“Page 3 of the autopsy says “…during initial examination in the emergency room, there was no rigor and lividity was at a minimum and unfixed. Page 4 said there was an endotracheal tube present at the mouth at the time of the examination.
Brigitte mentioned her jaw had dropped, she tried to push it shut and it wouldn’t. Isn’t that a sign of rigor mortis? If there was a tube in her mouth when brought to the hospital they wouldn’t have seen rigor of the jaw? “
Yes that is a sign of rigor mortis and once it is “broken,” particularly early on after a death, it doesn’t entirely return as long as one is manipulating the muscles. So I believe the first morons obscured the presentations by all their efforts at CPR, changing positions etc. Perper doesn’t say there is NO lividity, only that it is minimal. If they had flipped her into a face up position two hours or more before he saw her, that soon after her death, certainly he wouldn’t have seen the same presentation - the same face splotching and chest splotching that the first observers saw.
It doesn’t take much to override initial rigidity as anyone who has worked in a hospital could tell you. If there had been tubes placed and chest compressions, arms flexed and moved and poked and strapped onto a gurney and etc. etc. performed by well meaning EMT’s who had the misinformation that she had perhaps JUST expired, then the entire face, neck chest area would have been rendered fairly pliable again by the time Perper saw her.
It was a messy, messy situation, obfuscated by people trying to cover up their own incompetence or their own sense of guilt for not having checked on her sooner. It was exactly what HKS wanted — confusion.
Thanks. That gives me a better picture.