Autopsy Details

Did you know that medical examiner's records are apparently "open records"? Well that was what I recently learned of, so if you're interested in the details of that gruesome murder you heard about on the news, feel free to request a copy of the autopsy from the office of the medical examiner that performed it (for a small fee of $5).

So last week I requested the autopsy results on my friend and her husband who killed her and then killed himself. I anxiously rummaged through the mail as soon as it arrived today HOPING to find my reports. BINGO! They had come in!

My first interest was to immediately flip to the last page of her husbands to where I was told the results of the toxicology report were. And the verdict:

Clean. The man was completely free of alcohol and drugs when he killed his wife!

Now, as a man with a history of social usage of cocaine, 99.9% of the people that knew my friend and knew her husband and his "social ways" were SURE he had to have been "coked up" at the time of the killings, but we now have the report proving our assumptions wrong.

So this led to our new theory...

We think he accidently killed her. We even have considered that thought that he didn't even mean to pull the trigger...

As we have recalled some of the witness testimony, we have been able to put together a possible story suggesting that the murder was a complete accident and when he later learned of the results of his actions (or mistake, whatever it ended up being), he couldn't live with the thought of what he'd done and that's when he chose to take his own life.

We do know that he lived for several hours after her passing. And we know he got word of his wife's passing and that that was when he said, "without my wife I don't want to live." So, with that chain of events, I am led to believe that HAD he had this whole day planned...had he planned on killing his wife and then taking his own life, he wouldn't have waited around to hear his wife's status before taking his own life. I have reason to believe that he would have taken his life in a rather short period of time after shooting her. Not to mention, if he had planned on shooting her to kill, I believe he would have shot her in a different place on her body (as he shot her in the lower back area just above the waist) and that he would have shot more than once.

My friend's reported "Manner of Death: homicide." The report states that the bullet entered the right side of her lower back and perforated fifth lumbar vertebra, the right common iliac vain, the right common iliac artery, the mesentery of the small intestine and then exited out the left side of abdoninal wall.

Due to the bullet hitting the iliac artery and vein, there was no hope for my friend. After speaking with a medical professional I was told that it wouldn't take but a matter of minutes for an individual to die after damaging the iliac artery OR the iliac vein. Seeings how she had both "hit" there was no way she could have been helped, even had medical attention been provided almost immediately.

It's crazy to hear these stories about people being shot 8 or 9 times, or being stabbed repeatedly and living through the experience. But then to think of someone being hit once with a bullet in the lower back of ALL places and it killing them almost immediately, with minimal blood exiting the external wounds. It's bizarre, but at the same time, it is a reminder of how fragile we all can be.

One lesson learned...

Don't jack around the guns, they truly can be deadly, whether meant to be or not. Accidents CAN happen and the guilt left from them can be just as deadly.