5 bodies no time of death

[scipio_usmc]

this is somthing thats allways bugged me about the case they had 5 bodys to work on.

but they couldent get a time of death from any of them,

Providing a window for time of death requires taking the temperature of the victim at intervals to try to figure out the temperature loss rate and extrapolate.  Other techniques involve lyfe cycles of flies found on the bodies and invovles knowing the emperature of the location among other things.

The level of rigor is used sometimes but the window is large and temperature effects it.

General rules of thumb are that rigor starts 2-4 hours after death. It reaches the maximum rigid state (well established) at 8-12 hours depending on temperature.  It will take 8 hours when warm and up to 12 hours when it is cooler.  If placed on ice and extreme cool is used this can push back maximum rigidity even longer but it is rare for someone to go to such lengths of using extreme cold to do such)  It stays that way for 12-18 hours.  Then rigor will dissipate and be completely gone within 36-48 hours.  The window if death can be quite large then.

The ME was not on the scene right away to do anything to try to assess time of death.  The ME waited for the bodies to arrive at the morgue before doing anything.

He started his examinations at 3:30PM.  Sheila was first so the others actually had more time than her to reach peak rigid state.  All of them were at peak rigid state including Sheila which means they died at least 8-12 before they were examined.  So Sheila was dead by anywhere from 3:30-7:30AM.  Since it was summer and the temperature warm it would be more likely to be the 8-10 hour range as opposed to 12 hour range.  So in all likelihood they died by 3:30-5:30. 

Note dead "BY".  Since well established rigor takes 8-12 hours to set in and lasts up to 18 hours well established rigor means one died at least 8-12 hours earlier and as many as 30 hours earlier.   

So how could the ME come up with a good time of death based on rigor given such window?

They were known to have been alive by witnesses as late at 10PM.  So all we can say from rigor combined with such info is that they died somewhere after 10PM and were dead by 3:30-7:30AM (again because of the weather it is not likely it would have taken 12 hours to set in).

For those who want to pretend that police shot her or moved her body very quickly after she was shot this is not good news.  Police found her body after 7:30 but with the 12 hour window she had to be dead by 7:30 and in fact honestly by 5:30 because the temperature would not have likely delayed fully rigor until 12 hours.   

But there never was any evidence to back up the claim that police had shot her anyway or that she shot herself and then they moved her body flat immediately thereafter.  No police heard any shots like they would have and all 7 who were the first to see her body say she was flat when found.

[grahameb]

Jeremy wanted the cops to go in quickly. He knew the time was not long enough for Sheila to kill everyone, as he received his father's call for argument's sake at 3.26 and the police came at around 3.48 or so. Certainly not much time admittedly for her to go from no one killed to everyone killed.
Remember that Jeremy wanted them to go in right away. But if they did go in right away it would not have looked too good for him if they were all dead.
But it was the police's decision to wait and eventually the raid team went in at approximately 7am say. So so effectively this gave Sheila a lot longer to kill everyone and herself. I don't go along with the notion that they would have heard the shots from a .22 rifle. If that farm house was a turn of the century house those walls are probably 12" thick in places and what with furniture further deadening the sound and the close contact of the shots to Sheila herself thus having the effect of a silencer I reckon not much would be heard from the house at all.
But having said that of course we must remember that the telephone was off the hook and the phone company was listening in and reported only the sound of a barking dog.

[scipio_usmc]

Jeremy wanted the cops to go in quickly. He knew the time was not long enough for Sheila to kill everyone, as he received his father's call for argument's sake at 3.26 and the police came at around 3.48 or so. Certainly not much time admittedly for her to go from no one killed to everyone killed.
Remember that Jeremy wanted them to go in right away. But if they did go in right away it would not have looked too good for him if they were all dead.
But it was the police's decision to wait and eventually the raid team went in at approximately 7am say. So so effectively this gave Sheila a lot longer to kill everyone and herself. I don't go along with the notion that they would have heard the shots from a .22 rifle. If that farm house was a turn of the century house those walls are probably 12" thick in places and what with furniture further deadening the sound and the close contact of the shots to Sheila herself thus having the effect of a silencer I reckon not much would be heard from the house at all.
But having said that of course we must remember that the telephone was off the hook and the phone company was listening in and reported only the sound of a barking dog.

1) Jeremy didn't plead with police to go in right away.  He scared the crap out of them with lies about Sheila firing all the guns in the house and exaggerating how many weapons were in the house. At 5:30AM he supposedly asked what was going on and at that point he still didn't demand they go in he instead said he wanted to talk to Julie.  He called Julie, told her not to go to work because he wanted her to talk to police and tell them how he reported to her that Nevill phoned thinking that this would convince them the call happened.  All that wa son his mind was the framejob not any concenr for his family.

2) The police went in after 7:30AM not around 7. 

3) Gunshot sounds travel through windows especially crappy windows like the farm had tryign to pretend the sound could not have been heard outside is futile and nonsense coming from people like you who deny reality and make bogus claims all the time to try to pretend Jeremy is innocent.

Gunshots will not travel through windows, police got together in a vast conspiracy, Nevill chose to phone Jeremy for help though it would take him a while to arrive even if he answered but he would not be likely to answer, and took this unusual option instead of disarming his daughter himself or arming himselff to stop her.  Worse yet this crazy daughter left him alone to use the phone then didn't shoot him but rather according to you went to the phone and held down the buttons to disconnect the call.  To do that she would be too close to keep the gun aimed at Nevill and worse would have only 1 hand holding it so Nevill could have disarmed her easily.  But instead he hoped Jeremy woudl arrive in time to save him and instead of shooting him there she marched him to the bedroom to shoot June and him together.

Not only is this nonsense totally unsupported by any evidence it makes no sense at all from any standpoint.  That is what you peddle asburd things that have no evidentiary basis.

