8 Die in Crash on Taconic State Parkway #2

Status
Not open for further replies.
She wasn't there to get the results; therefore, she was able to appear on camera claiming Ruskin was holding out on them and seem completely truthful.

Well, it wasn't truthful if she was told to stay home while she knew Dan was going to get the results. She would know that the results had been given to Dan and therefore could not truthfully say that Ruskin was keeping them in the dark.
 
Well, it wasn't truthful if she was told to stay home while she knew Dan was going to get the results. She would know that the results had been given to Dan and therefore could not truthfully say that Ruskin was keeping them in the dark.

On camera, she said she was confused about it as she knew they met but she (allegedly) wasn't provided with the results. I think she was being truthful when she said she was confused.
 
The reautopsy was part of Ruskin's investigation, and he claims they didn't have the money to go through with it. Aunt Jay says they couldn't afford to pay the 10,000 and then 30,000 bills associated with the investigation. Ruskin says specifically in the article that they couldn't pay for the reautopsy.

Danny, Barbera, and the filmmakers were in collusion to make Ruskin look bad claiming that he never shared the results with Barbera or the Schuler family when in fact he met with everyone but Aunt Jay (who was told to stay home!) and went to the papers. The fact that the reanalysis matched the original results was publicly reported in the news a year ago.

The filmmakers text-over that Danny was collecting permissions isn't credible as to the real reason why the reautopsy wasn't done (unless if it means collecting the permission of a licensed coroner who is waiting for a signed sealed contract and $$).

I believe the talk of reautopsy is just noise at this point because Danny doesn't want to accept the BAC results and can't squeeze the money out of the Schuler family (who doesn't have it per Aunt Jay), and the filmmakers are out of there.

IMHO, Ruskin is the only one telling the truth at this point except for Aunt Jay, who was deliberately kept in the dark.

If your theory was correct, it would have appeared in the documentary or Danny would have been screaming to the papers (e.g., the Hance family preventing the exhumation).

Believe what you want, but I'm not buying it. We will have to agree to disagree.

We can agree to disagree, but we can't agree to just make up stuff.

I'm sure you're right that at some point, money was an issue in re the exhumation.

Nonetheless, during the first part of the documentary, there is clearly an expectation that the exhumation will take place (Ruskin or no). Since there is no suggestion that Dan or Jackie have won the lottery, I think it's reasonable to assume they are expecting the filmmakers to pay for the exhumation. That is also what countless internet sources reported in 2010. (For some reason, you think it is very important to deny this; I have no idea why. You don't offer a reasonable alternative that conforms to the timeline of events.)

Near the end of the doc, we are told that Dan wasn't able to obtain the "necessary permissions" for the exhumation. (This is according to not just my memory, but that of several other posters here.) "Necessary permissions" does not mean "needed cash" in any version of English with which I am familiar.

There was some legal reason why Dan could not have his wife exhumed. To date, neither of us has found an explanation for this.
 
We can agree to disagree, but we can't agree to just make up stuff.

I'm sure you're right that at some point, money was an issue in re the exhumation.

Nonetheless, during the first part of the documentary, there is clearly an expectation that the exhumation will take place (Ruskin or no). Since there is no suggestion that Dan or Jackie have won the lottery, I think it's reasonable to assume they are expecting the filmmakers to pay for the exhumation. That is also what countless internet sources reported in 2010. (For some reason, you think it is very important to deny this; I have no idea why. You don't offer a reasonable alternative that conforms to the timeline of events.)

Near the end of the doc, we are told that Dan wasn't able to obtain the "necessary permissions" for the exhumation. (This is according to not just my memory, but that of several other posters here.) "Necessary permissions" does not mean "needed cash" in any version of English with which I am familiar.

There was some legal reason why Dan could not have his wife exhumed. To date, neither of us has found an explanation for this.

I'm not making up stuff. I provided a news article as my source. The news article claims that the purpose of the documentary to film the exhumation. The filmmakers are quoted denying any connection to an exhumation. In denying that connection, they are not promising we will see it in their film.

The film itself is something of a mockumentary, considering all the drama over the paid for but unshared results. Because they're not married to the truth, IMHO, any text about "permissions" is suspect.

If there are any permissions missing, I suspect it is the signature of the licensed medical examiner hired to do the reautopsy.

