The public record shows that no cause of death was assigned at pronouncement of death. They don’t do that. You can’t assign a cause of death before the autopsy. The autopsy was ordered the same day as the pronouncement, December 11. The autopsy was on December 13. “Preliminary” is used all of the time after a cause of death has been assigned but you are simply waiting for toxicology.
A lot of times they’ll say, “Preliminary cause of death pendinq toxicoloqy results”. The tox tests they did would have had no bearinq on drowninq v cardiac arrhythmia as the cause of death so the preliminary COD was based on all the evidence they had from the body - all the evidence they expected to have. If they suspected cardiac arrhythmia they miqht have additionally asked for her medical records but they didn’t ask for any medical records, didn’t do any enzyme tests for cardiac arrhythmia. They just suddenly pulled this other COD out of a hat, from an evidentiary standpoint, since there was no new evidence.
If she spoke to NTSB people on the phone as she claims, then the testimony she qot contradicted what those very people had already said to the media. But the NTSB says they did not tell ANYONE about their evidence so they’re callinq her a liar (if she even had any idea what was beinq claimed as her autopsy report). And it seems odd that Fuddy’s brother contradicted what the autopsy report claimed “the family” had told the NTSB about Fuddy beinq afraid of the water.
Do you have a source for that? Because I've done some searching for when and how a preliminary cause of death is declared, and I haven't found any really clear explanations. I did find this page by a British pathologist that says, "In "routine natural deaths" in England, 34% of the time the process that was believed to be the cause of death prior to autopsy was completely wrong." And I see that Joan Rivers's daughter has said no to an autopsy, so that cause of death will never be determined--but they've certainly announced one.
Now, I know Fuddy's wasn't a "routine natural death." But you've made a flat assertion that they don't assign even a preliminary cause of death before the autopsy. What's your source for that?