 

[lookout]

 There was NO excuse whatsoever not to have used a rectal thermometer in which to give them an appx time of death. I see no reason why they didn't,as it's carried out at ALL murder scenes that the police are called out to,unless the body has lain for days.

[nugnug]

well you would think would be normal procedure.

[lookout]

 Of course it is,nugs. A lot of work can be done by knowing when a person died. It goes towards solving a crime,or a sudden death.

[nugnug]

mind you if they thought shiela was the killer they might not of bothered.

but procedure wise i still think there supposed to.

[lookout]

 In view of what has happened to Jeremy,it would have been vital to have given a time of death.
 It would have tallied with the time of his fathers call,and stopped the guilters from saying he'd" killed them at midnight ".

[scipio_usmc]

There was NO excuse whatsoever not to have used a rectal thermometer in which to give them an appx time of death. I see no reason why they didn't,as it's carried out at ALL murder scenes that the police are called out to,unless the body has lain for days.

Unless a temperature reading of the scene and body temperature are both taken very early upon finding the body then it is worthless.

Such can't be done off scene it needs to be done on scnee and the records have to be taken as soon as possible.  The temperature will drop to the temperature of the room the body is in.  The interval can vary which is why you would want to keep taking readings to see if you could get as close as possible to the interval the drop is occurring at. 

Moreover natural body temperature fluctuates. Even though 98.6F is normal body temperature in reality the body temperature will fluctuate between 96.7 and 99.  Rectal temp is actually higher than this, the average rectal temp is 99.1-99.35F BUT can fluctuate between 97.2 and 99.75.

So right off the bat this natural fluctuation creates a situation where we don't know what the original temperature was and thus the estimate can be thrown off by several hours.

Clothing and other variables make it hard to know precisely what the heat loss rate will be which is why we have to monitor it to try to figure out the exact rate in the situation at hand.  Just using some generic rate will be imprecise and cause even a great margin of error.  Worse yet loss of heat is not necessarily uniform.  Even though we like to pretend heat loss will be 1.5 degrees F per hour sometimes a body will lose less sometimes more it will not be uniform hourly loss necessarily.

Using the 1.5 loss rate the margin of error will be several hours.  The variation of the starting temp at death will cause more problems.  You still need the temperature of the environment in the meantime which also can fluctuate.

Let's assume the deaths occurred at 2:30AM.  They were exained 3:30PM and later.

Suppose their temperature at 3:30AM was 72 degrees.  Suppose also they had been in the cold morgue for 2 hours but before that had been in a hot truck.

How are you supposed to figure anything out accurately?  Initial body temp could have been anywhere from 97.2 and 99.75.  Plugging in the 1.5F/hour loss rate we get 16.8-18.5 hours.

But being placed in a hot truck not only could have inhibited loss it could have caused the body to heat.  Placing it in the cool morgue would cause more rapid cooling.  It could be greatly distorted by this.

You need reliable readings of the environment where the bodies were found and the readings at those times to even have any hope of giving a range with an error rate of only 1.5-2 hours.



 

[Alias]

Doesn´t mean they shouldn´t have measured body temperatures. It could potentially have told them SOMETHING about the time of death.
I know it is hard to determine the time of death, it is still used though - just not in this case.

[nugnug]

well they could of given aproxmate time of death but they dident even seem to able to do that.

i mean in most murder cases the body isnt found straght away but in most of them they can still give a time of death.

[scipio_usmc]

Doesn´t mean they shouldn´t have measured body temperatures. It could potentially have told them SOMETHING about the time of death.
I know it is hard to determine the time of death, it is still used though - just not in this case.

In some cases it means something. If the times of death could have been established as being before Nevill even allegedly called Jeremy definitively that would be another nail in Jeremy's coffin.  But given the window or error in such calculations he would have needed to kill them hours before for it to fall outside the margin of error and prove for sure that they died before he claimed Nevill phoned him.  So their failure to do so probably made no difference.

 

[Alias]

Are you drunk, scipio? That´s OK! Makes you even more human and likeable!  and 

[scipio_usmc]

Are you drunk, scipio? That´s OK! Makes you even more human and likeable!  and 

No I'm of Italian descent it is difficult to get me drunk- I only get buzzed. The only time I truly got drunk was when I drank like 3/4 a bottle of 151 (after already being buzzed from Jaeger and some other crap I hated). I remember chugging the 151 but nothing beyond that. When I woke up the next day I was on top of a coke machine in the laundry room of an all female dorm. I had no clue how I got there. All I know is that when I left I heard rumors flying around campus about how they were looking for guys who went on a panty raid in the dorm. Then I met my friends and they were pissed at me saying I ditched them and that they almost got killed looking for me.  They claim that as we used the bathroom, that we heard 2 lesbos moaning in the shower and that they heard us talking about them so popped out of the shower stall. They were like 300 pounds each, I supposedly insulted them by saying something about them being lesbos because even Moby Dick would not go near them and then they started to chase us. They said I vanished and as they tried to find me the fat chicks grabbed field hockey sticks or something and tried to kill them.  They finally gave up looking for me and seconds after they ran from the building the cops pulled up and just missed catching them.  They said if it wasn't for me they would have been long gone before to cops arrived. I don't particularly believe that they looked long and hard for me because they were not the type. We supposedly saw plently of T&A but I remember none of it so don't know how true that is ether.  All I know is a panty raid of some sort did actually occur and I somehow ended up sleeping on the coke machine where it happened so may indeed have taken part. I haven't drank 151 since.

[susan]

Alias I told you I imagine two fat ladies shakin their booty running down the street after the drop dead gorgeous scipio wonder what they did to him when they caught him maybe more bits shakin