Jolynna
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Thanks for putting all that info into a single post.
In light of the facts established in your post, it brings several questions to my mind. At some point the maggots must have eaten any and all traces of whatever decomp remains that were ever in the trunk, except for a bit of butyric acid scrapings, and then migrated into the white trash bag to feast on the decomposing fatty substance like Adipocere.
http://www.deathonline.net/decomposition/body_changes/grave_wax.htm
Adipocere begins to form within a month. If a body is readily accessible to insects Adipocere is unlikely to form.
http://deathonline.net/decomposition/corpse_fauna/flies/maggots.htm
Maggots can consume 60% of a human body in a week.
There were enough maggots in the white bag for GA to hear them making a popping sound. Therefore, it stands to reason there had to be some food source within the white bag. The black tray in the pictures you provided is an area where some of these maggots were found, so at some point in time there had to be a food source within that black tray, at least it is likely there was.
In my interpretation of the entomologist report, the fatty decomposing substance like Adipocere is NOT Adipocere and it seems Adipocere is unlikely to form if it is readily accessible to insects (which the above link seems to indicate). Also the link states Adipocere begins to form within a month, so yes 2.6 days does fit within a month, although it does seem unlikely it would form with insects having access, and in such a short period of time.
Since maggots can consume a large amount of food (for example more than half a human), in a weeks time, and we know there were enough maggots in the white trash bag to make a popping sound, do we not have to assume at one point in time, there simply had to be food items in that white trash bag?
Now, using the same process used by the experts. Since there were insects that had access to the fatty decomposing substance like Adipocere, the conditions in that bag were consistent with facts proving Adipocere was unlikely to form. And since maggots can consume a large amount of food in 17 days, and maggots were found in the white trash bag making a popping sound, the conditions found in the white trash bag are consistent with an event that suggests there was at one time food within the white trash bag.
Since we have established the presence of food likely being present in the white trash bag, and the Adipocere not being in the white trash bag, any decomposing odor in the trunk would likely have emitted from the decomposing food that the maggots had eaten in order to survive and multiply inside the white trash bag.
In conclusion, the conditions in the trunk were not consistent with Adipocere being likely to form, but the conditions do show it is likely there at one time was food in the white trash bag, and this could be the cause of the odor of decomposition. It should be noted, the decompositional event in the trunk could have been from human origin.
As always my entire post is moo.
Bolded by me.
In response to the parts I bolded, according those who investigated the trash, there was no food in the white trash bag. According to our own Websleuth chemist and Arpad Vass, who essentially created the field of Forensic Biology, the substance found on the napkins is consistent with the results of human decomposition.
The maggots were "coffin fly" maggots, not blow fly maggots. Blow flies show up shortly after death. Coffin flies are attracted to "riper" food.Originally Posted by DogMom2JoeAndWillie http://www.websleuths.com/forums/ima...s/viewpost.gif
Palmitic acid (C16H32O2), stearic acid (C18H36O2), and myristic acid (C14H28O2) are all saturated fatty acids. "Saturated" means that there are no double bonded carbons in the molecule...so there are as many hydrogens in the molecule as possible... the molecule is "saturated" with hydrogen atoms. Oleic acid (C18H34O2) is most abundant FA in human adipose tissue, and it is UNsaturated. If you hydrogenate the double bond (remove the double bond and add hydrogen) of oleic acid you end up with stearic acid (one of the saturated FA's). Palmitoleic acid (C16H30O2) is also a monounsaturated fatty acid, found throughout human adipose tissue. According to Vass' report, recently decomposing samples will have lots of oleic fatty acids (unsaturated). The unsaturated FA's are converted into saturated fatty acids (like stearic acid) over time. This means that some of the oleic acid was converted into other fatty acids while the paper towels were in the hot trunk during the summer. This explains why the the other fatty acids are present...they're products of decomposition and hydrolysis, hydrogenation, oxidation, etc. It also explains why they found lower levels of oleic acid than they would have expected for a recently deceased body...the substance on the paper towels was months old (regardless of where it came from/when decomposition began).
Vass concludes in the end of his report that the sample was consistent with human decomposition and (based on what I've read this evening) I agree with his conclusion.
THC and cannibinol are indicative of the pot....I don't think that the presence of myristic, palmitic, oleic, and/or stearic acids in the pot is significant. The results section of the study says that they only found all four FA's present in half of the samples that they analyzed. They also fail to give any real quantitative information... they don't tell us HOW MUCH of each of these FA's they found in the pot samples...but I'm going to do my best to estimate and explain my thought process. You've got to remember that they're working with very sensitive instruments (GC-MS) in this study, so they could have been identifying very small, trace amounts of FA's. I doubt that the amount of fatty acid they found on the paper towels could have come from whatever weed KC (or whoever it was) had. I can see where they were able to identify the THC and cannibinol... but they said that SMALL amounts were present. IIRC, pot is something like 5% THC...so if there was a gram of pot in the trunk (thats about a joint) they would've found around 50 milligrams of THC (which would be easy to identify/measure). The sample size they used for the fatty acid study was 100 milligrams...so there would've been a pretty low amount of THC (they abbreviate it CBD+CBN in their table). They give the ratio of fatty acid to CBD+CBN....and they got really little numbers. Assume that the 100 milligrams of pot was 5% THC, then 5 milligrams was actually THC. If they found 0.15 was the ratio of palmitic acid to THC, you can write the equation 0.15=x/5 and then calculate that x=0.75 milligrams of palmitic acid. That means that 1 gram of pot (a joint) would have 7.5 milligrams of palmitic acid in it....which is insignificant in comparison to the amount they found on the paper towels.
OK...I probably just confused everybody....maybe I made a little bit of sense, though! I hope this helps answer the questions you guys have. I'm sorry if it doesn't...I'm not very good at explaining things. If I don't make sense, please let me know and I will do my best to do better.
Being triple-bagged and sealed in a hot car trunk in humid Florida is an ideal environment for adipocere formation.
Here's a link to a New York Times article about how Neal Haskell used the presense of "coffin fly" maggots rather than "blow fly" maggots to show that a murder victim was put in a trash can either before death or immediately afterwards. Because the victim had been sealed in a hot air-tight container the entire body saponificated (turned into adipocere). Even after 3 years the body was preserved, although it was in a liquid, goopy state.
THE TRUTH REVEALED BY BUGS: THE CASE OF BROOKEY WEST: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12file-fly.html?_r=1