On Wednesday, Mr. Baden said Mr. Epstein had “three fractures in the hyoid bone, the thyroid cartilage.” He said those injures were “very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation — homicidal strangulation.”
The autopsy also showed Mr. Epstein had several bones broken in his neck. But the city medical examiner said Mr. Epstein’s death was “hanging” and the manner was “suicide.”
Before that determination was made public, an article in The Washington Post noted Mr. Epstein’s injuries included a broken hyoid bone, an injury that could have been a sign of strangulation, as well as suicide by hanging.
The article helped fuel conspiracy theories that speculated Mr. Epstein may have been murdered in order to prevent him from ensnaring his coterie of rich and powerful friends into his legal woes.
At the time, several medical officials cautioned against relying solely on the broken hyoid as evidence of strangulation. “It’s not a slam dunk,” Marcella Sorg, a forensic anthropologist, said in an interview. She said a broken hyoid is “a sign of neck trauma” that can occur in both strangulation and hanging cases.
Dr. Burton Bentley II, the head of Elite Medical Experts, a consulting firm based in Arizona, echoed that skepticism. “It’s not a hundred percent,” he said. “It’s not even going to get us to ninety.”
The death led to several investigations into how a high-profile inmate apparently killed himself just weeks after he was placed on suicide watch after a failed attempt to take his own life.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-homicide-autopsy-michael-baden.html
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