The broken neck bone adds to the suspicions
You’ve probably already heard this:
An autopsy on the body of Jeffrey Epstein revealed the convicted sex offender had several broken bones in his neck, including the hyoid bone, according to a report.
The hyoid bone, which is near the Adam’s apple, can be broken in a suicide by hanging – especially in older people – but is more common in strangulation murders, The Washington Post reported.
Some people are making a great deal out of this. It doesn’t surprise me that they are doing that, because it’s a situation rife with suspicion from start to finish. There either was a conspiracy to silence Epstein or allow him to silence himself, or there was gross negligence by the prison administration and staff, or both simultaneously.
A very bad situation.
However, to me this information about the broken bones doesn’t add much. But you get articles like this:
“The hyoid bone in the neck being fractured and other fractures in the neck, make it more likely, and again, this is a percentage call, more likely that it was a homicide than a suicide,” Siegel said during an interview on “America’s Newsroom.”
No, it doesn’t. It makes it highly possible that it was either, because hyoid bones apparently get broken with some regularity in both situations. Yes, they are broken more frequently in strangulations. But they are broken frequently enough in hangings too, so this fact essentially tells us little of any use about what actually occurred in this particular case.
Multiple studies from different countries have backed up several critical points in The Post’s article: Namely that the hyoid bone being broken is more common in strangulation homicide deaths, but it does occur in a fair number of suicides by hanging, especially in older people.
However, TMZ reported that Epstein “either hurled himself off the top bunk or had his feet to the ground and leaned forward to cut off his air supply” and that such an act could explain the hyoid bone breakage. TMZ also reported Epstein “suffered petechial hemorrhaging, caused when someone hangs himself or is strangled or smothered.”…
Three authors specifically studied broken hyoid bones in hanging cases in the article Fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage in suicidal hanging. They conducted “A prospective study of hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage fractures in Thai people who died from suicidal hanging between November 2008 and August 2009.”
The results of that study found that a broken hyoid occurred in about one-fourth of cases: “Twenty male cases of suicidal hanging were reviewed. Fractures of the hyoid bone and/or thyroid cartilage were found in five cases (25%).”
This study also noted: “Fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage in 25% of Thais who died of suicidal hanging were related with older ages and incomplete hanging but not related with location of the knot.”…
That 2005 article is called Fracture of Hyoid Bone in Cases of ASphyxial Deaths Resulting From Constricting Force Round the Neck.
“Some have claimed hyoid bone fracture in about 20% cases of hanging. Some have claimed hyoid bone fracture in about 68% cases of hanging. They also claimed that hyoid bone fracture increases with age above 40 years due to calcification and immobilization of joints. Some also claimed that hyoid bone fracture increases with using hard ligature for hanging and strangulation,” the article notes.
Much more at the link.
I’m not going to go on and on about this. But it’s pretty clear to me that there are reasons to be suspicious, but I don’t see the neck fracture or absence of a neck fracture as determinative in any useful way.
One thing I do know is that speculation about what happened to Jeffrey Epstein will not end. I can’t even imagine a finding of fact that would end it. Can you?
It seems increasingly likely that, just as with Stephen Paddock and Las Vegas, there will never be any adequate answer to the mystery of the egregious Epstein’s demise, but in the absence of such, it will always appear highly unlikely that such a confluence of bureaucratic ineptitude, corruption, and negligence simply happened to occur in the case of perhaps the most important inmate in the nation’s most important federal detention center.
j e:
I must say that, on the contrary, I don’t find that combination “highly unlikely” at all, or even just plain unlikely.
This was a professional hit made to look like incompetence. The situation made it very likely that anyone could have breached the jail that had the inside knowledge. Speculation?? What else will we ever have?
Bones in neck is pleural. The only other bones in neck are atlas, axis and the other upper cervical vertebra. The thyroid and upper tracheal cartilages are not bones. Two hands chocking probably gives more wide spread damage than one linear rope. I.e. I would expect ecchymosis near flailing sharp ends of broken hyoid and erythema and bleeding in pharynx, upper trachea, and esophagus…especially if there was a struggle.
