Strangulation may occur without any of these visible symptoms (and it is not uncommon), so we can't rule it out. Furthermore, Terri was subjected to fairly brutal emergency procedures in the struggle to revive her. She had a tracheotomy -- surgical insertion of a breathing tube into her neck. In these conditions (medics assure me), it would have been easy for ER personnel to miss or misidentify any marks or symptoms from strangulation.
So at this point, we have no good reason to rule out strangulation but no positive or visible reason to support the theory either.
That is all the further we would get except for the bone scan. This amazing document was hidden away by Michael and his lawyers for 11 years. They HAD to hide it from the malpractice jury. It would have instantly cleared the doctors who were being -- falsely -- sued.
We have only the brief bone scan report, not the radiographs themselves, but that is damning enough. At some point Terri suffered terrific trauma -- comparable to being in a nasty auto wreck. ("Looks like somebody beat the crap out of her," a doc told me.)
We cannot date these injuries (the bone scan was 13 months after Terri was injured), but they are well within the range of possibility. We assume they were the results from the night of February 25, 1990. If not, then we have TWO impossible mysteries to explain. There is no other factual explanation for these traumas, so that's out of court.
The injuries shown in the bone scan are very odd. They have the force of a beating or auto wreck, yes, but the damage is in strange places. There was trauma that broke Terri's back at L1 [compression fracture] and fractured the back of several adjacent ribs. (Broken ribs are not uncommon from emergency resuscitation, but not at the back of the ribs like these injuries.) There was a bone bruise on her right femur -- another injury that takes an enormous amount of force. Other injuries shown by the bone scan need not concern us, but they confirm that she was handled roughly.
I have come to believe that one and only one kind of attack explains every known symptom and fact of the case. It would have to be an attack from behind to explain the spine and rib fractures. It would have to cause asphyxia, to explain Terri's brain damage. It would have to explain her two very odd blood chemistry readings -- admission level hypokalemia (meaning bad enough that she needs emergency treatment) and lactic acidosis -- a condition caused by extreme exertion in the absence of oxygen. (Like "runner's burn" after an all-out sprint.)
Michael and Terri were known to be having a huge argument that day. Terri went to sleep. Michael had to work late at his restaurant job, probably fuming all evening that he had to work because the b*tch spent $80 on her hair. I believe he came home steaming angry, dragged her out of bed, wrestled her down (she ended up face down on the hallway floor a few feet from the bed). He got on her back, pinning her with both knees -- one in the small of her back where the spine and rib fractures occurred, the other on her thigh (bone bruise). His left hand pinned her head to the floor (producing the stiff neck that bothered her the rest of her days). Michael is 6'-6", 260 pounds, where Terri was 115 and unathletic. He would have handled her like a rag doll.
What he did not know, evidently, is that this position is quickly fatal for the restrained person. (Death from such restraint is well known in law enforcement when the cops get a little too vigorous. That's why it is called positional or restraint asphyxia.) With force on one's back, head sideways on the floor, the person simply cannot breathe. The end is fast. Within seconds the victim will be unconscious. If the pressure is not relieved, the victim will go into cardiac arrest. And of course that is exactly what happened to Terri. There is no dispute about that. (Note that she did not have a heart attack; in fact her heart was still healthy at her death fifteen years later.)
The kind of hypokalemia Terri suffered is characteristic of trauma. Her lactic acidosis simply means she was fighting desperately to breathe. The fractures and internal injuries are like a photograph of a large man on her back.
Such is my reconstruction, and as far as I can see, it accounts for every fact on the police and medical record. It is just a theory, of course, but there is no other theory out there. As usual, I invite the world to find any fatal flaw in it.
Here is a link to a great deal more information on positional asphyxia:
Patient Restraint and Restraint Asphyxia
And here are a couple of photos (from the same site) showing roughly the position of Terri's attacker. Note the officer's knee on the restrainee's thigh in the second. If the officer had put his other knee in the small of the back and his hand on the neck, that would complete the picture of the assault on Terri as I see it.
