Thank you for sharing your experiences. I had thought about the menopause/mood swings thing.
Can I ask you if you can make any sense of putting animal blood on a car seat before a suicide? It seems to me that if Cheryl was brilliant enough to make her death so mysterious and convoluted that a suicide wouldn't be obvious and might even be murder, she'd be smart enough to realize that animal blood would quickly be identified as not human and wouldn't support the murder theory. If she put that blood there purposefully, why not just use her own blood? Her body was full of it!
This animal blood REALLY has me perplexed. As does the missing personal belongings, although those wouldn't be hard to throw in 3 separate areas on a walk to the culvert.
Thank you for your kind words, TTF!
Again,
speaking for myself and myself only, the use of animal blood as a red herring of sorts makes sense. For me, it would serve two purposes:
1. It would buy me time. Being found too soon, thus not being able to complete suicide and possibly becoming an even bigger burden to my family (e.g., if I were to be left with a severe brain injury due to a prolonged lack of oxygen and couldn't take care of myself) has always been my worst fear. I would assume that if I were to be absent from work without an explanation, someone would start looking for me eventually. If my car were to be found early in the search process with blood visible to the naked eye, I would also assume that the "ruse" would at least create a degree of confusion, likely causing a delay.
2. It would make suicide appear less likely. I realize that the blood would be determined as being of non-human origin fairly easily, but the possibility would still exist (again, for the sake of my daughter, in particular, since I would not want to set a "bad example" for her in my mind) that those investigating the case would conclude that the blood had come from poorly-packaged meat, fish, etc., and thus the evidence was not relevant to determining the manner of death.
I would be extremely careful as to the disposal of personal items such as wallet, car keys and phone, so as to ensure that they would not end up in the hands of a criminal and possibly creating a major headache for my family. I have always locked my car doors, so that is one thing I might still do just out of habit.