Person doing a backbend or hanging upside down in dense foliage

Hi! Been lurking for a few years @ websleuths but Alcala thread is new to me.

My mother was late teens/early 20's in SoCal at the time, but she says all her friends are accounted for.

Anyway, looking at the pdf of the photos http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/21/alcala.photos.pdf I saw similarities between upside down guy (on page 5) and the guy in photo on pg 77. Both have long dark hair, shirtless and seemingly similar bone structure. He's posed with the girl from photo 205, 209 & 220. These are the only pictures in woodsy areas and they seem to have similar flora.

I do think this is more a "backflip" pose. I do not think it's in the LE's MO to release images of the dead unless absolutely necessary. They went to great lengths to edit the sexually explicit materials, cropping the photographs, even though valuable details could be loss (ie birth marks, tattoos, scars etc).

Cant remember if Ive posted this before - but the lump in between this persons eyes/forehead looks a lot like the Jay Sebring morgue photos, he got the wounds by blunt force trauma.

Flipping and resizing the photo to 280% - nothing else done to it.

What about her?

I looked hard at earphone girl, too. The brows, upper nose, and eye socket areas are a pretty good match. Earphone girl has a very sharp, strong chin, however. While you can't see the hanger's chin directly, the slope of her neckline points to it being much smaller, a "weak" chin. Then, the settings don't match. Finally, hanger's hair looks like it would be lighter under equal lighting conditions. (Her hair is in deep shade so it's hard to be sure.)

WildHuncher said:

I looked hard at earphone girl, too. The brows, upper nose, and eye socket areas are a pretty good match. Earphone girl has a very sharp, strong chin, however. While you can't see the hanger's chin directly, the slope of her neckline points to it being much smaller, a "weak" chin. Then, the settings don't match. Finally, hanger's hair looks like it would be lighter under equal lighting conditions. (Her hair is in deep shade so it's hard to be sure.)

Click to expand...

Wow, I may need to leave this pic alone for a while and come back to it. I see this face now in so many pictures...

I do see a resemblance here as well.

I've been at this picture for too long, I think.

Thanks for the posts all!

punklove said:

What about her?

Click to expand...

Every time I come back to this thread something new seems visible. In the picture on the right, the shadow on the hanger's arm is a facial profile. There you can see what you can't see directly. The chins don't match.

That is what I was saying up thread, the shadow did not appear to be the victims own.

I would like to hear the input of an ME familiar with strangulation or hanging as to the amount of swelling above the ligature...if it would appear so flat faced and swollen in the neck area. The shadow seems to be of a male, imo. Alcala? Can anybody take a side pic of him and post just a profile shot? Maybe elongate it to match the suns position? IDK. I so wish I knew more about photography and the computer programs to do this. Someday.

Where does the shadow of the shoulder come from if it is her/his own shoulder...it doesn't. Not possible imo. It has to be the photographer or another person. I do not think the shadow shoulder matches the leaf either.

dsntslp said:

That is what I was saying up thread, the shadow did not appear to be the victims own.

I would like to hear the input of an ME familiar with strangulation or hanging as to the amount of swelling above the ligature...if it would appear so flat faced and swollen in the neck area. The shadow seems to be of a male, imo. Alcala? Can anybody take a side pic of him and post just a profile shot? Maybe elongate it to match the suns position? IDK. I so wish I knew more about photography and the computer programs to do this. Someday.

Where does the shadow of the shoulder come from if it is her/his own shoulder...it doesn't. Not possible imo. It has to be the photographer or another person. I do not think the shadow shoulder matches the leaf either.

Click to expand...

Are you allowing that the picture is rotated 180 (i.e., upside-down)? It looks to me like hazy sunlight is coming from the upper right in the original, non-flipped picture. The profile on the arm would naturally be the hanger's. It's sharper and clearer than it would be if it were cast from afar. The fuzziness of a shadow edge spreads out like a cone the farther you get from the light-blockage.

Ahhh, Thanks WildHuncher. That makes sense.

Except...her arm is on the ground...?

I get the rest though, truly. Honestly, I thank you.

But...If her arm is on the ground how does it make a shadow? Do you see the shadow of the arm/shoulder also?

What I think I see would require the photographer to be upside down also if we use the flipped and upside down theory..
But the photographer is not upside down, imo and is right side up.

