ElleElle
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Apparently, some soldiers have smelled burning bodies and it is not a scent that would go unnoticed. So, NO ONE can smell a body burning behind SAs trailer?
The Bonfire
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If you look at it logically it's very clear who did it!- Latest: SweetDreamsAreMadeOfCheez
Apparently, some soldiers have smelled burning bodies and it is not a scent that would go unnoticed. So, NO ONE can smell a body burning behind SAs trailer?
Nathan Middleton. He burned the body three or more days, non-stop, and the vast majority of her remains were found, including entire bones.
missy1974
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could argue that the tires masked the smell.... but then I go back to those first interviews.... if there was a huge fire with tires that night... even if they didn't see it, you would smell it IMO. I live right smack in the middle of a city of 33,000... when a farmer outside of town burns tires.... we ALL smell it! LOL
There's a lot of relevant info in the thread called "Bones" that intertwines with the Bonfire subject. I'm only about half-way through that thread, as I keep going off to check links in there, and I'm only researching this in small chunks each day -- it's a very addictive case with so many things to think about and so few good answers that came up in the trial info presented in the series.
So far I think I've learned that there were three places with bones found: the quarry, the Janda's 'burn thing' (I've forgotten the word?) and the pit outside Avery's trailer...though there are also suggestions that some bones were scattered around the pit?
The temperature to get roughly that state of cremains would be around 1400 to 2000 celsius for about five+ hours?
There were allegedly about five tires in the burn pit bonfire (judging from the steel parts leftover) and this is theorized (thread on reddit with people who said they had qualifications in this aspect of anthropology and fires) to not be enough to get a high enough temperature for these results.
It was an open, outside fire, possibly adding to the difficulty of reaching those temperatures in a 'bonfire' which just has random junk and a few tires. As an aside, I remember seeing a TV documentary that discussed early human cremation of the dead and a wood-based cremation pyre has to be huge....this burn pit was supposed to be the size of a dining table (in area).
Then we have the difficulty of, if it does reach high enough temperatures, how do you get close enough for going into the fire and breaking up the bones? It would take time for that temperature to cool down, yet we supposedly have three known sites where the remains turned up.
Then we have the problem of knowing which is the actual burn site, and the extra query of whether there's an additional unknown site?
The bones, according to the forensic anthropologist who did study the remains after they'd been removed from the site, said that there was no odor (or residue) of rubber on the bones...an odor which I think most people would imagine would be insidiously permeating anything in the same fire? And the tires all seem to be agreed by all sources to have been present on the bonfire. Yet, according to the same expert's testimony, the bone fragments did seem entangled with the steel remnants of the tires, and actually needed physically 'prising' from the steel parts. But the expert couldn't say for sure if that was because both body and tires were burned together or whether they were mixed together post-cremation/bonfire.
The overarching problem that permeates all of these questions is the extremely wanting evidence-gathering process and the documentation of that (photographs of the burn pit prior to excavation seem to be non-existent, the bones weren't removed with the oversight of a forensic anthropologist, etc).
On the other side, we do have the difficulty of a third party accessing that property unseen to dump the remains. The coincidence that they'd have found this recently used burn pit, used on the say of Miss Halbach's disappearance, no less! This could be explained, though, if the person who did this (IF it wasn't SA) wasn't an unusual visitor to the scrapyard and they went there when he was out, maybe when Barb Janda and her son were out at work, Brendan at school, etc?
The problem I am having with all of this is that I am left with some important questions at the end of the series. Where was Teresa killed? How did it all play out? I think that when the police got Brendan's [false] confession of how it all went down that they assumed they'd got a rational narrative (or they created one out of the confession and the existing circumstantial evidence they'd collected). But without that confession, we don't have an explanation for how everything played out and where it all took place...without that, it's very hard to say for certain, with no doubts whatsoever, that it was definitely SA who was responsible and to just ignore the missing answers.
I would really like to see everything, on all the various topics, laid out similarly to how I've done in the first half of this post, but with links and quotes, and see what fits together and what does, like a jigsaw puzzle, because there has to be a coherent picture of what happened to Teresa, and so much of that is obscured right now.
So far I think I've learned that there were three places with bones found: the quarry, the Janda's 'burn thing' (I've forgotten the word?) and the pit outside Avery's trailer...though there are also suggestions that some bones were scattered around the pit?
The temperature to get roughly that state of cremains would be around 1400 to 2000 celsius for about five+ hours?
There were allegedly about five tires in the burn pit bonfire (judging from the steel parts leftover) and this is theorized (thread on reddit with people who said they had qualifications in this aspect of anthropology and fires) to not be enough to get a high enough temperature for these results.
