. Forgetting for a moment that the dead don't do backbends, both the hands and the feet are splayed out too far to support the body stably. NEITHER are under the torso.

Same disclaimer as before. The above is strictly amateur-hour humble opinion.

 

[dsntslp]

I agree with you Wildhuncher.
It amazed me when I first saw autopsy photos and the blood from the nose appeared to be watery and not thick and red like a fresh cut bleeding wound would be. What was coming from the nose in the autopsy pics I saw was a clear watery liquid tinged with blood. In the autopsy photo I saw it appeared almost identical to what we see here... even to the point of running uphill and leading us to believe the body was moved after death. Thank you for your well thought out post and the time it took to do it.

 

[WildHuncher]

http://i40.tinypic.com/2e2fotu.jpg

I think these are the same person. I think her hands are dirty from doing back bends while alive and that the other pic is so disturbing because he staged her that way so he could...recreate the position.

Was she a dancer? Gymnast? Did she really think they were innocent and artistic pictures being taken by a genuine photographer...she told him no and he recreated the positions afterward? Apologies to whoever is in these pics and their family, it hurts just writing all of this.

I think the bump on the head matches, as well as the head hair and the arm shape.

What may be bothering me about the picture that seems staged is that the foliage is blurred at the front like it has been tampered with. Could LE have done that to try and hide the bruising on the cheek that also seems to match cheek bruising on the girl with her hands in the air?

I think the eyebrows, the tops of the cheekbones, and the area around the eye sockets match very well, rather better than can be expected.

That, and I can't imagine an attractive woman going into some presumably secluded spot in the woods with Alcala, dancing nude for him, and NOT getting murdered.

Edit: Another comparison with a rotated and zoomed dancer pic shows the same parallels.

 

[Enchanting_eyes]

I don't feel that is blood on his/her nose. Whatever it is has a clean edge to it and it slanted to the left and it does not appear to me that his/her head or body is leaning to the left, I'm not saying blood won't flow that way, but not as clean as whatever it is we are seeing. Also whatever it is appears to just stop right around his eyebrows.

I'm kinda leaning towards that it is a small twig across the nose area.

In my experience I don't feel like blood is pooling at the forehead. For one thing, there is nothing pressing against the forehead, another thing it's just in that area and unless somehow he/she was laying on his/her side with just that area press against the ground, but then you would see pooling on the side of the face and there isn't any.
ETA: And another thing, if it was blood pooling there, it would be darker and less iodine looking.

What's going to happen is that the blood would pull to the back of the head and neck where it's going to be the heaviest because the brain is pushing on the back of the head compressing the blood vessel in the head. There is nothing pressing against the right part of the forehead to cause blood to pool there.

I don't think the person is dead in the picture, I think they are possible drugged up, I know Alcala like to pose bodies and this is not an easy pose to but a dead person in.

 

[reasypeasy]

That, and I can't imagine an attractive woman going into some presumably secluded spot in the woods with Alcala, dancing nude for him, and NOT getting murdered.

Oddly enough, I can imagine it, a woman dancing for him and getting away with her life not knowing what danger she had been in. I suspect he enjoyed consensual sex too, and probably found it very bolstering to his ego in a different way to the nonconsensual activities. I think the case of the underage hitchhiker he raped gives an insight into the border between his consensual and non-consensual acts... they were happily having sex, something went wrong (maybe she didn't want to do a particular sexual act?) he lost his temper and then when she regained consciousness he was crying even though what he did to her was quite mild compared to many other things he had done to others who had presumably rejected him right from the start. Obviously he hadn't intended for things to go that way with her, he had been enjoying the way things were and thought she was fun until he lost his temper.

 

[WildHuncher]

Oddly enough, I can imagine it, a woman dancing for him and getting away with her life not knowing what danger she had been in. I suspect he enjoyed consensual sex too, and probably found it very bolstering to his ego in a different way to the nonconsensual activities. I think the case of the underage hitchhiker he raped gives an insight into the border between his consensual and non-consensual acts... they were happily having sex, something went wrong (maybe she didn't want to do a particular sexual act?) he lost his temper and then when she regained consciousness he was crying even though what he did to her was quite mild compared to many other things he had done to others who had presumably rejected him right from the start. Obviously he hadn't intended for things to go that way with her, he had been enjoying the way things were and thought she was fun until he lost his temper.

Interesting insight. Thanks. I wasn't aware of that incident.