Should we pay any attention to Heavy? I will be keenly interested in what Dr. Michael Baden, who observed the autopsy, has to say. I presume they are/were waiting on photos of the scene.
It is utterly ridiculous to make generalizations by lumping data from capital punishment trap-door hangings, stepping off a chair with a rope hangings, and leaning into a bedsheet noose hangings.
A rolled up bedsheet would distribute the forces more than a common rope by at least a factor of ten.
____
Epstein “either hurled himself off the top bunk or had his feet to the ground and leaned forward to cut off his air supply” — TMZ
Is that a joke? If he was found on his knees leaning into a bedsheet noose, then his hyoid would not be broken unless someone put a foot on his back and pushed.
I imagine the next step in speculation will move on from the question of IF to HOW? and from there to WHO?
I remember the JFK and Bobby Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories in great detail with James Ellroy, who said quite frankly that he was just looking for material he could bend for use in the novel he was then working on — which was AMERICAN TABLOID. He found that the Mafia made the most sense for his purposes.
No matter what the actual facts of the matter are here with Epstein, what is known just LOOKS BAD. Hard to see how that can be definitively changed. But we’ll see.
Hanging isn’t necessarily exactly in the same ballpark as choking. For example, when official executions are done by hanging, the condemned is dropped several feet so that the neck is broken and he is dead long before he’d have died of asphyxiation.
On the other hand, I have been choked out in competition, choked out a competitor in competition, and choked out an assailant. In no case was I dealing with the windpipe, nor was my competitor messing with my windpipe and associated breathing apparatus.
In all cases, if was pressure against the carotids, the blood supply to the brain. What happens is…you just wake up, if you’re lucky and the ref gives the win to the other guy. You hardly know it’s happening.
OTOH, you can mess with the larynx, and, in competition, the other guy will tap out, because it hurts a lot and it promises more hurt. If you’re really serious, you can crush the larynx and it’s all over. That might damage some bones.
Earlier discussion about the survival reflex overcoming the intellectual determination is relevant here. If you can arrange to cut off your carotid pressure….not a bad way to go and little damage. But, in the official reports, you were “hanged” by self or others.
So if we insist that “hanging” includes methods to close off the carotids, we might know something useful about bone damage or its likelihood in hanging..
While I find the most suspicious item here to be that this is the second successful suicide in forty years. A guy who figures out how to do the carotid thing wouldn’t make any fuss–no flailing around either as survival reflexes kick in, or he’s fighting somebody–and no damage.
So if Epstein, short of reading material, is sitting around amusing himself by making a tee of his thumb and forefinger and pressing on his carotids to get an idea of what it might be like, and if he can get some fabric to rotl up tighter than, say a loose towel but without the necessity to be a narrow ligature, he might manage. This possibility, I submit, makes the damage more suspicious.
It isn’t determinative.
It just slides the probabilities in the direction of murder and away from suicide.
That suicide is still possible is, of course, obvious and widely-acknowledged. And while the original announcement (“He was on suicide watch!”) made suicide seem unlikely, the immediate follow-ups (“Actually, he wasn’t on suicide watch.”) made suicide seem more likely again, without being dispositive.
Well, the trickle of additional details since then have made suicide seem less likely again, still without being dispositive.
What, then? Where do we stand?
There are still three possibilities:
– he killed himself (maybe 46%?)
– he was murdered (maybe 50%?)
– he’s in WitSec (maybe 4%?)
It’s possible we’ll know the truth, one day. But, it will be a long time.
We have been so spoiled by watching all of the crime solving autopsy shows where they look at crazy bits of this and that and then run out the door and catch the criminal all within a one hour episode that we are almost, but not exactly, experts. I have know some coroners, both in the Dallas area and one who worked the hurricane stuff in Galveston a few years ago and they told me that the TV stuff is kind of science fiction when it comes to real body work. I think we need to have some good reports, looking at all of the evidence from some good major university medical school body people. As things are today this thing stinks like really old fish. It does not pass the smell test.
