An idea about the signs of asphyxia

[Cogidubnus]

Don't try it at home...

Crook your right elbow around someone's neck, then hoist them (back down, face up) across your stooped back...do it swiftly enough, there's no time for them to make more than a low choking noise...they can kick out but against nothing...their arms are flailing and useless...keep them there long and they're unconscious...the only way they can escape is if they can flip right over your back...

I discovered this (accidentally) wrestling with mates forty years or more ago...

I'm not saying this is how it was done...but it shows it CAN be done in principle at least...

Dave

[Errata]

I thought the quickest way to kill someone silently with a knife would be to cover the mouth with one hand from behind and slit the throat with the other.

Chapman at least did not have any blood on her front. She couldn't possible have had her throat cut while standing.

[Errata]

Crook your right elbow around someone's neck, then hoist them (back down, face up) across your stooped back...do it swiftly enough, there's no time for them to make more than a low choking noise...they can kick out but against nothing...their arms are flailing and useless...keep them there long and they're unconscious...the only way they can escape is if they can flip right over your back...

I discovered this (accidentally) wrestling with mates forty years or more ago...

I'm not saying this is how it was done...but it shows it CAN be done in principle at least...

Dave

Oh I have an older sister. I am familiar with this thing of which you speak.

But that's still a choke hold, which causes ischemia, not necessarily asphyxia. The only ways I can figure that asphyxiation would occur is with some variant of that attack from the front, but since it takes a minute or two to asphyxiate someone, that's a long time with some woman (several of whom were not small) scratching your face and kicking you in the privates. Never mnd that you would still be crushing the windpipe, which didn't happen.

Although if you pierce someone under the armpit with a needle you can theoretically collapse a lung. But of course, no needle marks.

[Henry Flower]

Errata, are we absolutely certain that ischemia (a) leaves definitive signs that would not be missed by a medical examiner, and (b) does so after 20-25 seconds of non-fatal neck compression?

I've been doing a little light reading on the subject, and watched some video clips. A chokehold can render someone unconscious in as little as fifteen seconds. A blood choke especially. In videos I've seen, the volunteer is then released and slowly regains their wits. No visible signs of the experience remain. What if the volunteer/victim, instead of being released, then has their throat quickly cut? What evidence of ischemia would we find?

So far, I'm as baffled by the nature of the attack as you are - if chokeholds definitely leave unmissable signs of ischemia.

[Cogidubnus]

Ischemia

I would guess that in the LVP Ischemia would often be indistinguishable from the post mortem indications of myocardial infarction...and I AM expert on those, in that I've recently had one!

Dave

[Henry Flower]

Dave, you've had a recent post-mortem?

Oh... I see.

I sincerely hope you're recovering well, sir.

Listen, I have to go now - The Man With The Golden Gun is on ITV4 - awful film, but Britt Ekland in a bikini.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Henry

I'd been feeling short of breath for a while (all that smoking which I gave up donkeys years ago...thought I)...so one night shifting my daughters furniture up three flights of steps...It was suddenly worst...minor heart attack diagnosed...angina diagnosed...and here I am...possible by-pass indicated if I can raise the bottle!

But as an interim measure I thought...what worse could possibly happen to me?...so I joined Casebook!



Dave

[Henry Flower]

Dave, take it easy! Nothing gets my stress levels up quite as much as Casebook!

Seriously, tough call to have to make on the by-pass. I suppose it's not uncommon now, almost routine in fact. But it must be an alarming place to find yourself all of a sudden.

Our first daughter arriving in three months so I expect my days of good health may soon be leeched away also.

Hey - do take it easy, and stay happy! More importantly, do tell me how the goddamn Ripper attacked his victims, please, before I go nuts. I don't want to watch any more chokehold videos! I think I'm actually too squeamish for this place.

[Errata]

Errata, are we absolutely certain that ischemia (a) leaves definitive signs that would not be missed by a medical examiner, and (b) does so after 20-25 seconds of non-fatal neck compression?