It was an open, outside fire, possibly adding to the difficulty of reaching those temperatures in a 'bonfire' which just has random junk and a few tires. As an aside, I remember seeing a TV documentary that discussed early human cremation of the dead and a wood-based cremation pyre has to be huge....this burn pit was supposed to be the size of a dining table (in area).
Then we have the difficulty of, if it does reach high enough temperatures, how do you get close enough for going into the fire and breaking up the bones? It would take time for that temperature to cool down, yet we supposedly have three known sites where the remains turned up.
Then we have the problem of knowing which is the actual burn site, and the extra query of whether there's an additional unknown site?
The bones, according to the forensic anthropologist who did study the remains after they'd been removed from the site, said that there was no odor (or residue) of rubber on the bones...an odor which I think most people would imagine would be insidiously permeating anything in the same fire? And the tires all seem to be agreed by all sources to have been present on the bonfire. Yet, according to the same expert's testimony, the bone fragments did seem entangled with the steel remnants of the tires, and actually needed physically 'prising' from the steel parts. But the expert couldn't say for sure if that was because both body and tires were burned together or whether they were mixed together post-cremation/bonfire.
The overarching problem that permeates all of these questions is the extremely wanting evidence-gathering process and the documentation of that (photographs of the burn pit prior to excavation seem to be non-existent, the bones weren't removed with the oversight of a forensic anthropologist, etc).
On the other side, we do have the difficulty of a third party accessing that property unseen to dump the remains. The coincidence that they'd have found this recently used burn pit, used on the say of Miss Halbach's disappearance, no less! This could be explained, though, if the person who did this (IF it wasn't SA) wasn't an unusual visitor to the scrapyard and they went there when he was out, maybe when Barb Janda and her son were out at work, Brendan at school, etc?
The problem I am having with all of this is that I am left with some important questions at the end of the series. Where was Teresa killed? How did it all play out? I think that when the police got Brendan's [false] confession of how it all went down that they assumed they'd got a rational narrative (or they created one out of the confession and the existing circumstantial evidence they'd collected). But without that confession, we don't have an explanation for how everything played out and where it all took place...without that, it's very hard to say for certain, with no doubts whatsoever, that it was definitely SA who was responsible and to just ignore the missing answers.
I would really like to see everything, on all the various topics, laid out similarly to how I've done in the first half of this post, but with links and quotes, and see what fits together and what does, like a jigsaw puzzle, because there has to be a coherent picture of what happened to Teresa, and so much of that is obscured right now.
missy1974
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Hi Amonet 
Since you are reading about the bones/bonfire... you might be interested in this:
This is a Canadian podcast. They interviewed Dr. Fairgrieve, he is the anthropologist that testified for the defense. The 2 interviewing... are married....he's a defense lawyer, she was a prosecutor... and her Mom was a Supreme Court judge in Canada.
http://www.michaelspratt.com/poadcas...ott-fairgrieve
I listened to it last night, it touched on some of the things you mentioned. You mentioned the smell of the tires on the bones, and I remember reading the defense asked Dr. Eisenberg about it too and I don't think she noticed any smell. Dr. Fairgrieve talked about finding bones that you could "smell" the accelerant on them and how they would extract that by by putting the bones in a sealed container or whatever and then test the gases (paraphrasing lol). It was a very interesting conversation.
I summarized ... and added some comments lol at post 1012 http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...ream-new-documentary-on-Steven-Avery-4/page68
Since you are reading about the bones/bonfire... you might be interested in this:This is a Canadian podcast. They interviewed Dr. Fairgrieve, he is the anthropologist that testified for the defense. The 2 interviewing... are married....he's a defense lawyer, she was a prosecutor... and her Mom was a Supreme Court judge in Canada.
http://www.michaelspratt.com/poadcas...ott-fairgrieve
I listened to it last night, it touched on some of the things you mentioned. You mentioned the smell of the tires on the bones, and I remember reading the defense asked Dr. Eisenberg about it too and I don't think she noticed any smell. Dr. Fairgrieve talked about finding bones that you could "smell" the accelerant on them and how they would extract that by by putting the bones in a sealed container or whatever and then test the gases (paraphrasing lol). It was a very interesting conversation.
I summarized ... and added some comments lol at post 1012 http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...ream-new-documentary-on-Steven-Avery-4/page68
dexter75
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mommylicious
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But say the body was burned at the quarry (have we ever heard one way or the other that there was evidence of a fire at the quarry vs just a dump site?)... Then someone tended that fire for how many hours unnoticed? Especially, likely, without the added tires as accelerant? I'm not 100% that it was SA but the simplest answer seems to be that she was burned in the fire pit with the tires, etc both adding to the temp and covering the smell rather than someone tending a fire at the quarry for however long and then transporting the bones, sneakily, to the pit where SA just happened to have a bonfire the night TH went missing.
