This new thread seems to address some points I and some others were making elsewhere regarding the "just a male doing a backbend and nothing else to see here" hypothesis. I appreciate the effort to provide some feedback. However, with one notable exception, the comments do not answer the mail on the objections we have raised but restate the original "nothing to see here" point, adding only an argument from numbers and/or authority.
I and others gave the male-female and crime-scene vs "nothing to see here" issues separate and detailed treatments on the other thread. Also the armpit hair question.
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foliage
ETA... HOLD down CTRL '+' to 325% percent to see what I am talking about. CRTL '-' will take you back.
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foliage
Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foliage - Page 5 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foliage
I want to avoid going 'round and 'round if nothing new is being said. I'll deal with the last quoted sentence as it's been a while for that argument.
When I look at the above, making allowance I didn't manage to put them at exactly the same scale, hanger and dancer have the same proportions in forearms, upper arms, you name it. They also match very well to the extent you can compare features like hairline, forehead, neck, chin, etc. An army of experts can swear the photo on the left is a muscular man and it wouldn't mean a thing against my lyin' eyes.
EEEP!! "Pretty even?" An argument from absence of evidence--from NOT seeing something--works best if NOBODY sees it. Once some substantial number of people are blowing up pictures of the a feature and passing them around, getting more people to say they don't see it won't help you with those who do.
I can see it, and my graphic editor software can see it. It's there even if a panel of experts, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or the State of Oregon swears on a stack of bibles they can't see it. There is lividity of some sort or other over a good bit of the face and head. (But the parts that aren't red are
deathly pale. "Pretty even!!??") I put the color dropper over the tops of the cheekbones and it tested bright red.
Just wrong. A well-defined, livid "down" area is strong evidence the subject is dead. Very strong evidence. The presence of such is grounds for withholding CPR and other potential lifesaving treatments. They wouldn't use it that way if it wasn't a reliable indicator. Don't take my word for it. Check the resources below.
(*** CAUTION: First link contains a gross picture. The LAST link is an image Google on "livor mortis" and is tons of gross pics.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livor_mortis
http://www.vchca.org/emspolicies/0606_Determination_of_Death_in_the_Field.sflb.ashx
http://www.google.com/search?q="dep...ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7HPIA_en
http://www.google.com/images?q=livo...&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1003&bih=567
You can't just hang upside-down and get that. You have to be dead. Somewhere there's a crime-scene photographer who disagrees, but I'm not making this up.
You can have it that the red area is blood pooling under gravity, but only if the person is dead. You can have it that the person may be alive, if the red area is a nasty bruise surrounding a nastier gash. I'm not buying exertion flush for that black thing enclosed by that red thing, never mind other problems.
I looked for a shadow, too, and agree that if a support extended to the right of the subject you could expect to see a shadow for it. That side is mostly sunny. The left side is practically all shapeless shadow. If the support is on the left, or a if it's a rope attached to a belt--or the feet, assuming the legs wearing the jeans aren't the hanger's but belong to Alcala--anything off the top of the frame, the shadow would be out of the picture to the left or lost in the mass of existing shadow on that side.
Note that NOW somebody sees redness in the face. There are areas of redness amid the pallor, yes. I agree. But just above, somebody else made an argument from not seeing anything of the sort.
I concur now as before that the head is up a little. Maybe it's just swinging freely. Maybe a badly bruised, choked person is still alive and moving it. There is no strain that I can see in the arms or the neck.
When I try relaxing my arms and dangling them, the rest position is about 1/3 forward, which corresponds well to the picture. Directly out feels a little strain and takes a small effort to hold.
This is the first time anyone arguing the "nothing to see here" position has addressed that dark region at all. Duly noted. Doesn't work for me, though. Maybe they haven't seen the enlarged, brightned pictures?
The "cutting" angle of the dark area crosses into the sunlight. In fact, it goes WAY too far in--a third of the way over the eyebrow!--to be a male's temple hair. (Maybe on Lon Chaney, Jr. This person isn't all that hairy, whatever you think of those armpits.) More importantly, there's not a hair visible in the sunlit portion OR on the part that's in shade. It's surface color.
What is not said is also interesting. There's no mention anywhere about why or how a "live person simply doing a backbend" would be bleeding from the nose or mouth and (it appears) the far eye, with the blood trails running up the head. No speculation of what that red stripe is across the neck. (Did they only see the original, non-enlarged picture?) It's an exercise mostly in not seeing and not addressing.
