Interesting points. I think he wanted her bones scattered by animals, or at least, factored that into his rambling statements about what might have happened to her. He knew there would at least be birds. Seeing carrion birds circling in that area is a daily occurrence (and actually, as I live near some open fields, I see turkey vultures circling almost daily - never think a thing about it). But, by digging a shallow grave, the murderer made it obvious that this was no animal predation event. I know it makes the murderer look stupid, but even the smartest murderers do really dumb things (thankfully for Justice). I feel that this murderer could not resist attempting a "decent burial."
I keep thinking about those tools, as well. Microscopic analysis of the shovel (if it is now in the hands of LE, which I don't know) could say something about the soil into which it last dug. And there could be teensy particles of that soil in micro-grooves on the shovel (but if he had, say, steel wool or something, I think that evidence could be disappeared). OTOH, the steel wool would reveal that someone thought it necessary to thoroughly scrub the shovel (gee, could it be BARRY, the guy who took a shovel into a hotel room on the day his wife disappeared??)
The whole bleach thing is confusing. Someone posted yesterday the interview with the asst manager of the hotel who said that particular room "always smelled like bleach" (due to the pool) but I have my doubts about that person's reliability. What sort of hotel allows noxious fumes to accumulate in a guest room? And why would there be THAT much bleach in the pool. Pools that are off-gassing chlorine to that extent are dangerous and that's not how pool chemistry is supposed to be managed (makes the hotel look really bad). What a lucky thing for Barry, right, if true?
But then Andy Moorman says that LE told him that the Puma Path house also wreaked of bleach. Hmmm.
JP and MG mention the bleach smell in that one room.
No other guest reviews of that hotel mention it (I would be on google reviews so fast if my room smelled of bleach!) I can think of all kinds of reasons why the asst manager might have made that statement to a reporter, though. I can think of reasons why some reporters would want a tidbit like that.
At the time of Suzanne's disappearance, Salida had two small town newspapers (digital; one can barely call them newspapers, as they were more like news blogs, each run by mainly one person, each with more opinion pieces than news, IIRC).
The two papers had competing viewpoints on nearly everything. Some of Barry's known friends (and IMO, Barry himself) were more associated with one of those papers than the other (IMO). The newspapers were both covering (before Suzanne's disappearance) the hiring of Sheriff Spezzi (and the two papers took vastly different viewpoints on it - with Spezzi's chief competitor for the position being supported by the one paper and Spezzi by the other). I think one of the online newspapers is no longer in existence, I haven't checked recently.
Even now, there is a local online entity (newspaper-ish) that has links to some extraordinarily biased/angled coverage involving Suzanne. It may be the same newspaper under a new name, but it has taken up the "cause" of besmirching Suzanne in a way that I find shocking - but not unbelievable.
IMO.
Yes, but he's OUR
@Barry and it is very good to see him here.
But, IMO, hair would likely NOT leave a record of a tranquilizer injected just hours before death. Sadly. Her hair might, for example, show signs if cannabis use (something that Suzanne wanted to try for her chemotherapy nausea and which Barry forbid her to do, IIRC). So it will support the narrative that Barry started (of Suzanne's moral depravity - from his point of view).
So I am not confident that hair will yield the kind of evidence that I'd like to see. It would be the bone marrow and the blood that would reveal the animal anesthetic. In my view, it's possible that BM shot her with a commonly used deer anesthetic (which IIRC, he had procured from his "mentor" in Indiana, the guy who ran a deer farm). In researching post-mortem detection of anesthestics, I find that most doctors and others investigating this issue say it's really difficult to detect. The best technique involves using whole blood from a recently deceased person.
Bone marrow gives a good record of recent chemical use, but what I'm finding is that every single human research project on this topic involves a newly deceased person as well. There are some animal studies, though, on longer-dead animals, and that's promising (that the marrow chambers could still retain some evidence of toxins/anesthesia, etc).
While looking into this topic (still reading), I found that it's not uncommon for someone to have severe allergic reactions to anesthesia (anaphylaxis) AND that there's a reason we do not use the same chemistry for human anesthesia!
It made me wonder whether Barry's real plan was to make Suzanne unconscious, thinking she'd wake up an hour later, like a deer. Then, he'd interrogate her, waving her journals in her face, etc. She ended up dead instead (from the deer anesthetic). He could not rouse her. He panicked. Anyone who would shoot a human with a deer dart (and don't get me started on whether he then put more of that stuff in her port) HAD to have realized the risk of death. So he didn't care if she died. But did he intend for her to die right when she did? Did she ever come to and did he interrogate her? Did he then simply give her more anesthesia, take her off premises, and give her still more?
By doing this, he found out what he wanted, punished her before she died, and created a complex crime with no chance of cadaverine right in the house. If it is true that dogs hit on his truck, it's because he interacted with her body at least 12 hours after her death. It's possible the initial dose of deer anesthetic killed her and the clock started to tick (surely he knew from his volunteer fire training about cadaver dogs and their capacities - otherwise, it's easy enough to google). If he did expect her to wake up (like a deer), and she instead went deeper into coma, I think he was prepared for that. He knew that even deer do not always wake up, and he knew he was using a product unusable on humans and likely to cause death.
IMO.
(Sorry for the super long post - I am appreciating the discussion here so much, as with so many others on WS, this case is really deeply embedded in my heart and soul, and I find myself crying as I read the medical literature on what can be found post-mortem with this amount of time passing - it's obviously something we anthropologists try to improve on, as we deal mostly with older bones).