I've been doing a little light reading on the subject, and watched some video clips. A chokehold can render someone unconscious in as little as fifteen seconds. A blood choke especially. In videos I've seen, the volunteer is then released and slowly regains their wits. No visible signs of the experience remain. What if the volunteer/victim, instead of being released, then has their throat quickly cut? What evidence of ischemia would we find?

So far, I'm as baffled by the nature of the attack as you are - if chokeholds definitely leave unmissable signs of ischemia.

One thing you have to remember is that these special forces guys who do these demonstrations are trained exhaustively on how to place their arm precisely on the right spot, where the average joe is not. Also, the classic choke hold does not render the victim completely silent. It actually places comparatively little pressure on the windpipe. I've had those demonstrations (my uncle is one of those guys... and one of those uncles) and I could get pretty loud. It sounded like my voice box was being squashed, which it was, but it was not inoperative. With Annie Chapman, there was a guy in the head on the other side of the fence. He heard a faint "no" and then a thud against the fence. Immediately afterwards. If she was in a chokehold, she should have been louder, and not so immediate of the thudding against the fence part. Yeah. That guy ruins everything.

Typically death by ischemia or in conjunction with ischemia shows what are considered "classic signs" of strangulation, since most cases of strangulation involve ischemia. Essentially the face gets very dark, sometimes even black and swollen. The eyes and tongue protrude... Basically if you've ever seen Hindu art of Kali, that's what it looks like. And for a reason, since thugees were devotees of Kali and their execution of choice was ligature strangulation.

Really if you wanna know, wrap a rubber band tightly around a finger and see what it looks like after 30 seconds. When a person dies while blood flow to the head is constricted, the tissues don't rebound. They stay that way. Also cracking open the skull would immediately show it. I think Nichols (?) brain was examined and it had congested black blood in the brain tissue. THAT'S ischemia. Deoxygenated blood lingering in the brain. Now other conditions can cause that, and she is the only one whose brain showed that. (As far as I know she is the only one whose brain was even examined).

But despite the fact that ischemia and asphyxia often show up in the same person, straight asphyxia never looks like that. The color changes from asphyxia are global, where ischemia is local. If the head is dark blue/black, and the fingers and toes aren't, it's ischemia. If all of them cyanotic, it's asphyxia. Really it's the difference between a ligature strangulation or garrotte death and a gas chamber death. Ligature strangulation is a more precise choke hold. It is ischemia, the blood flow to the head is interrupted. The gas chamber (about as pure as asphyxiation gets) keeps the blood from oxygenating throughout the entire body.

I suppose if you really want to know what that looks like you can google it, though personally I wouldn't. That's probably going to result in more porn on an image search than your wife is going to appreciate.

[Wickerman]

But that's still a choke hold, which causes ischemia,

I'm not clear on your thoughts with this ischemia.
When, by example, a ligature is applied around the neck (as with Rose Mylett?), the blood stops moving both into & out of the head. Therefore there is no "inadequate blood supply" (ischemia), the flow just stops.

Also, Chapman died from Syncope, essentially fainting due to blood loss, not asphyxia.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Typically death by ischemia or in conjunction with ischemia shows what are considered "classic signs" of strangulation, since most cases of strangulation involve ischemia. Essentially the face gets very dark, sometimes even black and swollen. The eyes and tongue protrude... Basically if you've ever seen Hindu art of Kali, that's what it looks like. And for a reason, since thugees were devotees of Kali and their execution of choice was ligature strangulation.

Ah, yes, Errata, but these people were ligatured "to death", not just briefly rendered unconscious. Chapman died due to the cut throat.

Also cracking open the skull would immediately show it. I think Nichols (?) brain was examined and it had congested black blood in the brain tissue. THAT'S ischemia. Deoxygenated blood lingering in the brain.

That was Chapman.

The evidence given by Dr. Phillips on 18 Sept. at the Hanbury-street inquest is incontrovertible proof that Annie Chapman was partially strangled before her throat was cut. When Dr. Phillips was called to see the body he found that the tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The face was swollen, the finger-nails and lips were turgid, and in the brain, on the head being opened, he found the membranes opaque and the veins and tissues loaded with black blood. All these appearances are the ordinary signs of suffocation. In Dr. Phillip's own words, "I am of opinion that the breathing was interfered with previous to death, but that death arose from syncope consequent on the loss of blood following the severance of the throat."
The Star, 24 Dec. 1888.