Hi OldTexan,
Remember Billie Sol Estes, whose death by shooting multiple times with a bolt action rifle was ruled a suicide?
It took 24 years for the verdict to be changed to murder:
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/08/14/1961-suicide-ruling-changed-to-homicide/1010492840000/
Oh Lord help us, I do so remember Billie Sol Estes, he took all sorts of folks for an anhydrous ammonia ride in the late 1950’s – early 1960’s and fu**ed so many folks over. Then he knew who all the folks Johnson had murdered and the facts of their demise. By the way, I drove from Dallas to my home today for three hours passing through Johnson City on the way home. We do know about Texas and US history.
One thing I do know is that speculation about what happened to Jeffrey Epstein will not end. I can’t even imagine a finding of fact that would end it. Can you?
neo: Sure, authenticated communications between various authorities conspiring to killl Epstein or allow him to commit suicide. I’m not expecting it, but I can imagine it … among other things.
I want to know Epstein’s exact circumstances were and so far I don’t. Was there something tied around his neck? What? To what was that tied? Exactly how did he kill himself? I want the diagrams. I want the full autopsy report.
Exactly how did all these multiple factors coincide that Epstein could kill himself? Who made the decisions behind each factor and why? Is everyone conveniently incompetent, even when it’s not in their self-interest?
Oh. But we’ll never know, so why worry?
huxley:
I thought it was obvious that I meant finding some evidence that was realistic to find. Perhaps that wasn’t so clear, though.
Obviously, for example, if we could all get in a time travel machine and go back and view the event, that might do it. But it would take a mighty big machine to fit the entire population of the US.
Finding the communications you describe is not going to be happening. It’s a bit more likely than the time machine I just described, but not much.
The physical evidence involving the way the hanging occurred, that you describe after that, would of course be important and might convince you or me, and it is realistic to think it might be found. But what would convince you or me is not what I was referring to. I wrote that speculation would not end, and that I can’t imagine what would end it. It might end for you and it might end for me, but I meant in general. That’s why in another post I used the JFK analogy. For me, speculation ended quite some time ago, and the Bugliosi book should have put all speculation to rest, the evidence is so overwhelming and powerful that it was Oswald alone and no conspiracy at all. But vast numbers of people remain unconvinced. Not only that, they scoff derisively at those who are convinced.
That’s the sort of thing I’m referring to.
neo: Oh. Evidence that was realistic to find, presumably with you as the judge. My evidence was far more realistic than a time machine.
Speculation is never going to end on anything. But I thought you were speaking pragmatically.
I was a person who leaned 3:1 in favor of a JFK conspiracy. After I read Bugliosi, I changed my mind, because I do that in the face of better evidence. I’m not the only one.
At summer camp one summer, when I was a young teen (this would have been close to 50 years ago), one of the kids introduced the rest of us to the pass out game.
How this worked is that you’d hyperventilate, then hold your breath while someone else gave you a really tight bear hug. If you’d hyperventilated enough, and the hug was tight enough, you’d black out, and then come to as (or when) you were lowered to the ground.
Edward: “Remember Billie Sol Estes, whose death by shooting multiple times with a bolt action rifle was ruled a suicide?”
Wow. That showed at least as much commitment to completing the “suicide” as that bank CEO in Colorado who “committed suicide by shooting himself multiple times with a nail gun“, with “up to eight wounds to the torso and head“.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553964/CEO-commits-suicide-nail-gun-company-investigation.html#ixzz2sgRAm1JK
“Remember Billie Sol Estes, whose death by shooting multiple times with a bolt action rifle was ruled a suicide?”
I recall the name, Billie Sol Estes, but no details. According to the article, it wasn’t Estes who had been suicided, but rather Henry Marshal, who “was investigating the convoluted business dealings of Texas swindler Billie Sol Estes“.
Wouldn’t you know it! One of the few times that the edit option is available to me, and it disappears just as I notice that I hadn’t properly closed my italics tag.
How this worked is that you’d hyperventilate, then hold your breath while someone else gave you a really tight bear hug. If you’d hyperventilated enough, and the hug was tight enough, you’d black out, and then come to as (or when) you were lowered to the ground.