I know a pelvic bone was purported to have been found in the quarry. Was it ever actually tested or just assumed to be hers?
I know a pelvic bone was purported to have been found in the quarry. Was it ever actually tested or just assumed to be hers?
missy1974
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Without going back to the transcripts... I think there were other burned bones at the quarry, thought to be not human, I think there was other not burned bones there, thought to be not human. The presence of other non-human burned bones... maybe there was a fire there? Or were they moved there too? (As I'm typing this... I wonder... where did Bobby dispose of the bones from the roadkill deer that he had hanging in his garage?)
The pelvic bones that were found, were unable to be tested, but the anthropologist, Dr. Eisenberg, concluded that they were more than likely human, something to do with the joint and it being consistent with a human hip joint. The defense anthropologist, Dr. Fairgrieve, I think, agreed, that they were human pelvic bones.
As far as I know.. there are no pictures... no anthropologist or expert went to the quarry site either, so we have few details about any of the potential burn sites, including the burn pit. I don't think the bones were able to be tested for DNA, but a piece of muscle tissue provided a partial profile that matched TH.
dexter75
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What really gets me going, about the bonfire is in Steve's first interview on 11/9/2005 he says he never had a bonfire, it had been about 2 weeks or so.
In fact,
in every person interviewed, their INITIAL interviews, there was NO bonfire. ( Sorry, as I think this may have been brought up before )
It is repeated for a while, there is NO bonfire, for at least a week or two prior to 10/31. ( It has been a couple weeks since trash/tires were burned in ALL initial interviews. )
Slowly, the interviews change. A bonfire appears.
These CHANGES come after Branden mentions in his FIRST interview, pulled from school, that they were going to have a bonfire on 10/31.
After this, EVERYONE'S story changes.
There WAS a fire. The flames were THIS tall. I saw Steve watching the fire, etc.
Even Steve himself, goes from being interviewed more than once, saying NO FIRE on 10/31 to months later talking with his mom ( assuming his dates were off? or believing there was a fire? ) about the bonfire on 10/31.
These initial interviews, were when he was taken in on the convicted felon/weapon charge. FYI
It's difficult to get past this, IMO.
In fact,
in every person interviewed, their INITIAL interviews, there was NO bonfire. ( Sorry, as I think this may have been brought up before )
It is repeated for a while, there is NO bonfire, for at least a week or two prior to 10/31. ( It has been a couple weeks since trash/tires were burned in ALL initial interviews. )
Slowly, the interviews change. A bonfire appears.
These CHANGES come after Branden mentions in his FIRST interview, pulled from school, that they were going to have a bonfire on 10/31.
After this, EVERYONE'S story changes.
There WAS a fire. The flames were THIS tall. I saw Steve watching the fire, etc.
Even Steve himself, goes from being interviewed more than once, saying NO FIRE on 10/31 to months later talking with his mom ( assuming his dates were off? or believing there was a fire? ) about the bonfire on 10/31.
These initial interviews, were when he was taken in on the convicted felon/weapon charge. FYI
It's difficult to get past this, IMO.
dexter75
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I think there were other bones too
Looking at the tires, well, steel belts
To me, could someone have placed them there?
Do they look like they were there, intertwined and burned for hours, with the bones? Just curious what anyone thought.
I really wish they'd have had experts, coroner, a TEAM there ( quarry ) or EVERY WHERE evidence was found. Photos, documentation, etc. would have been nice.
For EVERY person involved.
JMO
Looking at the tires, well, steel belts
To me, could someone have placed them there?
Do they look like they were there, intertwined and burned for hours, with the bones? Just curious what anyone thought.
I really wish they'd have had experts, coroner, a TEAM there ( quarry ) or EVERY WHERE evidence was found. Photos, documentation, etc. would have been nice.
For EVERY person involved.
JMO
Re: the statistics on burn times and temperatures required to reduce a human body to the condition in which TH was found.
It strikes me that everything I've read and found online is focused on burning an intact body.
I wonder what the effect would be if the body were dismembered first.
It would seem logical that the time and temperature would be less in that instance.
I'm not stating as a fact that this was the case, however the original 2005 thread has links to several articles which refer to the dismemberment of the body.
Sadly, with the passing of time none of those are active any longer.
Given that remains were found in two or three locations (still can't quite make sense of the quarry find) there had to have been some breaking up of the body either before, during or after the burning - no matter where you believe it took place.