Not questioning you WildHuncher, just trying to make sense of what we see...
You understand, I am sure.

I think it is the same reason this pic bothers you as well.

It's in our nature to make sense of what we see.

OK,
Here is another thing I notice.
I did gymnastics for years.
Lots and lots of years.

I do not remember ever seeing anybody doing a backbend and seeing that much tension on the chest muscles as if they were hanging (weight/pressure) and their arms were above them v. doing a true backbend and the arms were slightly splayed (for lack of a better word).
I could be wrong though, it's been a lot of years.

Gonna' go grab my daughter and make her do a back bend, really, brb.

Ok, I did, and she did...
The muscles do bunch up like that in the arm chest area.

I am satisfied with this part now.

... And the shadows tell us something ELSE (IMHO). This picture was cropped for the reason most of us suspect. The chin leaves a shadow on the arm. So does the nose. The shoulder leaves a shadow on the neck. The sharp and jutting line on the upper arm comes from ...

The Shadow Knows!

Ok, I had the same daughter come look at this pic and explain what WildHuncher has explained above.

Daughter was going to be a photographer and has convinced me WildHuncher is correct.

Thank you WildHuncher, truly.

I am satisfied now that this person is truly doing a back bend and is not hanging somehow.

TX.


Ohhh my,
I just had the daughter do another back bend with a flashlight pointed in various positions to imitate the light of the sun.

The only way I get the shadow of the face is from what would be late afternoon sun.
Using this position I have the shadow of the face but not the shadow on the arm.

When I have my subject sit/lie upside down in a chair, as if hanging upside down, the shadow is harder to reproduce.

I am to the point now where I swear I am going to take my camera and different subjects outside at different times of day to try and recreate this.

Please forgive me, I don't mean to derail.

This just bug me so very much, this pic.

Thank you again Wild Huncher.

dsntslp said:

Ahhh, Thanks WildHuncher. That makes sense.

Except...her arm is on the ground...?

I get the rest though, truly. Honestly, I thank you.

But...If her arm is on the ground how does it make a shadow? Do you see the shadow of the arm/shoulder also?

What I think I see would require the photographer to be upside down also if we use the flipped and upside down theory..
But the photographer is not upside down, imo and is right side up.

Not questioning you WildHuncher, just trying to make sense of what we see...
You understand, I am sure.

I think it is the same reason this pic bothers you as well.

It's in our nature to make sense of what we see.

Click to expand...

Quite right. This picture is a major puzzle and it's hard to let go. About lack of shadows out from the body... The shadows we DO have say the sun is very high. Shall I guess about noon in summer? Makes me want to eliminate high-latitude places like New York or New England as the sun seldom gets that high in the sky farther north.

Ahhh,

That kid of mine just viewed the original and has shown me how the shadow from the arm in the forefront (right) makes the shadow on the left arm in the left of the pic.

Gosh, it's so much harder to type and gives words to what we see or don't see and why...but I do finally understand.

Thanks again WildHuncher.
See you on the next one.

PS, I really was going to get the camera out tomorrow. I even had it figured out that if I put a black stocking on her face/head it would make her unrecognizable but still show the shadow and outline! LOL.

I've learned a lot tonight!

TX.

dsntslp said:

Ok, I had the same daughter come look at this pic and explain what WildHuncher has explained above.

Daughter was going to be a photographer and has convinced me WildHuncher is correct.

Thank you WildHuncher, truly.

I am satisfied now that this person is truly doing a back bend and is not hanging somehow.

TX.


Ohhh my,
I just had the daughter do another back bend with a flashlight pointed in various positions to imitate the light of the sun.

The only way I get the shadow of the face is from what would be late afternoon sun.
Using this position I have the shadow of the face but not the shadow on the arm.

When I have my subject sit/lie upside down in a chair, as if hanging upside down, the shadow is harder to reproduce.

I am to the point now where I swear I am going to take my camera and different subjects outside at different times of day to try and recreate this.

Please forgive me, I don't mean to derail.

This just bug me so very much, this pic.

Thank you again Wild Huncher.

Click to expand...

Please keep us posted on your experiments. I don't have anyone to do backbends for me and it's not like I'm going to do one.

