Hi, I've read these forums from time to time but felt compelled to post on this case due to all the wild and crazy speculation that I've been seeing.
I thought you might like to receive some insight from a police officer's point of view, who also has a direct family member who is a veteran homicide detective:
The fact that she was strangled almost certainly means that this was a crime of passion. Strangulations are very personal acts. They are almost exclusively committed against family members, "ex" relationships, or victims of sexual assaults. Ligature strangulations are a small part of these and are mostly committed as part of a less impulsive crime, such as sexual sadism, serial murders, etc.
Notice how the ME said it was due to "compression of the neck" which can be taken as "strangled from the front". This can happen from the rear in choke-holds, but scratches occur on the forearms and sometimes the face of the perp. The reported scratches on the suspect's chest and back suggests that she was strangled from the front, with his hands, as she tried to fight him off.
The point being, that this was a personal, moment of passion crime. Almost ALL strangulations are either very personal, or sexual in nature. If it was another type of crime, IE: an argument gone overboard between casual acquaintances, cause of death would tend to be blunt force, gunshot or stabbing trauma.. and sometimes asphyxiation, but with facial smothering instead, such as with a plastic bag, a pillow over the face, etc.
The strangualtion act means it was a heat of the moment crime. This was either an infatuation/obsession, with an unwanted advance that lead to rape, or the two had an affair that ended very badly. I'm sorry, but people who don't know each other personally don't strangle one another over the cleanliness of a mouse cage.. even if they are sociopaths. The crime would be more calculated and the method would be different.
The infatuation/obsession leading to rape angle is much less likely if he had her personal cell number. There are a myriad of ways why he might have had it otherwise, but she would have been suspicious and would NOT have given him opportunities to be around her if he was harassing her... and little issues about lab mice are not a good enough reason for her to drop everything to go over there and subject herself to harassment by some "weirdo". It is very unlikely.
If the "text" message was a direct cell to cell SMS, meaning he had her personal phone number, it was code for "I need to talk to you.. now."
We put our money on an affair that lead to either:
1: A heated personal argument that became very impassioned and led to desperation and murder.
2: She tried to break it off in the days before and he couldn't handle it, tried to stop it from happening and it lead to number 1.
Also, the lack of information from law enforcement is routine. Information is typically withheld so that during interrogation the suspect might slip up and make mention of something that only the perp would know about.
Most of the time, questioning is first focused on facts already known so as to "read" a person and figure out what gestures they make when they are lying. Then you know what to focus on and information is fed to them in an attempt to get them to hang themselves with something that was not released to the public. It is very effective.