Ilion: An immigrant kid from Okinawa taught that to my sixth grade class at recess in 1962. I had low blood pressure. I was good at it.
I used to black out regularly if I got out of bed too fast in the morning. But with age my BP has increased, so not so much anymore.
Low blood pressure, huh? I wonder if that explains why I passed out several times as a teen (*).
Anyway, I bought it up as a possible partial explanation for how Epstein *might* have managed to suicide in the manner told us. The weakness of this as the means to force himself to be unconscious *before* the carbon-dioxide buildup in his lungs is the missing bear hug part.
(*) once, going down the stairs; fortunately, I felt it coming on and lowered myself before completely losing consciousness.
Who in gov even has enough credibility to give the facts and be believed?
There’s no organization I would trust even if they were to publish the unvarnished truth.
Pics or it didn’t happen, basically. Even those could be altered.
As the mainstream “folks” will tell you, there are no such thing as conspiracy theories.
Conspiracies ,after all, are things you get charged with by prosecutors for doing bad baddy stuff. So conspiracy theories never exist of course. There are only Occam’s Razor type conspiracies. The ones that are easily proved in court.
Can you prove this in court? Without witnesses? Heh.
j e on August 15, 2019 at 3:15 pm said:
It seems increasingly likely that, just as with Stephen Paddock and Las Vegas, there will never be any adequate answer to the mystery of the egregious Epstein’s demise, but in the absence of such, it will always appear highly unlikely that such a confluence of bureaucratic ineptitude, corruption, and negligence simply happened to occur in the case of perhaps the most important inmate in the nation’s most important federal detention center.
We know what usually happens to Epstein in Jail at his country club time out session of 12 months that he initially got for trafficking in minors. He gets luxurious treatment.
How he got double jeopardize on that, I have no idea, but he has enough sex slaves that another charge would be duplicated without double jeopardy.
Then compare to his treatment here… low intelligent intel analysts might need to consult their Intel Conspiracy and Counter Intelligence 101 manual before they can figure out the answer.
Even some Epstein conspiracies aren’t allowed on here by Neo. Imagine what the Deep State “allows” humanity and Americans to learn about. It’s not even as much as what the main sewer zombies know, and they don’t know much.
Here’s someone billed as a “top” forensic pathologist saying that hyoid bones break far more often in strangulations than they do in hangings.
A Montreal study cited in the article linked below found that of some 239 hanging deaths, in only 2 cases did the hyoid bone break i.e. in less than 1% of the cases.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/top-forensic-pathologist-only-1-of-hanging-deaths-resulted-in-broken-hyoid-bone-video/
R.C. said,
“It isn’t determinative.
It just slides the probabilities in the direction of murder and away from suicide.”
Exactly my thoughts. Once I heard it was the hyoid bone, and possibly other bones (reports keep coming out that the autopsy mentions bones rather than bone), I began to swing toward murder.
Its become a preponderance of irregularities, if you will.
I don’t think enough people are taking into account how manipulative and narcissistic Epstein was. He could have been planning this for quite a while and pretending to the shrinks and guards that he was OK. I bet some of his “elite” friends were staying back from him, and he may not have had access to girls like he did before. He would probably wanted to go out as a headliner for weeks than just quietly sit in a cell. He was not dumb.
Remember Billie Sol Estes, whose death by shooting multiple times with a bolt action rifle was ruled a suicide?
Estes died of natural causes in 2013, about a year and a half shy of his 90th birthday.
https://www.wileyfuneralhome.com/obituary/billie-sol-estes/
“Here’s someone billed as a “top” forensic pathologist saying that hyoid bones break far more often in strangulations than they do in hangings.”
At the same time, going by what we are being told about how Epstein allegedly hanged himself, it is more of a strangulation than a hanging.
At the other same time … there are those other broken bones in his neck. Beside the hyoid, “multiple broken bones” means at least one vertebrae, and implies more than one vertebrae.
Epstein has instantly entered the Conspiracy Hall of Fame…
Were it not for the heretofore unfathomable conspiracy in our government to overturn the 2016 presidential election, this would not be news at all.
