Quotes RS&BBM
All good questions, my fellow sleuthers. And I don't have many good answers... just more questions. Here is the thing. I do
not dispute the
cause of death finding, although I still wonder about what drugs, toxins, poisons, etc. might not be detectable three days post mortem in the baking heat and sun. So IMO there may be a contributing factor to their demise - or at the least their decision making abilities that day. Is there is a forensic toxicologist among us who could help tease that out?
If you haven't yet read the Audubon article I posted long ago about
Carbofuran - a highly potent lethal pesticide - and its rampant use by grow ops, please do.
This Brutal Pesticide Creates a 'Circle of Death.' So Why Is It Making a Comeback?
"Often the teams encounter Gatorade bottles filled with carbofuran and tuna tins stuffed with carbofuran-tainted meat. The labels on jugs of chemical are frequently in Spanish, indicating they were smuggled from Mexico. Gabriel questions the growers on site, after they’ve been arrested, and some have admitted to using carbofuran to keep animals from rampaging their camps because, they say, it worked great for getting rid of jaguars preying on livestock back home in Mexico.
The scientists’ bold field work is paying off, if only to document a compounding problem. In 2013 they discovered carbofuran at 20 percent of the raided sites. Just six years later it’s been found at more than 80 percent of them. Gabriel suspects the growers are increasingly using carbofuran not just because of its potency with animals, but also with law enforcement: Media outlets have reported officers exposed to the chemical being hospitalized for nausea, blurry vision, and migraines."
So yes, possible accidental exposure to a pesticide such as Carbofuran - Oski eating a baited food trap for instance, or a spray trap got one or more of the family if they went off trail to explore something or for a bio break. This would have been a contributing factor for sure, even if not detectible post mortem. And are there in fact grow ops near where the family was? Well, of course I don't know. And while I certainly cannot quote social media content as fact, there is noise out there about just this.
What I also wonder about still is the
manner of death, which, although not clearly stated by the Sheriff last Thursday, is presumably 'accidental'. But don't you think death by heat stroke could be the perfect crime? It would take a psychopath to do such a thing, but it is plausible. Death marches are an effective and cruel devise. Or again, could they have been intentionally exposed to a poison, toxin, or drug that rendered them incapacitated or dead but not detectible at their autopsies?
But then of course, the question is
why would someone or criminals due such a thing. Certainly it would not be robbery and it is likely not a crime of convenience.
Here is where the darker partitions of my mind go when I let it try to explore this question:
- Revenge: Did JG or EC report to the Sheriff any information about a criminal element that might have led to the huge drug bust in the county five days earlier?
- Defense: Did JG or EC see something incriminating that day or sometime prior that they were not supposed to see and this was the opportunity to silence them?
I am not suggesting any of this did happen because there are few if any facts to suggest this. But taken in its totality, Mariposa County is not a bucolic, suburban community by any stretch of the imagination. It is a remote, poor, rural county with cheap real estate and a very dark history of crime that appears to drift into the present.
All this is my way of trying to answer:
Why did a family apparently outfitted and prepared for a short stroll that morning, end up attempting an 8 mile hike in steep terrain in 107-109 degrees with two very vulnerable dependents? Occom's Razer says "because they wanted to". But I wonder if that's true.
