CH has a half-life of 4 minutes so CH itself would not be detected - it’s metabolites is what gave the levels away:
“The absence of the parent chloral hydrate in the blood of Miss Smith suggests that her death did not occur immediately after a large ingestion/administration of the drug; due to the extremely short half-life of 4 minutes
for chloral hydrate and since the chloral hydrate was a liquid preparation.
[snip]
Miss Smith had a peripheral blood TCE concentration of 75µg/mL and TCA concentration of 85µg/mL which is consistent with her having received repeated doses of chloral hydrate over a couple of days. A general therapeutic range for TCE is 2 to 12µg/mL
The TCE concentrations found in the blood, liver, brain, gastric and duodenal contents taken from Miss Smith are similar to literature concentrations (i.e., blood, 55µg/mL; brain, 91µg/g; liver, 200µg/g; and gastric, 5g) found in a fatality that occurred 3 hours after ingestion of chloral hydrate6.
[snip]
Serum and vitreous (eye fluid) chloride levels were elevated suggesting dehydration,
[snip]
This suggests that she took a significant dose of chloral hydrate in the hours preceding her death.
[snip]
j. Chloral hydrate may result in jaundice or icterus in cases of chronic toxicity. The absence of these findings suggests an overdose resulting in acute toxicity in this case.
b. If most cases of suicide, the victim ingests a large amount of a drug to insure death. The bottle found of chloral hydrate found near Miss Smith was only half empty.
c. In many case of prescription drug overdose, multiple drug levels are elevated.
In this case, all drug, except chloral hydrate are at therapeutic levels.
http://www.broward.org/medical/investigative_report.pdf
??? sorry plum, I am missing your point attemtp? Not sure how this applies to Perper not testing for CH from the start which was my question you reply to. If the CH was in the room, why did Perper wait and ‘need clinical’ info from anyone? Why wouldn’t CH be an elephant in the duffel bag to this inventory?
dehydration.. “suggesting” “BUT” .. there is the real truth! “BUT sodium levels NORMAL”. IF dyhydrated, her sodium levels should be elevated and he knows it so has to put a deceitful line in that could be misinterpreted.
He is so dishonest and tricky. He wants to use partial information and discount or ignore total results.