I think you're making it up by assuming its a legal reason. It could be any type of permission or no permission at all.
 
http://nymag.com/news/features/62043/index2.html

Not sure if this article has been posted before, but I find it interesting.

"Danny told the police she smoked once in a while, but Jay knew better. She liked pot and smoked it 'on a regular basis,' the police understood from their interviews."

"Her best friend, Christine, like most of her friends, was surprised to learn about her affection for marijuana; that didn’t fit with the super-responsible Diane they knew."

"'And Diane liked to honk a horn. “I never beep my horn,” Christine told me, and that would drive Diane nuts. “If we were driving and someone cut me off or was in front of us on a cell phone, she would reach over and honk my horn. She’d say, ‘I bet you didn’t even know that worked.’ ”

I'm reading the comments section of this article and see a couple of interesting theories there. All just speculation but interesting.
 
I'm not making up stuff. I provided a news article as my source. The news article claims that the purpose of the documentary to film the exhumation. The filmmakers are quoted denying any connection to an exhumation. In denying that connection, they are not promising we will see it in their film.

The film itself is something of a mockumentary, considering all the drama over the paid for but unshared results. Because they're not married to the truth, IMHO, any text about "permissions" is suspect.

If there are any permissions missing, I suspect it is the signature of the licensed medical examiner hired to do the reautopsy.

I think you're making it up by assuming its a legal reason. It could be any type of permission or no permission at all.

I said "WE" can't make up stuff. It wasn't a claim that you had done so.

My point is that you and I find different implications in the same article; those disputed implications are not proof of your scenario or mine.

The film is not a "mockumentary." That is a gross misuse of the term. The documentary, like all documentaries, is edited to tell a story. It is no more perfectly "objective" than any other documentary, but that doesn't mean it is fiction.

I repeat: there was no reason to mention the lack of "necessary permissions" if there was no money to exhume and re-autopsy. Dan Schuler does not appear to have had the money, so who did? One entity I know of that might have the money is the company making the film. (Another possibility is the life insurance held by Barbera at the time; we now know those funds were misappropriated, but I don't know that was known at the time of the article.)

The quote to which you point merely states that the film company didn't order the exhumation. This tells us nothing because legally the company had no standing to do so.

You extrapolate from that remark that the film company never intended to fund the exhumation, but that is not what is said.

***

Here's a nice quote from the article that YOU cite:

"The New York Post reported that the movie deal would net Schuler $100,000 that he would use to support his 6-year-old son, the sole survivor of the crash."

"Net" implies that the $100,000 was not the GROSS money to be received by Schuler; the total amount was something higher and may have included the cost of the exhumation. May. This statement doesn't prove my position, but it does cast doubt on yours.
 
***

Here's a nice quote from the article that YOU cite:

"The New York Post reported that the movie deal would net Schuler $100,000 that he would use to support his 6-year-old son, the sole survivor of the crash."

"Net" implies that the $100,000 was not the GROSS money to be received by Schuler; the total amount was something higher and may have included the cost of the exhumation. May. This statement doesn't prove my position, but it does cast doubt on yours.

I don't agree with your interpretation of the quote above. Here's an alternative dictionary definition for the word net that has nothing to do with the word "gross"

verb (used with object)
6.
to gain or produce as clear profit.

This is really getting silly. I don't agree with you, so we will have to agree to disagree.
 
SouthCityMom said:
I also, if I were a betting woman, think Barbara has told the family to NOT have another autopsy done. I can't see an attorney wanting that in this case unless he KNEW the results would be different from the results obtained by police professionals in a state of the art lab. When their private test came back as "LOADED," that couldn't be kept a secret. Again, it's better to plant the idea in the public's mind that the test might be faulty - and let that idea simmer and stew - than to actually have the darned thing done again and reinforce the first result.


From the first thread on this case. I think she makes a good point and that the second autopsy may never have been seriously pursued.
 
I love you both :) Glad to see tolerance for difference of position on this case.

I've followed this case closely, see, I am an alcoholic. Although, I can't see myself doing what Diane did. My honest opinion, is that she was a drinker, just hid it real good. I'm positive her family knew something wasn't right with her, because you can only hide it so long. That's why Warren freaked out and told her to stay put. As an aside, I feel so much anguish for Warren and Jackie, losing all their children.

