It's really boggling my mind about the TOD's.
Totally understand the difficulty in deciding them all if they were all killed in close proximity, but even KR's being listed at 1349 is strange, right? Isn't this a bit unusual?!
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Not really.
The time on a death certificate is when a person is legally declared dead, not an actual time of death.
Folks tend to consider death certificates as an extension of an autopsy.
Not true, because all deaths result in a death certificate, but not all deaths require an autopsy.
Death certificates are generally issued before autopsy reports are complete. Many, if not most or all, states require that a death certificate be issued within a specific amount of time.
That's why cause of death is often stated as "undetermined" on a death certificate when an autopsy was performed, even when the cause is relatively obvious.
As an example:
My father died of a heart attack that was caused by injuries sustained in an automobile accident. By law, an autopsy was required because his injuries were caused by criminal conduct of another person.
His death certificate states "undetermined" as cause of death because the autopsy report had not been completed.
There was never any question by the attending physician or other medical staff present, or myself as I was in his room at the time, that he died of a heart attack.
When it came time to prove anything in court regarding my father's death, it was the autopsy report, not the death certificate, that weighed as legal fact as to the cause of his death.
We won't get a better idea as to when these victims died until the final autopsy report is completed and made public.
The same is true as to specifically where each gunshot wound was located on the bodies, how many, angle of entry/exit, size of the wound, etc.