Snow on Pine:
Except statistics indicate hyoid bones break in around 25% of hangings. His experience may be different, but that’s not the overall statistics. I already gave some of the research on this.
Soooo, if I were writing the TV-movie-of-the-week, this is my plot:
It’s murder, or at least assisted suicide, but not by the parties generally under suspicion at this time.
Epstein has lots of powerful friends (or victims), and he skated before, so it is not improbable for his victims and their supporters to assume he will get another gentle slap on the wrist this time as well, possibly a little more onerous because of the publicity, but nothing approaching what he deserves.
Someone in that group has connections to, or at least knowledge of, what goes on at that prison; OR (even better) has a covert relationship with one of the Epstein lawyers who cancelled the suicide watch. (Note to legal beagles: this is a work of fiction; I don’t even know who his lawyers are, except they don’t include Dershowitz this time).
Connect the dots.
“It’s murder, or at least assisted suicide, but not by the parties generally under suspicion at this time.”
Except that, these days, we all know to expect the plot to be written that way. So, this time around, the plot is written straight-up.
😉
Ilion, you watch too much TV !!
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/was_epstein_gal_pal_ghislaine_maxwell_really_trying_to_hide_at_that_innout.html
Monica Showalter thinks not:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/08/16/its-official-epstein-death-ruled-a-suicide/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/epstein_reportedly_spent_2_hours_locked_in_a_private_room_with_an_attractive_young_woman_the_day_after_suicide_watch_ended.html
https://ktul.com/news/nation-world/medical-examiner-rules-epsteins-death-a-suicide
That would be the same lawyers who asked the prison to take Epstein off of the suicide watch list.
And it’s interesting how so many “careful reviews of all available … information” don’t actually include all the information that should be available.
Maybe the clue is “investigative” — if you don’t investigate it, it isn’t available.
My son is a Sr. Fire Fighter / EMS with 14+ years exp.
He has ran his fair share of deliberate, accidental and “assisted” (concealed murder) suicides by hanging. We has jaile Cell Hangings and etc.. He pointed me to a several articles that call in to question the physical neck injuries given the circumstances Epstein in died under (jail cell).
“Suspended by the neck, the weight of the body is used to tighten the noose around the trachea and neck structure causing strangulation and subsequently death. This typically takes between 10 and 20 minutes, with unconsciousness occurring within 6–15 seconds.” (– where were the guards? –)
The length of drop needed to produce the injury would be about 6? 5½” according to the
“Official Table of Drops”, which is the official guide to conducting a proper hanging. A multiple broken bone neck hanging requires allowing 1,000 foot-pounds force (1,400 J) of drop energy – and then in 1939.
(– But in the jail cell can person get 6.5 ft of drop? even a Bunk bed is only 5ft at the high point and that would require the victim to be laying down on the upper bunk the bunk bolted to the floor and jump off curled up to get 4.5 feet at best or 2 feet short of what needed to break all the reported bones. –)
The NY DOJ has long been a suspected Coverup and Political Hit man office for the Democrats. Just look at the numerous times they have ran cover for the Democrats and gone politically after their political rivals. Many feel they are close to being another 9th circuit court like in California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwiBvZIApig
Soooo, if I were writing the TV-movie-of-the-week, this is my plot:
Ha ha ha. You’re showing your vintage. Any Millennials posting her will draw a blank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VI9mUyG_f0
Even better.
Steve A.:
I keep pointing out—and I will point out again here—that we don’t know what Epstein’s injuries were. We only know leaked anonymous reports—actually, unless I’m mistaken, one report in the WaPo.
I certainly am not familiar with “Official Drop” figures, but it seems to me from what you wrote that those figures are what is required to reliably and almost certainly produce a broken neck bone of some sort. With Epstein one only needs forces that possibly produce a broken neck bone (plus, of course, we need to get official word that his neck bone was broken). The studies I have read—and I have read many, and quoted them in comments and other posts—say it is possible to break a bone in any hanging or any strangulation, and it is even more common in an elderly male such as Epstein.