She went too far that day. That's all there is to it. We can look for answers all day long, but reasoning left her mind that day, and before she knew it she was loaded and the horrific accident happened.

All IMO. :sick:
 
I love you both :) Glad to see tolerance for difference of position on this case.

I've followed this case closely, see, I am an alcoholic. Although, I can't see myself doing what Diane did. My honest opinion, is that she was a drinker, just hid it real good. I'm positive her family knew something wasn't right with her, because you can only hide it so long. That's why Warren freaked out and told her to stay put. As an aside, I feel so much anguish for Warren and Jackie, losing all their children.

She went too far that day. That's all there is to it. We can look for answers all day long, but reasoning left her mind that day, and before she knew it she was loaded and the horrific accident happened.

All IMO. :sick:

I suspect you may be right. And Dan and his sister-in-law may be in denial precisely BECAUSE they suspected there was a problem and did nothing to stop it. But that makes them no less sympathetic in my eyes. They wouldn't be the first or last human beings to look the other way and hope for the best.

Thank you for sharing your personal details. I hope you get whatever help you need.
 
I love you both :) Glad to see tolerance for difference of position on this case.

I've followed this case closely, see, I am an alcoholic. Although, I can't see myself doing what Diane did. My honest opinion, is that she was a drinker, just hid it real good. I'm positive her family knew something wasn't right with her, because you can only hide it so long. That's why Warren freaked out and told her to stay put. As an aside, I feel so much anguish for Warren and Jackie, losing all their children.

She went too far that day. That's all there is to it. We can look for answers all day long, but reasoning left her mind that day, and before she knew it she was loaded and the horrific accident happened.

All IMO. :sick:


I was trying to think through how this would have happened if she was an alcoholic (e.g., seriously addicted, not suicidal). Starting from the assumption that she didn't start out intending for this to happen, I wonder if the coffee was supposed to be to drink in the car and the loaded OJ was intended to be consumed later after the girls were dropped off at home? If she really was secretive about her drinking, she could have hidden it in that OJ cup. If she waited to drink the loaded OJ until she got home, she could have gotten totally wasted and gone to bed saying she had a headache or toothache or whatever excuse would have made Dan none the wiser. I think that car ride would have been terribly loud...not to blame the kids as it's normal and expected..but I have driven my kids and their cousins, and after three kids the noise goes up exponentially with every additional kid. I think she took a sip to take the edge off...and then another and another...and simply lost track of how much she had drunk of a VERY potent cocktail....and then she lost even more inhibition and consumed more and smoked pot as well (maybe at the rest stop)? And then as her BAC climbed higher, she went into a blackout and turned the wrong way onto the expressway for the final couple of miles, hands clenched at 10 and 2, eyes fixed ahead but nobody home upstairs.

Could this have happened this way?
 
I was trying to think through how this would have happened if she was an alcoholic (e.g., seriously addicted, not suicidal). Starting from the assumption that she didn't start out intending for this to happen, I wonder if the coffee was supposed to be to drink in the car and the loaded OJ was intended to be consumed later after the girls were dropped off at home?..
I've wondered this, too. Assuming it wasn't on purpose, what the heck made her drink with the kids in the car? Maybe her drinking was escalating. Maybe she'd had more than usual during the camping trip and it was giving her more of a headache/hangover than usual. Maybe she was afraid someone would get on her case about her drinking if she said her head hurt too much to drive the kids home? Then she decided to start drinking some more to try to help the pain? I don't know. I just can't imagine how she could think she could drink (and smoke pot) to that extent and be able to hide it and get the kids home intact.

Had she driven all the kids home from camping trips previously? I don't remember this being mentioned.

I just still can't understand how she could drink that much. Enough to be almost to the point of alcohol poisoning, with more still in her stomach to be digested. That's severe, even assuming she just "lost track." I can't understand it. It's like she was pushing herself to the limit.
 
Could this have happened this way?

Certainly. And I'd add into that scenario the strong possibility of being embarrassed or angry about Warren coming to get her (ie, her failing at something and ceding control) and being determined to finish the drive.

But the sheer volume of alcohol -- on top of marijuana -- is troubling. That's really getting "carried away."

That's what I find ironic/dumb about the Dominic Barbara PR blitz. If she was not a drinker, not an alcoholic, how in the world did she ingest that much? And please don't insult my intelligence further with the diabetes or stroke nonsense. If she wasn't a drinker, there had to be a huge trigger that day/weekend.

