from everything I have read - the blow to the head was post-mortem.
she died from being strangled, she was alive as could be determined by the scratch marks around her neck as she was clawing at the rope.
That is different from what I read. But I really haven't followed it as closely as others have here, so you may well be right. It does make sense to me that this could be a cover-up of an initial injury. But it just seems to be too gruesome to have the parents doing it. I just don't know...
That's the first I'd heard that. The coroner's report noted lacerations consistent with rope movement around the neck, but I didn't know that they had associated it with her CLAWING at her neck. Interesting.
The coroner was not the only one to review the forensics. The Boulder Police contracted other pathologists who specialized in these types of injuries to look at the evidence as well. They concluded that the asphyxiation and head trauma could not be disentangled as far as a definitive cause of death: they were both responsible. They also concluded that the head trauma occured 10 - 45 minutes before the strangulation. Unless they're just wrong on that, I'm going with that conclusion for now.
As for the head injury, it is consistent only with a rare type of 'freak' incident in which the head is "snapped" back against a hard object (like the end of a wet towel) and implies that the object was stationary and the body moving. This is based on the lack of laceration and the long split of the skull with few if any fragments. A brute force blow would result in lacerations and fragments. A baseball bat or other instrument would result in laceration. The type of head trauma she received requires 'perfect' conditions and is not something that can be readily reproduced or planned. It would require some modest padding between the head and object to prevent laceration. The body would have to be accelerated quickly with a sudden deceleration to create the 'whip' effect. The best candidates in the home for this type of injury are heavy furniture and installed fixtures. This type of injury is VERY rare. Any coroners out there can correct me on this but I think this is a fair description of the craniocerebral trauma JBR received.
I'm not jumping to exclude an intruder, I just think there is a mountain of evidence pointing inside the family itself.