Right, which was the point of my post. Rigor hadn't started, which is in the face first, approximately 2 hrs after death. So, now I'm rethinking Maddie being killed before midnight, or she'd have been ~8 hrs into rigor when she was seen on video (mouth ajar and limp body ~ an hour later when moved to the trunk).
From my post that was edited out:
Smaller muscles over the face – around the eyes, around the mouth, etc. are the muscles where rigor mortis first appears, followed by rigor mortis of the muscles in the hands and upper limbs, and finally appears in the large muscles of the lower limbs. Rigor mortis appears approximately 2 hours after death in the muscles of the face
... and progresses to the limbs over the next few hours, completing between 6 to 8 hours after death.
IF she was killed before midnight, as I thought likely, rigor would have been completed by the time she was seen on various videos which throws a wrench into my theory.
I found only 1 instance searching for
mouth. (Pg 35) But, several mentions of her slumped. People don't slump if they are going through rigor. I'm thinking slumping would happen pre-rigor, which starts ~2 hours after death in the face, and completes ~6-8 hours after death according to:
Forensic pathologists are essentially required to estimate the time since death (TSD) to assist in death investigation by limiting the investigation period and thus helping narrow down the number of suspects in homicide cases. TSD also provides valuable information in establishing the timeline...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And with all due respect, I'm going with what NIH says on that matter (National Library of Medicine - National Center for Biotechnology Information), over an article on MedicineNet. I'm open to seeing other sources to potentially sway me away from NIH though.