Kapua, I want to thank you for alerting me to the Earls testimony on the masking tape. I had missed that. I did watch Earls, I thought, but obviously I missed a segment.
So I have been thinking about what Dr. Taylor meant in terms of real time when she said the jaw fracture was perimortem. I have done some googling in an attempt to find time frames that tell me whether the fracture had to have been what killed Charli, or that she died almost immediately after, because Taylor didn't quantify what "very near" to time of death means in this case (that I heard).
One of the better things I found is this article at Academia.edu (cached version needs paragraph breaks badly)
Distinguishing Between Antemortem, Perimortem, and Postmortem Trauma
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...rauma+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
I am not a physical science knowledge compatible brain type, so I don't like reading this sort of thing, and it would be great if someone else here is more geeky about it. Anyhow, the best I found was that while perimortem and postmortem are fairly sharply distinguished in bones, the difference between antemortem and perimortem depends on healing processes becoming visible. This says that the healing process begins almost immediately, but it might take a week to show visible signs. And six weeks to become really defined.
So if the pathologist had bruising or internal organs to examine, there are a lot of signs providing evidence, but less so right after a trauma fracture.
Therefore I'm thinking it is a fair working hypothesis that the blunt force trauma occurred that evening before death, but not necessarily in the final five minutes. An hour is not going to show visible changes of healing the trauma in the bone. But the trauma did occur before she died, and was not a case of it happening as her body was handled, because Taylor was definite about the perimortem not postmortem injury on the fractures.
The reason I want to know is whether she could have been struck as an initial attack to incapacitate her, and then transported to where she was stabbed, or whether it had to happen all more or less at once.
Because one theory (that I share) is that she did not go willingly on a long drive, this would require something to neutralize or forestall a protest or refusal. The reason I think this is because Brooke said Charli was freaked out when SC drove her out Hana Highway and would not stop or turn around, and it was not long before. So why would she put herself right back into that situation? It would make more sense that she met him while driving her car herself, and did not volunteer to become a passenger and put herself under his control again. But she might allow him to get in the vehicle for a conversation, at which point he could disable her with a surprise attack.
Haiku is not so remote that it seems like the right location to initiate a planned stabbing. Maybe it could happen to commit an unplanned frenzy, which could happen in the totally wrong place, but not so much a location to plan to murder and get away with it. Paraquat's would be that place, which he already scoped out, but how to get her there without a big struggle? A blitz attack in a parked vehicle is one way.
I'm just having trouble buying into him sweet-talking her into driving him or being driven on that night, although I can't rule it out either. She did have a history of giving into him. But because of Brooke's story about the dry run night that scared her, I want to believe she would have said no.
A hybrid theory might be that he got her to meet him and attempted to get her to agree to the drive, but she refused and he got violent because he had made up his mind that this was the night. He had told people he was going to be unavailable. He didn't wish to postpone and maybe not get another chance. (this is just speculation)
