Report: Car Headlights Suspect in Death of White House Adviser's Wife

Fox news ^ | Feb 9 2011 | Fox news

[crosslink]

Several sources familiar with the ongoing investigation tell WTOP fire and police investigators believe the radiator in Turton's 2008 BMW X5 was punctured when it rolled into a workbench. The halogen headlights, which emit a bluish light and illuminate the road better than conventional headlights, stayed on after the radiator was punctured.

[Gabrial]

“I've also found a way to explain why she's in a car with the garage doors still locked”

The car had been partially backed out of the garage. I think the door was opened and the car partially backed out.

[muawiyah]

Other reports have the car crashing into the doors and forcing them open. Then there's a fire.

Two things have to happen to have the car actually backing out and have it stall ~ (1) The driver has to stop pressing the accelerator and (2) the engine has to stall.

With automatic transmissions being so common these days it is easy to forget that not too long ago if you suddenly died at the wheel, you'd rapidly slow down and your engine would shudder and die with you. Now, they just keep on running. This car stopped cold.

So, let's say the engine stalled ~ sudden consumption of all the oxygen in the vicinity by a big fire in the immediate vicinity would do that. That means the fire, as big as it got, roared to life instantly as she was backing the van (if she was, in fact, backing the van). That's remarkably like an explosion.

Final reports will tell us whether the vehicle left tracks ~

[muawiyah]

Interesting ~ I think somebody mentioned yesterday that's a standard only slightly greater than that for gasoline.

I am replacing my antifreeze with water in the future.

[Gabrial]

“The fact that it's sitting on the back end of the car gives some credence to the speculation that the door was hit from inside with the car backing out. I haven't seen the door, or pieces of it, in any picture but I suspect the firemen pulled it out of their way as soon as they got there.”

Good point.

Tin Foil hat NOT on:

1) Victim pulls in night before and hits something that punctures radiator.

2) Per muawiyah’s theory, hot liquid coolant sprays through the punctures and starts to create a vapor which mixes with cold air all night, concentrating in the very small one car garage.

3) Being a young attractive woman she has the habit of getting in her car and starting it immediately before she pushes the garage door opener. Just to be safe. To prevent car-jacking, common in DC.

4) However, this time a glycol vapor/air mixture has reached the critical 3.2 percent ratio. She starts her car, the garage bursts into flames in the few seconds it takes for the cat convertor to heat to 231 degrees Fahrenheit.

5) She panicks and throws the car into reverse and smashes into the door, knocking herself unconscious, and the car comes to rest partially out of the garage.

6) The fire rages until the trucks put it out.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Sometimes the mind's eye sees what is not there. I hope this is the case for me. My mind might be filling in the blanks of a picture with no reference points.

My eyes see a view from the right backseat passenger window towards the front driver's side. I see a shape which could be a partial view of someone’s head & shoulders. It appears to be in an upright position. IOW, a normal position for someone behind the wheel of a car, but not for the tragic circumstance.

If that is the case, perhaps she did not have time to react.

[TigersEye]

Not a bad speculation of events. Other ignition sources are possible too such as a gas water heater if one were there. Starting the car might pressurize the radiator in a couple of minutes enough to spray aerosol anti-freeze onto the pilot light if it were close enough. But what knocked her out? Just backing through the garage door doesn’t bring a cause to my mind.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I might be wrong (probably am) but my impression is that there is no entrance into the house from inside the garage. Has that been established on way or another?

[TigersEye]

I saw that shape too and wonder the same thing. Not sure about it either though. I can see the possibility that the entire garage was filled with an e-glycol vapor and went up in a big flash. I give that small odds. But if she were in her car with closed door and windows that would protect her from flames and concussion. On the other side of that coin; if she were knocked unconscious immediately she couldn’t back through the garage door.

[TigersEye]

I don’t know but I agree with your off the cuff assessment that there would be no door between house and garage. There is no entry door to the garage on the front or the side seen in some pics either. That would mean having to open the big door to get in. I think there are some pics that show the interior wall of the garage that abuts the house but I don’t recall if there was a door into the house. My memory says ‘no.’

