I must have misuderstood Wolstar's interpretation.
"I've always thought that the blow was done at the same time as the strangling or nearly so, perhaps a during a fit of rage by the killer for non-compliance or because of his inability to "complete" his fantasy."
I thought something similar. I actually wondered if this was the climatic point for the killer. Or, once he believed her to be dead from the strangulation, he threw her against something.
I think you did, CTM. Let me summarize my main points:
1. Both the head trauma (which was far more massive than I ever knew before yesterday) and the garrotting were fatal injuries in and of themselves.
2. The autopsy photos and report make it clear the child was alive -- by alive, I mean her heart was still pumping -- at the time both acts occured.
3. We know she was alive when the head wound occurred because of the massive bleeding between her scalp and skull, and on the right side of her brain.
4. We know she was alive when she was strangled, due to the distinctive telltale signs of death by strangulation which were present on the child's neck and face.
5. Although I'm not an MD, I'm exceptionally well read. On that basis, I'm taking an educated guess that, without rapid medical support, the head wound would have been fatal within a very short time from when it occurred. Probably only a few minutes at the most. I think she might not even have survived the time it took to carry her from her bedroom to the basement.
6. All of this suggests to me that the head wound and strangulation occurred, at most, within a very few minutes of each other and probably in the same location.
7. The shape of the main head wound is rectangular -- a rectangle laying on its long side across as much as a third of the right side of the child's skull. It has the appearance of having been caused by a hard, rectangular object that struck JonBeney laterally. By laterally, I mean similar to the way a baseball bat is swung, although the wound does not look like it matches the rounded end of a bat. It looks more comparable to the head of a golf club, or perhaps to the corner of a table.
8. The massive fracture that radiates off the main head wound runs laterally around the back of the skull. That might indicate the direction from which the blow came. I'm not qualified to say if it was struck from directly in front of her or directly from behind, but I think it must have been one or the other. The image I have in my mind is of someone standing behind her and swinging something comparable in shape to a golf club, but swinging it in the same motion one swings a baseball bat. If she wasn't struck in such a manner, then she was thrown or fell violently against something hard and probably rectangular in shape.
9. However, the blow to the head also could have occurred while the killer was in the act of strangling her. If she struggled violently for a brief period and/or if the killer was violently tossing her about while tightening the garrot, her head could have been smashed sideways into an object such as the corner of a table. So it is entirely possible that both the strangulation and head trauma occurred pretty much at the same time.
10. Because I don't want to imagine a six-year-old girl living for some time, however brief, through that savage strangulation -- and it was very savage -- I prefer to see the scenario in my mind's eye as someone behind her striking the blow to her head, then doing all the rest of it within, at most, two or three minutes. If the blow to the head occurred first, that is the only merciful thing about this whole vile atrocity. Once that child suffered the head wound, she knew and felt nothing else.
11. I belive the immense savagry in the way JonBenet was garrotted indicates that this was a rage killing. The force needed to strangle a six-year-old is far less than what was used on that poor child. The groove all around her neck caused by the extreme tightening of the ligature was astonishingly deep. I just can't imagine anyone doing that to a small kid unless they were motivated by a white-hot rage. That suggests this wasn't a garden variety kidnapping for money that went bad. Literature on criminal behavior indicates that the vast majority of rage killings are perpetrated by someone known to the victim.