Regards, Jon S.

[Cogidubnus]

Direct pressure leaves very pronounced marks...using my elbow-hold to induce ischemia doesn't...

Dave

[Errata]

I'm not clear on your thoughts with this ischemia.
When, by example, a ligature is applied around the neck (as with Rose Mylett?), the blood stops moving both into & out of the head. Therefore there is no "inadequate blood supply" (ischemia), the flow just stops.

Also, Chapman died from Syncope, essentially fainting due to blood loss, not asphyxia.

Regards, Jon S.

Well, yes and no. This is one of those things where sometimes physics just trips things up. It is insanely hard to stop all blood flow. We just have too many blood vessels. But we can slow it to a fatal crawl. Now if you apply a ligature to a person who is standing, the blood can drain down past a blockage much easier than it can be pushed up past a blockage. So blood is coming out of the brain without blood coming in to replace it. Blood being pumped by the heart in combination with arterial pressure is much stronger than blood simply circulating by arterial pressure alone. Without the carotid being able to bring in a more powerful blood stream, the blood in the head doesn't circulate well at all. So it pools, depriving the rest of the tissue with a blood supply. Which is technically what ischemia is. A tourniquet causes ischemia in the part of the body that is cut off from the heart, and a ligature is simply a tourniquet of the head.

And I know that Chapman died of syncope, but she had signs of asphyxia. And that means that she was being asphyxiated up to at least a minute before she died as her tissues didn't have a chance to rebound. In this case it isn't about the actual cause of death, as much as what was happening in the minutes before she died, and then how the hell did he get them on the ground silently and without a fight.

[Errata]

Ah, yes, Errata, but these people were ligatured "to death", not just briefly rendered unconscious. Chapman died due to the cut throat.



That was Chapman.

The evidence given by Dr. Phillips on 18 Sept. at the Hanbury-street inquest is incontrovertible proof that Annie Chapman was partially strangled before her throat was cut. When Dr. Phillips was called to see the body he found that the tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The face was swollen, the finger-nails and lips were turgid, and in the brain, on the head being opened, he found the membranes opaque and the veins and tissues loaded with black blood. All these appearances are the ordinary signs of suffocation. In Dr. Phillip's own words, "I am of opinion that the breathing was interfered with previous to death, but that death arose from syncope consequent on the loss of blood following the severance of the throat."
The Star, 24 Dec. 1888.

Regards, Jon S.

Well, I don't think he would have only strangled them until they passed out. If he had he would have found out the hard way that people recover very quickly from anoxia. They would have been conscious again in a second or two. Weak, but conscious. If he garrotted them, he would have held it past the point of unconsciousness so they would stay that way. Which is not to say he killed them that way, we know he didn't. But if you tourniquet your finger, like every kid with a rubber band does as some point or another, it only takes seconds for it to visibly change. And it takes a good bit longer to recover. He couldn't screw around after garrotting these women without risking them coming to, so he would have had to cut their throats almost immediately. He would have to kill them before the tissues could recover. It doesn't take long for that distinctive darkening to show up. It shows up before you lose consciousness. But if someone dies before the tissues recover, their face sticks like that. So to speak. You could have a garrotte around your throat and be shot in the back of the head. You still look garrotted. Ironically, many of the people garrotted didn't die from the restriction of blood flow. They died at the resumption of it. It's called a reperfusion injury, and technically it's how my grandfather died.

But, since Chapman had signs of asphyxia, we know she was asphyxiated very shortly before she died. If she was being garrotted, she should still have had signs of ischemia. It doesn't make sense that the signs of ischemia would disappear but not the signs of asphyxia.

[Wickerman]

Errata.
Bearing in mind the effects we have been talking about, do you have any opinion on some of the comments made by Dr Phillips, on Strides heart.

"There was no fluid in the pericardium,......the left ventricle firmly contracted, and the right slightly so. There was no clot in the pulmonary artery, but the right ventricle was full of dark clot".

Anything here out of the ordinary, if so, do you have any opinions?

Regards, Jon S.