LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

AUGUST 20, 2014

Dr. Eugene Carpenter, formerly a medical examiner with the LA County coroner’s office, performed the autopsy on Audrey Nelson, a.k.a. Audrey Everett. He explained his findings with a laser pointer aimed at projections of her emaciated, scarred body on a steel slab.

Silverman knew Audrey’s daughter and sister would be in the room. The doctor testified about the fingernail kit, the drag marks, the myriad of injuries, many of them premortem.

He introduced the third-party culpability evidence of the distinctive stamp mark on her neck that looked like a ring or belt buckle, neither belonging to Little. Bruising and crescent-shaped nail marks surrounded it. Silverman suggested alternative theories for how it might have gotten there.

Audrey was beaten plenty. It hadn’t started with Sam Little. That was just where it had ended. Even Silverman had rarely seen a body so battered.

The doctor explained the bruising and areas of bleeding in the chest cavity, on her back, were so deep as to appear to be caused by a blunt-force weapon, not excluding feet, elbows, or hands. Severe blunt-force trauma to the central abdomen. No signs of petechial hemorrhaging, so it was like a hanging, where the pressure was so great the blood never built up in the head. You don’t have the pressure that causes the little hemorrhages. Severe hemorrhaging in the neck muscles, hyoid bone snapped in three places.

SILVERMAN: How would you describe that, given that you’ve been practicing forensic pathology for approximately 27 years now, on a scale of 1 to 10? What are we talking about in terms of the level of force used in this particular case given the extent of hemorrhaging that you saw, along with fractures of three of the four bones in the neck?

CARPENTER: Okay. I’m going to be careful because these cases are not frequent. Maybe I’ve seen ten, 12 cases; but of those ten or 12, these signs of force are the greatest that I have seen in a 27-year practice.

SILVERMAN: Okay. Tell us, in terms of your determination with respect to the observations that you made in your examination at autopsy, what you determined was the cause of death.

CARPENTER: Death was caused by strangulation.

SILVERMAN: How long, approximately, would it take with that type of extreme pressure held constant around the neck before you would expect death to occur?

CARPENTER: By convention, it’s acceptable that about three and a half minutes is a reasonable answer.