Neighbors had heard heard Bella crying on occasions. But what if one day it got to be too much/too loud and they didn't want/couldn't deal with it and gave her something to subdue her and used what they had on hand. It could have been a one time occurrence that became deadly for Bella.
What Mistree brought up about maybe MM was trying to do CPR and not pushing/punching on her abdomen or reacting somehow to a non responsive child made me think. Inside lies there is usually a bit of truth mixed in.
The part I've bolded is something I was thinking yesterday when reading the thread about baby Chance...
How does it apply here, though?
If MM hasn't yet changed his story it's wildly different from RB's story.
Where's the truth in either of these stories and what effect does each story have on the other's story?
If MM's telling the truth, then we might not expect to find the same type of violent marks on the body? Because if MM's telling the truth, then that means RB is likely to be solely responsible, so I'd expect something less brutally violent and slightly more subtle .... smothering, drugging, drowning in the bath, etc.
If RB's telling the truth, I would imagine that the fridge is truth, the journey out to the seaport is truth (though MM may or may not have been present). If the beating by MM is true, then where's the evidence on the body? Why isn't it more obvious?
The lack of these signs of violence has apparently left the pathologists hypothesizing some kind of action that impacted on the breathing but which didn't leave too much bruising. That could be true, but what does that leave MM doing to cause that kind of death? Is it a realistic scenario or is it reaching for something in the pathology that matches RB's version just because there's nothing else to go on other than her version?
So where does that leave us? He either did it, in this way that left no bruising and no fractured ribs, or he didn't....so he might be telling the truth. Or we might not have the full pathologists report in front of us...which we don't, and maybe there is something there but it just doesn't give a definitive picture of COD and that's why it's not listed as clear COD?