[PennsylvaniaMom]

Girlene’s post @118 of this thread shows a photo of the garage (angle so that the wall between house/garage is shown). It appears that there was some type of mudroom or sunroom addition (w/a second story porch) on that common wall. Its hard to tell if there is a door, but there would have to be some steps down from the house level to the grage.

[Gabrial]

“That would mean having to open the big door to get in.”

If that were the case, I would speculate that would greatly lower the probability of the vapor/air explosion. The minute that large door opened, vapors would begin to dissipate.

[TigersEye]

Thanks for finding that for me. It's too dark to see that wall in that pic and I'm sure there was another that showed it in light. The part you're calling a mudroom would require a set of stairs to go down to the garage level and with a flat roof like the garage has I can't see the headroom for stairs there. I'm not saying it isn't possible though.

I have to get moving and get to town or I would get right on finding the pics I was thinking of or other clearer views of the interior. You can easily beat me to it if you want to! ;^)

[TigersEye]

Good point, I hadn’t even thought of that. My first thought was how unlikely that she would have closed it again and then backed through it. That could happen in an early morning pre-coffee state of mind though.

[Gabrial]

Go to 186 and look at the picture. There is a portable light on top of the car shining brightly on the wall. From this angle I can see no door into the house.

[TigersEye]

Thank you, that's the pic I was thinking of. There is one possibility that, due to the angle the pic was taken from, an entry door could be on that wall close to the front hidden by the front wall of the garage.

But the pic at #198 gives a pretty good view of the garage roof and there is no projection there to account for the headroom of a stairway. Notice the division of floors on the house. The one between basement and 2nd floor is about midway up the garage wall. There could be no straight pass-thru door between garage and house. The floor levels don't match. No door on the back wall that we can see either.

I think it's near certain that the only way in and out of that garage is the big door. Since we're working from pics that don't reveal all walls of the garage I'll give it a 99.9% certainty.

[Gabrial]

“The possibility for explosion probably depends how much pure e-glycol is mixed with how much air, and how hot the heat source is that ignites the mixture.”

I made a call to a friend that is a research chemist for Dow chemical. She has a Masters and P.H.D. in research chemistry.

She said to get an e-glycol vapor explosion (entirely possible) you need a continuous heat source heating an open container of e-glycol in an enclosed area for an extended period of time. Any other scenario, no boom. That is why it is so safe in cars.

She thinks some other chemical blew the garage (like gas).

[muawiyah]

Tell you what, push back on that source and ask her about e-glycol spray ~ that what may have happened here is the antifreeze mixture of e-glycol and water was sprayed into 22 degree air ~ very dry air ~ in an enclosed garage ~ for possibly several hours!

I'm sure your source can figure out the size of the aerosol droplets that will enable the water to be shed quickly while leaving the e-glocal airborn until 4:30 AM when she starts the engine!

[muawiyah]

Else I’m thinking the possibility of murder may have crept back into the picture.

[Western Phil]

The street level Google earth pictures of this property may give more detail: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=800+a+street+se+washington+dc&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=800+A+St+SE,+Washington+D.C.,+DC+20003&gl=us&ei=ipFUTcGiEMXZgQfrhLXiCA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ8gEwAA

The one from above shows their second car parked diagonally so that one would have to leave the garage at an angle..

[TigersEye]

The way that car is situated makes it look like a real challenge to back out and around from the garage. I can imagine an oversteer that caused the front of the car to hit a work bench on the house-side wall. That could have upset some flammable materials onto some kind of ignition source. That would then be the car's only role in starting the fire.

But that leaves the question of why the door was closed and raises the question of why this anti-freeze-headlight theory was put forward by the authorities. Fire investigators for fire departments are usually pretty good and it shouldn't be that hard to find the ignition point and the initial accelerant.

One possibility I overlooked for a stairway and entry into the garage would be from the basement level up to the garage. But the entry door on that stoop would seem to rule that out. The headroom for that stairway would impinge on what we've been calling a mudroom behind the door on that stoop.