"It wouldn't have been there if the head blow had happened after her heart stopped pumping."
It? You mean the blood in her head/skull?
There is always blood in our head (scalp, arteries and veins) right?
From what I understand of ligature strangulation, the ligature cuts off the flow of outgoing blood (the veins) but not so quickly on incoming blood (the arteries). That's why petechial hemorrhaging occurs. The little capillaries and such just burst under pressure (too much blood coming in, not enough going out). Do you agree with that?
So there would be blood in her head. Maybe even a little more than normal. I'm reading about hemorrhaging now so that I understand the process better but if there was no trauma to her head prior to being found, then all of the blood should still be contained in the blood vessels in her head, right? Some of them may have burst (petechial hemorrhaging) but overall they would be in the vessels. Correct? Because there was no trauma to force the blood out of the vessels, right?
There would be settlement of the blood after time. I forget the technical term but that is what causes livor mortis. The heavier cells (I think the red ones) settle on the bottom.
Do you agree up to this point?
That's as far as I am right now on hemorrhaging so I'll read more. I'm trying to figure out at what point your thinking became different than mine.
No - keep reading - the blood had spread throughout several layers of the brain membrane - no, it's not usually there - it's in the veins. This was a flood.