longtimelurker
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Twice I've come across histopathology caused by fatal exposure to phosphine poisoning (phosphine pois. can come from exp. to fumigants). It's very intricate when you get into reading about phosphine exposure. Phosphine isn't found easily in nature. You'll have to look that one up. I love reading this type of info., so if you don't, maybe they will have a "human liver for dummies" and a "phosphine poisoning for dummies" on Google
As well, the "pancreas is autolyzed". Does this mean autolyzed via mechanical means used on autopsy to get it ready to be tested, or does it mean "autolyzed" pancreas due to poisoning or could it mean the pancreas autolyzed due to decomp? Need I take I40 to Chapel Hill?
The liver can help detoxify the pancreas. Of course, that's what a liver likes to do: detox, among other functions. We need the ME to come here and help us out.
To add, I want to see the BIG Mamma of the Autopsy results: the real thing. I want lab results from testing the liver, etc. Yes, I know she died of asphyxiation. I am SLEUTHING.
When it says the pancreas was autolysed it means that the body had been left out in the heat so long that although they could grossly identify an organ as pancreas, when they look at the histopathology( a small section that has been stained and fixed on a glass slide to look at cellular architecture) of the organ they couldn't identify tissues at all. Meaning it was too badly decomposed to make any judgement about it. Mild vacuolation of the liver is a histopathologic finding which is so general and vague that it is unlikely that it has any crucial meaning to the cause of death.
Things like small amount of fluid in trachea, could also be a post-mortem finding ie the lungs were startiing to disintegrate and liquefy and some of it was found in the trachea. If it was vomit it would have had to come up the esophagus and them be aspirated into the trachea. I am guessing that is unlikely. You have to realize that a pathologist has to write down every finding, even though many of them will have nothing to do with the cause of death. In my medical opinion from reading the autopsy I would not take the autolysis of tissues, the fluid in the trachea or the vaculation of the liver to be significant at all to the case . They were just findings that had to be noted.
Things I take as important Fracture of hyoid bone( very common in ligature strangulations), mark on neck( probably from whatever was used to strangle her), possibly the fact that one leg had the mud on it.
Again going by statistics if you read papers most women who are strangled are strangled by a male that they know. All this does is make it statistically more likely that a man may have done it. It doesn't all tell us that it had to be a male, or someone taller or stronger. If the person had the element of surpise they easily could have been smaller, weaker, and female.
Hopefully there will be some more details that will help prove or disprove who did it. If the man walking his dog hadn't found her and she had been out a few more days there may have been no findings on the autopsy and the killer would leikely have gotten away with it. Thank goodness for the vultures! The man said he looked down ther becasue he saw vultures circling.
Probably the killer didn't realize that vultures would circle the body if it wasn't buried.