I still have problems with the idea this person is doing a backbend. I'll say maybe.

Earlier I posted a YouTube of a young girl doing a prolonged backbend. I was eating crow at the time, as I had thought you can't do what she did. I was amazed that she could pull one hand up and scratch herself or at times shift her feet easily without collapsing. Sometimes she had both hands well out in front of her body.

But I eventually noticed that when she pulled the one hand up she had her weight back on her legs. That is, her feet were well under her body at those times. When she was shifting her feet, her weight was forward over her arms. She always kept something directly under her.

Looking at the wide-view hanger picture, she has her hands out in front of her weight and her feet out behind her weight at the same time. That's probably not impossible either but I doubt even skinny young girls can hold that for very long.

I probably still should just so I learn more from it (the experiment).

I'll keep you posted!

I think a photography class is in order, lol. True.

dsntslp said:

That is what I was saying up thread, the shadow did not appear to be the victims own.

I would like to hear the input of an ME familiar with strangulation or hanging as to the amount of swelling above the ligature...if it would appear so flat faced and swollen in the neck area. The shadow seems to be of a male, imo. Alcala? Can anybody take a side pic of him and post just a profile shot? Maybe elongate it to match the suns position? IDK. I so wish I knew more about photography and the computer programs to do this. Someday.

Where does the shadow of the shoulder come from if it is her/his own shoulder...it doesn't. Not possible imo. It has to be the photographer or another person. I do not think the shadow shoulder matches the leaf either.

Click to expand...

The features are flattened in the shadow, yes. It's not a full profile. The light is somewhat behind the subject. You have about a 2/3 profile effect. That's why the nose is such a little nub and the lips/mouth show only as a slight indentation. The light angle also exaggerates the rounding of the chin, but I'm sticking with my story that the chins are way different because you could almost see the same thing without the shadow. You can see directly that hanger's neck slants out to the chin, whereas headphone girl's neck stays straight farther up before angling sharply. Similar differences--is that an oxymoron?--can be seen in other pairs of people.

Re: comparing the ballet dancer shots and the "hanger" picture. (I'm not sure she's hanging but because of the thread title and the need for a one-word reference, I use that term. As posted above, I'm now sure as sure can be we're looking at a female here, though.) The light is much softer and more diffuse in the ballet dancer pics. It's an overcast day with an off-white sky in several shots.

The dancer setting looks more like a park, less woodsy. In one shot some kind of open field is visible in the background. The hanger shot looks more like deep woods, although it's all foreground and no background. Relatively bright sun, sunny-day shadows. Between the shot angles and the dad-blasted cropping, the dancer shots have no foreground detail around her except the one tree. You can't see if she's dancing on manicured grass or in a weedy area like that around the hanger. She'd probably prefer short grass for prancing about with bare feet. On the other hand, she may not want to dance naked in a public park.

That could be evidence for different places on different days. Or it could just mean the sun poked through the clouds later. Maybe they just moved a few dozen yards back from the edge of the woods. Or it's the same place but the one shot faces a different direction. Maddening. So much you can't tell.

I complained earlier that hanger's hair is so totally in black shadow that you have to do all kinds of brightening just to see it and this problem ruins comparison with other pictures. (Then I went ahead and compared anyway.)

But there's a little area that does catch the sun. It's a lustrous dark brown with glints of red in the highlights. (I have untrustworthy color vision with some red-green deficiency, so your mileage may vary.)

Dancer's hair is dark and reddish-brown. I strongly suspect it would behave similarly in bright sun, but ... (and here comes the catch) ... while she's well lit, she's very softly lit by an overcast sky with light from all over.

Here are the originals the side-by-side is cropped from:

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Man Hanging Upside Down In Dense Foilage

http://cnnnancygrace.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/00611.jpg

The disconnected-looking reddish patch circled is her hair. This is more obvious if you brighten the picture to see the rest of it. Except for cropping and circling there are no alterations from the originals.



What it all means, I still don't know. I'm leaning toward hanger = dancer but there are mismatches. Hanger is female, or at least has far-from-trivial pectoral development. Definite injuries. Very unsure whether that's a live backbend or some kind of post-mortem posing.

Going to try taking some time away again and see what I think in another few weeks. Didn't change my mind about much but did notice a bunch of new details this time.