It amazes me that this point continues to baffle people, and that people continue to point to the fact that there was little blood in her skull from the head blow as evidence that the head blow might have come after the strangulation. I would point out what the ME said in the autopsy report:
Cause of death of this six year old female is asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.
While no one has been any more critical of Meyers first missteps in spending less than ten minutes on the initial examination and failing to take certain measurements that would have helped establish an estimated TOD, I recognize that his specialty was pathology and he was qualified to determine COD. The problem is that we laypeople often dont realize what he actually spells out unequivocally in the above statement. Think about it -- there are two parts to his statement. The first part says,
Cause of death of this six year old female is asphyxia by strangulation. There it is, thats all we need to read to know what the COD was -- it was
asphyxia, and the method was
by strangulation. The contributing factor was
craniocerebral trauma (brain injury) because Meyer states that the COD was
associated with this other injury.
As for the little (or small) amount of blood from the head blow that is often repeated, that is simply not true. Ive pointed this out several times before, so I wont repeat it all again here (this really isnt the right thread for that discussion anyway). If anyone hasnt read this before and is interested, Ill list a few links from here and at FFJ (the last link also talks about the fingernail marks that some posters try to associate with JonBenets autopsy photos):
http://www.forumsforjustice.org/for...kull-Fractures-The-Weapon&p=194988#post194988
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?7469-John-Ramsey-s-Role&p=9570391#post9570391
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...G!-AUTOPSY-PHOTOS!***&p=10953354#post10953354
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...G!-AUTOPSY-PHOTOS!***&p=10931908#post10931908
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...!-*READ-FIRST-POST*-2&p=11110524#post11110524