 

[carbuff]

Oddly enough, I can imagine it, a woman dancing for him and getting away with her life not knowing what danger she had been in. I suspect he enjoyed consensual sex too, and probably found it very bolstering to his ego in a different way to the nonconsensual activities. I think the case of the underage hitchhiker he raped gives an insight into the border between his consensual and non-consensual acts... they were happily having sex, something went wrong (maybe she didn't want to do a particular sexual act?) he lost his temper and then when she regained consciousness he was crying even though what he did to her was quite mild compared to many other things he had done to others who had presumably rejected him right from the start. Obviously he hadn't intended for things to go that way with her, he had been enjoying the way things were and thought she was fun until he lost his temper.

Excellent point. In the articles written around the time of his arrest, nobody describes him as a loner, weirdo, or anything like that. They all talk about what a charming outgoing person he was, how popular, etc. And plenty of girlfriends. Also, quite a number of women have identified themselves already and most of them have said that nothing at all happened -- he took their picture and that was that.

I expect you're right about a trigger act. Something she didn't want to do, some defiance, something that reminded him of something that happened in the past -- who knows?

 

[WildHuncher]

Excellent point. In the articles written around the time of his arrest, nobody describes him as a loner, weirdo, or anything like that. They all talk about what a charming outgoing person he was, how popular, etc. And plenty of girlfriends. Also, quite a number of women have identified themselves already and most of them have said that nothing at all happened -- he took their picture and that was that.

I expect you're right about a trigger act. Something she didn't want to do, some defiance, something that reminded him of something that happened in the past -- who knows?

He triggered some people's radar very quickly and some not at all. He won on The Dating Game but his "date" backed out immediately afterward. Judy Cole, totally freaked, got up and ran from a photo shoot in New York right after the session began. (She's the somewhat out-of-focus blonde on the rug.) Liane Leedom (dark-haired girl in the lacy white dress, then 16) had no misgivings of her own but noticed her mother was very disgusted by his photo collection during her shoot. A friend warned her about Alcala's troubles with the law a few weeks before his arrest.

Police say he is having apparently consensual sex with some of the people in the unreleased photos. That lends some credence to the "trigger" theory. But maybe circumstances just weren't right for a rape in those sessions. In many of the cases he seems to have planned his attack from the beginning.

Alone in the woods with Rodney is no place for a girl.

 

[carbuff]

He triggered some people's radar very quickly and some not at all. He won on The Dating Game but his "date" backed out immediately afterward. Judy Cole, totally freaked, got up and ran from a photo shoot in New York right after the session began. (She's the somewhat out-of-focus blonde on the rug.) Liane Leedom (dark-haired girl in the lacy white dress, then 16) had no misgivings of her own but noticed her mother was very disgusted by his photo collection during her shoot. A friend warned her about Alcala's troubles with the law a few weeks before his arrest.

Police say he is having apparently consensual sex with some of the people in the unreleased photos. That lends some credence to the "trigger" theory. But maybe circumstances just weren't right for a rape in those sessions. In many of the cases he seems to have planned his attack from the beginning.

Alone in the woods with Rodney is no place for a girl.

S/he was certainly at risk, I don't deny that. My point was that there's no reason to automatically assume that everything in every photo shows torture or murder. And I am simply not seeing these bruises, blood streaks, etc. I see a person of uncertain gender doing a not-very-good back bend in the brush, and not looking very attractive while doing it.

 

[WildHuncher]

S/he was certainly at risk, I don't deny that. My point was that there's no reason to automatically assume that everything in every photo shows torture or murder. And I am simply not seeing these bruises, blood streaks, etc. I see a person of uncertain gender doing a not-very-good back bend in the brush, and not looking very attractive while doing it.

How you can miss a tomato-colored region as big as a grapefruit on that forehead is a mystery to me but I won't waste any more bandwidth posting pictures.

:beamup:

 

[carbuff]

How you can miss a tomato-colored region as big as a grapefruit on that forehead is a mystery to me but I won't waste any more bandwidth posting pictures.

:beamup:

I see the red spot but it just looks like his/her face is red from being upside down.

I'm not saying you're wrong -- under the circumstances, you might well be right. I just don't see anything that clear in this this photo.

 

[buffetoflies]

Ugh, I have never in all my life seen a pic that disturbs me more than this one has. The sketch of the guy holding the rope is what brought me over the edge. I haven't gone a night in the past six days without thinking about all this while I'm trying to fall asleep.

I bet LE knows this person is dead, and is it one of the extra murders RA was charged with?

 

[WildHuncher]

I really meant to stop posting these pictures but every time I look at this it gets worse. Here's what I'm seeing these days regarding those thin but bloody-looking streaks. Given the context, I can't make anything innocent out of it.

 

[eeyorelrn]

Has anyone contacted the investigators to find out if they know whether or not this is actually a male or female? I would think that if this happens to be one of the photos that were cropped they would seen enough of the photo to tell for sure. They may not be able to tell anything else about it, but maybe that much.... who knows?