I still lean slightly toward the theory of her going into a rage and choosing to get wasted and, as hard as it is to wrap your mind around, deliberately crashing. It's the theory with the fewest holes, imo.
 
Certainly. And I'd add into that scenario the strong possibility of being embarrassed or angry about Warren coming to get her (ie, her failing at something and ceding control) and being determined to finish the drive.

But the sheer volume of alcohol -- on top of marijuana -- is troubling. That's really getting "carried away."

That's what I find ironic/dumb about the Dominic Barbara PR blitz. If she was not a drinker, not an alcoholic, how in the world did she ingest that much? And please don't insult my intelligence further with the diabetes or stroke nonsense. If she wasn't a drinker, there had to be a huge trigger that day/weekend.

I still lean slightly toward the theory of her going into a rage and choosing to get wasted and, as hard as it is to wrap your mind around, deliberately crashing. It's the theory with the fewest holes, imo.

I can't really disagree with you...It's much easier to make a care for intentional and/or rage-induced suicide. It would have to be a really anomalous situation for her to have set out with the best intentions to get those kids home safely and ended up this intoxicated and out of control.
 
I can't really disagree with you...It's much easier to make a care for intentional and/or rage-induced suicide. It would have to be a really anomalous situation for her to have set out with the best intentions to get those kids home safely and ended up this intoxicated and out of control.

True, which is the only reason I think it's at least possible that she was suffering such severe pain (from a tooth or other source) that she meant to anesthetize a little and ended up anesthetizing a lot. But I doubt that would happen if she didn't already have some habit of drinking to cope.

I know it wouldn't occur to me to drink because I had a toothache. Search frantically for a drugstore, maybe, but not drink or even smoke dope.
 
It just still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It just doesn't make sense, even if she had the worst toothache or headache ever, that she would automatically think to use vodka and marijuana, which she just happened to have in the car with her, even though Dan says she almost never used either one. If the pain was so bad that she couldn't function and was considering using mind-altering substances while driving, she should have pulled over and called 911 before even thinking about taking the first drop and proceeding to get so intoxicated that she couldn't see.

I don't know the route, but I have read comments on other sites that there are grocery stores and other spots along it where she should have been able to get an OTC painkiller and places where she and the kids would have been safe while they waited for someone to come get them. ???

Another weird thing is that she didn't appear intoxicated OR in terrible pain in the video at McDonald's or the gas station. So weird. If she was having a stroke as Dan claims, she didn't seem to have any neuro symptoms at that point.
 
It just still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It just doesn't make sense, even if she had the worst toothache or headache ever, that she would automatically think to use vodka and marijuana, which she just happened to have in the car with her, even though Dan says she almost never used either one. If the pain was so bad that she couldn't function and was considering using mind-altering substances while driving, she should have pulled over and called 911 before even thinking about taking the first drop and proceeding to get so intoxicated that she couldn't see.

I don't know the route, but I have read comments on other sites that there are grocery stores and other spots along it where she should have been able to get an OTC painkiller and places where she and the kids would have been safe while they waited for someone to come get them. ???

Another weird thing is that she didn't appear intoxicated OR in terrible pain in the video at McDonald's or the gas station. So weird. If she was having a stroke as Dan claims, she didn't seem to have any neuro symptoms at that point.

I agree and I didn't express myself very clearly in my previous post.

What I was trying to say was I think it must have taken both (a) a history of using alcohol and pot to cope; and (b) a specific trigger that caused Diane to waaaaaaay overdo it on the morning of the crash.

The specific trigger could have been an emotional event, such as a quarrel with Dan (to be clear: I have no proof of such a quarrel); or a physical event, such as extreme pain or, I suppose, an event such as a stroke (the autopsy showed no proof of any such pain or judgment-altering event, but I don't know what all the coroner was looking for).

But to respond to either by drinking/smoking that much, I think Diane must have already had the habit. Otherwise, she would have been looking for Exedrin Migraine, not reaching for a bottle of vodka.

As I've said, I feel great sympathy for Dan and Jay, but I do think they have been in denial about Diane's daily alcohol consumption.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
75
Guests online
901
Total visitors
976

Forum statistics

Threads
589,925
Messages
17,927,731
Members
228,002
Latest member
zipperoni
Back
Top