It strikes me that everything I've read and found online is focused on burning an intact body.
I wonder what the effect would be if the body were dismembered first.
It would seem logical that the time and temperature would be less in that instance.
I'm not stating as a fact that this was the case, however the original 2005 thread has links to several articles which refer to the dismemberment of the body.
Sadly, with the passing of time none of those are active any longer.
Given that remains were found in two or three locations (still can't quite make sense of the quarry find) there had to have been some breaking up of the body either before, during or after the burning - no matter where you believe it took place.
missy1974
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I'm on my first coffee.... so I could be wrong, but IIRC the anthropologist Dr. Eisenberg, testified that she didn't believe that the body was dismembered and then burned separately in different area's... I think her reasoning was because the bones in the barrel were not from one limb... they were from different parts of the body (what she could identify) I don't think Dr. Fairgrieve, the defense anthropologist, disagreed.
The pelvic bones were in the quarry.
I found this picture on reddit yesterday.... It is from a newscast, and I wonder if it is the quarry. Can see the blackened burn area. Interesting.
The pelvic bones were in the quarry.
I found this picture on reddit yesterday.... It is from a newscast, and I wonder if it is the quarry. Can see the blackened burn area. Interesting.
BigCityAccountant
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It is weird that nobody mentioned it at first---however I believe I read that LE got the "gotcha" moment when SA was talking to Barb from prison and he mentioned the bonfire.
BigCityAccountant
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Missy is probably a better one to answer this...but...I recall reading that there were more found....I think only 1 in the fire pit. I believe the others may have been close by, but not in the pit.
missy1974
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no...that's not what happened LOL On here, websleuths.... posters that refuse to discuss the case said to the one's questioning the fire.....BUT HE SAID IT TO BARB in whatever dang episode on the phone... which was months later. It was a "gotcha" on websleuths (or what some posters thought LOL) but not in the case.
I'm not going to go into it all over again.... but I do seriously question whether there was a fire that night. The power of suggestion, the ability to plant false memories, etc. I don't care what they said months later... if the cops are sitting there saying but 5 other people seen it that night... you start to question yourself, then agree, well shoot, it must have been that night. I posted a link yesterday in the discussion thread... it was a really good question/answer on reddit from a forensic psychologist IIRC and she did a study and discussed false memories. It was a really interesting read! I think she got 70% of her study group to admit to a falsely planted memory of a crime they never committed. It was very interesting, and her participants had a higher IQ of 70 too.
missy1974
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I think there was 6 ... so 5 missing. They did find a zipper with YYK on it.
As for the why..... my guess? if they found the original burn site, they would probably find them... along with the bullets that went into her head and probably did not exit. IMO
Also... what about her SET of keys? what about her purse? if not a purse... what about a wallet? (they have zippers/buttons, etc too) Those things are still missing I think.
Sustained
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Most adults with an IQ over 70 couldn't tell you what they were wearing a week ago or what they had for lunch.
missy1974
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I'm looking for the info on the rivets lol think it might be in the bones thread.... the bonfire/bones information crossed over lots *sigh*
And I agree Sustained... I'm not sure I could tell you everything I did last week. Maybe if it was Halloween, but only because I have kids and I hand out candy, etc. I get the feeling that Halloween was probably just another day at the salvage yard.
And I agree Sustained... I'm not sure I could tell you everything I did last week. Maybe if it was Halloween, but only because I have kids and I hand out candy, etc. I get the feeling that Halloween was probably just another day at the salvage yard.
missy1974
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someone captured a screenshot from a video that aired on Nov 5th on nbc26 news. I expected the burn area to be darker, no?
here is the video
[video=youtube;m5oZgZQwoiM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5oZgZQwoiM[/video]
also interesting to add from twitter:
Yancey McGillicuddy ‏@YanceyMc Jan 11
@NBC26 guys, do you have HD of this footage & recorded time info - :30 section might reveal vehicle if there?
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@YanceyMc no HD. We believe it was recorded in early Nov. 2005 and aired Nov 5, 2005. (nov 5th is the day the RAV4 was found)
here is the video
[video=youtube;m5oZgZQwoiM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5oZgZQwoiM[/video]
also interesting to add from twitter:
Yancey McGillicuddy ‏@YanceyMc Jan 11
@NBC26 guys, do you have HD of this footage & recorded time info - :30 section might reveal vehicle if there?
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NBC26 NewsVerified account
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@YanceyMc no HD. We believe it was recorded in early Nov. 2005 and aired Nov 5, 2005. (nov 5th is the day the RAV4 was found)