i think so. reporter: neighbors testified the lovelace household was sometimes a stormy one. and that, parkinson suggested to jurors, is the backdrop of cory s death. they fought all the time. it was a rocky marriage with lots of arguments going both ways. and it got out of control. and maybe the evidence indicates that placing a pillow, over one s face to make them stop yelling at me. maybe in her weakened state, if she was had flu-like symptoms, maybe it went too far. reporter: the state s theory, remember, is the force of the pillow caused that cut and abrasion on the outside and inside of cory s lip. the prosecutor then implied the pillow was placed under her arms after she died and later removed. if you leave it there through the night, and while rigor mortis is setting in, and then if a person is thinking, oh, my god. what did i do? and, oh, there s that pillow in
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they hit here, abrasion over here, significant blow, like falls down, significant blow, fracture extends into the right side of the head over here. that s all possible from one mechanism, but then also fractures in the front over here just above the eyes. if i didn t know anything else about this, i would say is this someone who was unrestrained in a car accident? is this someone who fell down a flight of stairs, for example, or something like that? when we look at this from a neurosurgical perspective, there is a few different things we re trying to figure out. what was the mechanism of injury? the fall, car accident, what was it? but ultimately energy of the injury. how much energy was actually put on the skull and the brain. and what we can say from that pattern of injuries as outlined in the autopsy report, it was a significant, significant blow to the head. we don t know, again, exactly what caused that. it also does not appear he was on blood thinners, something we talked about l
when you read this autopsy report, that may be the case but it was a significant blow to the head. just to give you an idea. in yellow of all the bones that were fractured. it takes a lot of force to do that. let me show you on this skull model. there were fractures here and also an abrasion over here. clearly, there was some sort of, you know, impact over here. that fracture extended into the right temporal bone over here. that was a hard blow to do that. what was noted is there were skull fractures in the front of his skull over here as well just above his eyes. in order to do that, when i first saw this, if i knew nothing else about what happened, you would think maybe this was someone who had fallen down the stairs and had several impacts to the head or been unrestrained in a car accident. it was that degree of force.
impact, you know, that led to his death, sadly. now, what makes you you read the report. walk us through your approach of doing it. you see the head injuries. you learn about the pooling of the blood. we hear about the different languages described. when you re looking at this evaluating, obviously you did not do this as your medical examiner forensic reporter. when you are reviewing it, what are you looking for to determine that it was an accident? true. you know, i have to sort of you know, i don t have the investigative report given to me. that s what the original medical examiner would have. taking it all into consideration, you know, first i started looking at the outside of the body. and i m just going to point to my head sort of at the back of my head where my fingers are. basically the mid back of the skull and the scalp. that s where he had what s called an abrasion, which is if anyone skins their knee, that s what an abrasion is, where the skin basically, top layers o