ThinkHard
Former Member
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- Feb 3, 2013
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Ive been thinking about this a lot the past 12 hours - and I'm not so sure. I think the phone is worthless as i mentioned, time of last transmittance has no direct link to time of death. Obviously, the phone could have been destroyed well before or after the TOD.
I think its a mistake to think ME would use one piece of criteria to determine a window (like body temp), but more probably a combination of factors. There wouldn't be signs of decomp after 4-5 hours, but certainly some level. Of rigor and temperature loss. Hitting it from the other side of the time line, there may have been trace amount of food in her stomach or intestines. The more i think of it, the more I believe they could zero in on the time frame with more accuracy.
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I never suggested that any ME would use only one criteria to determine death, that would just be amature and unprofessional if an ME only looked at one factor.
That said I still don't believe the ME would have had evidence that would have allowed them to shave off one precise hour.
I think there were other things that played into narrowing down that timeline.....perhaps things like when her relatives first started looking for her and knowing what time she was normally back for her run, and eye witness statements.
If she was found around 820pm, and then the ME gets called and probably doesn't get there to look at her till at least 9-930, but it's also dark, so they may not have moved her until daylight so they could investigate the crime in daylight hours without disturbing it.....then that would further delay when the ME could really take a close look at the body.
I would think the sooner one can autopsy the body the more precise of a timeline one can get, because it's easier to distinguish things that would take 4 hours to start happening at that point, vs what would be going on with the body at 5 hours. But if the autopsy wasn't done till later, I'm not sure it's likely to shave just an hour off the time of death.
But if anyone has ME expertise please please chime in! I'd love to learn more about this stuff. Thanks in advance.