Well, what I wanted to post earlier, but something came up (imagine that, I got interrupted...sarcasm icon!), is that I heard back from not only one, but two forensic anthropologists and an ME re: some of our questions. Basically Lion was probabaly correct (no surprise there
) in that it is logical to surmise that the PMI (time since death) for P. Blue was much more likely to have been at most two years, and more likely w/in one year. This is still an ASSUMPTION bec. it was never stated forensically and it is much too late to have it looked at now, but this is based on IF there was viable bone marrow for the drug testing. I say IF, because they (the dr's.) brought up a good point:
because the opiates test came back negative could very well mean it was because the marrow was not viable enough for a proper analysis for the drugs to show up. They could have pulled the marrow and run it for certain drugs, and have it say,"negative" but not bec. there WEREN'T drugs at one point in her system, but rather, bec. the marrow sample was "weak." All also agreed that it seemed strange that there was only an "opiates" test run, not a complete toxicology test. Which may suggest they had reason to suspect an opiate or opiate-derivative (heroin, codeine, morphine,methoadone) may be there...for example, syringes near the remains. Or...it could mean that there WAS a complete tox screen run, and we just don't know about it!:silenced:
All the professionals also agreed w/ the previous for. anth. with whom I spoke about this subject, in that there is no documentation to show how bone marrow breaks down (like a rate), but they say there IS less of it in older ppl., overweight ppl., and persons w/ certain illnesses. Interesting...of course, we don't know how much was there in P.Blue's bones, anyway. But we do know she wasn't old!
Hope this answers some of our inquisitiveness,
