Thanks for your comments.
Re the issues you raise on assertion #3. I completely agree.
And indeed I would go with the simpler explanation. I agree it is entirely possible if not likely that Burke strangled first and perhaps final.
The head wound for me is very very problematic.
I am a neuroradiologist by profession and have interpreted thousands of head scans of victims sustaining serious blunt trauma to the skull.
I simply do not recall a single incidence of someone suffering a powerful blow to the skull by a blunt object - club, rock, bat, bar. lamp etc or who have sustained a deceleration injury to the head ( head vs dashboard, window, wall etc) who has not concomitantly presented with fairly massive scalp swelling at or near the point of impact.
The scalp almost always generates "edema" "swelling" "interstitial bleeding" - "goose egg" "bruising" that extends far beyond the point of impact. In the event that the scalp overlying skin is broken - lacerated, very substantial bleeding occurs over the scalp and face. On this point, I am only referring to all the layers constituting the soft tissue covering of the skull.
To cause a depressed well demarcateded skull fracture in a child (different force requirements vs a more mature adult skull) necessitates a substantial amount of concentrated kinetic energy (but easily delivered by a 9 yr old boy). The pathologic elements within the brain and its leptomeninges that would ensue at the fracture site as well as pathologic changes to the brain at the opposite side of the blow would be distinctive. The early coroners autopsy report and description of scalp, skull, dura, arachnoid, brain cortex, subcortex, deep white matter, pattern of brain swelling did not seem in keeping with an acute or even subacute blunt instrument blow to the skull. A number of statements struck me as "off" or "curious".
Thus I am on the hunt to view autopsy photos as well as photos of the detached brain, and microscopic views of the cut brain.
To date I have been unsuccessful in finding these photos.
If I could view this material I could advance a more reliable of what happened that night.