I appreciate RC's research on strangulation. Thanks for engaging in discussion and siting references. I'm going to watch a movie now......before I try to go to sleep.
Take care and looking forward to further sleuthing!
Sorry, I couldn't answer your question about the point of my posting the article earlier. Kids and 3 month old puppy demanded my immediate attention.
Now that I've read this stuff, I see how easily this scenario could have taken place:
Brad strangles NC in the foyer using the carotid artery hold. She doesn't fight because she loses consciousness within 10 seconds. He is stronger than she is because he is a male who is in top physical (Iron Man) condition. He continues this hold for 4-5 minutes, which results in her death. Meanwhile, she vomited and lost control of her bowels and bladder. These substances got on the sticks, and maybe on the ducks. Or maybe when he released his hold on her, her body fell and landed knocked over and broke the sticks and ducks or left some of the substances on them. Or maybe he knocked them over into the substances when he was moving her body. There were no visible marks on her from this and the only indication she had been strangled was the fractured hyoid bone, which would be consistant with BC using the carotid artery hold.
Now he has to put different clothing on her body, get rid of her body, the sticks, the ducks, the 4 shoes (including the ones he wore to the dump site), do the laundry, and clean up the mess in the foyer. However he transported her body, it had to be wrapped in something and he got rid of it along with the other items. He probably had a step-by-step plan to deal with this, but since he hadn't strangled anyone before, it is unlikely that everything had been accounted for.
Unless he is subhuman, he also had to get his emotions under control because he had to take care of the kids, be sure to eliminate all physical evidence, look forward to dealing with the police, family and friends, and all on no sleep. I don't know how a person would feel after doing something like that, but I imagine it would be something along the lines of panic-stricken (racing against time to do all that + fear of being caught + kids waking up), and horrified.
Premeditation can take place in seconds, and since strangulation takes 4-5 minutes, there it is.
It doesn't matter if he killed NC when she came home or later -- unless it had to be when she came home so she could vomit on the ducks and sticks. I doubt she was in bed asleep, though, or he would have had a mattress problem and no need to clean the foyer floor.
I suppose anyone who wanted to kill NC, a "friend" or a stranger who was with her that morning, could have killed her the same way, in another location. That seems unlikely, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I will be surprised if he is not convicted.