[Vedderman]

25 year old woman hanged herself in her rented room in Cambodia this week. She stood on a bucket and used a black cloth belt tied around the vent grate as a noose. Allegedly it was because her boyfriend had refused her marriage proposal and broken up with her.

The photo array on this one is weird. Most of the publicly available pics are just shots of her room after the neighbors broke the door down when they saw the belt tied around the grate and the girl wasn't answering. I'm including all of them for completion sake, but her body was located just to the right of that doorway so they basically shot everything BUT her corpse. I was able to get a few more images from her friends and the neighbor, including a postmortem right after she was cut down and another after her clothes had been changed and her body washed for her funeral.

I also have a few short vids, one of the noose after it was cut, one of her funeral, and one very crappy vid of a reporter using his phone as a camera through a gap in the vent grate after they cut her down.

She was not estimated to be hanging long, somewhere between 1 and 2 hours. The report was brief, but mentioned the usual signs of hanging. It reported no signs of livor or rigor, but confirmed a ligature bruise on her throat, salivary staining on her shirt and chin, and urine in her panties and shorts.

The postmortem photo isn't great and shows very little. The ligature bruise is covered by her collar, her hands and feet are not visible, and her soiled shorts are cropped out of the photo. You can see that she did drool extensively, as the aforementioned salivary staining is quite evident.

The ligature mark is visible in the pre-funeral photos after she had been cleaned up and her clothes changed.

[SimoneFlen']

Great find, Ved', thanks.

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by Simone ↗

Great find, Ved', thanks.

Thanks. it was a weird set. The Cambodians (as you doubtless know) aren't usually shy about photographing the bodies. They censor them sometimes, but they always shoot them. This was one of very few where they basically document every angle of the room EXCEPT the one with the body. Hopefully not a new trend.

[SimoneFlen']

A few additions:

[William May]

Sad. She was a little cutie. Wonder why her boyfriend dumped her?

[rudderman]

extremely small ligature mark under chin. no visible marks of pressure on necksides. not sure this was a suicide,

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by rudderman ↗

extremely small ligature mark under chin. no visible marks of pressure on necksides. not sure this was a suicide,

No signs of a struggle were noted, the responders had to break down the door because it was locked from the inside, she didn't have any defensive wounds of any sort, she had been making extremely fatalistic and depressive posts on FB for days following a significant breakup, and there was salivary staining on her shirt that followed the pattern of hanging. Salivary glands stop producing when the body dies, so trails of saliva running down the chin and chest in a hanging decedent almost always indicate that they were alive when they were hanged.

No clear photos of the full body or the site where she was hanged, but I'll bet you there's a puddle of urine under the grate too since the report said her shorts were wet. Same basic principle as the salivary staining and has been used in a significant amount of court cases to determine the actual location where an asphyxiation victim died.

It'd be extremely hard to forcibly hang a living person while tying that belt around a grate like that with neighbors on both sides. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it'd be super rare.

Possible that the lack of a fully encompassing ligature burn might be because of the high collar on her shirt, diffusing the pressure of the soft material of the cloth noose everywhere but the strongest point of pressure, which is where the bruise can be seen.

[rudderman]

agree and thank you for excellent research, Vedderman.

[emrosscar]

I’m just confused about the picture that shows the ligature still in place... yet they cut her down and it was on the floor with her..

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by emrosscar ↗

I’m just confused about the picture that shows the ligature still in place... yet they cut her down and it was on the floor with her..

Still in place where? On the grate or on her neck? I don't believe any photos show the ligature around her neck. The video that shoes it dangling from the grate is after they cut her down, but they cut the ligature about halfway up, not at the top loop. So the 'noose loop' and half the length are lying next to her on the floor and the other half, including the 'anchoring loop' is still attached to the grate.