Second of four parts: The story of a young man from North Ridgeville found hanging in his Dayton dorm room, and the forensic anthropologist who challenged the verdict of suicide.

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Jennifer Clark flipped hurriedly through the photos of a young man lying on a morgue gurney, his eyes closed gently as if in sleep, his neck deeply grooved with the signature of a noose.

Clark had come to Gary Yano's martial arts studio in Westlake to shake off the residue of her work as a forensic anthropologist. To escape the vacant, sunken eyes, the cadaverous cheekbones, the continuum of decomposition that challenges even the hardest of hearts.

But she did not get far. Midway through Yano's martial arts class on a late summer day last year, as Clark hit the sidelines for a breather and a swig of water, Yano ambushed her with a question: Have you ever seen an autopsy performed?

He explained it was his son, Stephen. Found dead, hanging from a noose in his closet at the University of Dayton, where he triple-majored in human rights, economics and Spanish, served as a campus fellow, traveled abroad to help others in need, had plans for the future. The litany of his dead son's accomplishments -- recited in the same order to anyone who would listen -- fluttered from his mouth and fell upon Clark like caged birds released with clipped wings.

The Montgomery County coroner had ruled Stephen's death in 2004 a suicide. But that was impossible, Yano said. Stephen had everything to live for and no reason to want to die.

Clark, bewildered and skeptical, agreed to peruse the case file, warning Yano that her theories might dissent from his. But as she flipped through the images in the bulging binder, Clark saw distressing signs:

Blood had pooled in bizarre patterns beneath the skin. Deep purple bruises mottled the back. The autopsy report offered no explanation.

She closed the binder and promised Gary Yano she would take the file home and examine it.

Clark didn't know then that she would devote the next year of her life to unearthing a mystery, struggling to pry open a closed case and seeking answers to unanswerable questions. Even today, she knows she might never find resolution for the Yano family, but her resolve has not waned.

Too many questions left unanswered

That night, Clark brewed a cup of tea and sat down with her tabby cat Briscoe in the living room of her parents' Lakewood house.

She heaved out the white binder and examined its cover, decorated with a photo of Stephen Yano, his arms spread as if dancing, a wild, mid-laughter smile across his face.

Inside was an impeccable collection of reports and notes, a catalog of conversations with school officials, police, trustees, professors. A compilation of messages left on blogs by Yano's friends and lists of inconsistencies, potential theories, details overlooked.

Clark was impressed. She wondered who had so meticulously researched and assembled the material. It carried an emotional charge, like reading a diary, in stark contrast to the police reports.

The reports filed by officers on the scene Dec. 8, 2004, showed they had been dispatched to a suicide. So, before investigators even arrived -- before they had even seen the evidence or interviewed witnesses -- they assumed Yano had killed himself. They weren't open to investigating other possibilities, Clark thought.

Yano was found hanging from two nooses, suspended from the rafters of an attic crawl space above his closet, the reports said. Blurry photos showed no chair or stool nearby, only a heap of clothes in a laundry basket beneath his feet.

A former girlfriend told police that Yano was depressed because his parents were getting divorced. But his housemates said he did not seem depressed and had never mentioned suicide.

Officers cut down the body, interviewed friends and searched the room for signs that Yano had been depressed. But Yano left no suicide note, no troubled journal entries. Papers and books lay open on his desk, alongside a weekly planner that showed upcoming final exams and meetings with professors.

A former girlfriend told police that Yano was depressed because his parents were getting divorced. But his housemates said he did not seem depressed and had never mentioned suicide.

Dayton police relinquished control of the scene to the university police, who said they had the situation under control. But university police conducted no criminal investigation, Clark noted. They collected no evidence from the room. Lifted no fingerprints. Conducted no analysis of the rope or comparison between the noose and a knotted length of rope found in an open desk drawer.

Yano's backpack and eyeglasses were missing. Police allowed a priest access to the body to issue last rites. And in one report, an officer acknowledged allowing a student to write a goodbye message to Yano on the bedroom wall.

The house was evacuated and secured. But in a follow-up report, a university police officer wrote that in the days after Yano's death, he stopped by the house and found it open.

"This is crazy!" Clark yelled at her puzzled cat. She turned to the autopsy reports, hoping medical examiners had been more thorough.

Clark stared in disbelief at the first page of the Montgomery County coroner's records on Yano's autopsy.

"Twenty-two-year-old Hispanic male?" she read aloud, "You've got to be kidding me!" Yano was half-Japanese.

Like the police records, Clark found the coroner's report riddled with unanswered questions.

A 6-inch-long abrasion ran down Yano's spine. Could his body have been dragged? Clark wondered.

In addition to the marks caused by the two nooses pulling upward against Yano's jaw, another deep bruise stretched laterally across but not fully around his neck. Could he have been strangled before his body was hanged?

Then she examined the lividity patterns caused by the pooling of blood beneath the skin -- the telltale signs of a body's position after death. The pooling typically begins about 30 minutes after death and becomes fixed between eight and 10 hours, Clark knew.

Neither police nor a coroner's investigator took the temperature of the body and the temperature at the scene -- a standard practice in estimating time of death. So follow-up interviews with students focused on trying to determine when Yano was last seen alive.

In the end, the medical examiner estimated that Yano had been dead for more than 20 hours before he was found. If this were true, it meant the pattern caused by the pooling of blood in the body would be fixed and would not change after the body was cut down from the noose and taken to the morgue.

Clark looked closer at the image of Yano turned on his side on the morgue gurney. She peered at the peculiar purple design impressed upon Yano's flesh, across his shoulder blade.

But in the autopsy photographs, Clark saw two distinct lividity patterns where Yano's waistband appeared to have shifted. And blanched areas on his lower body seemed to indicate contact with a hard surface before lividity was fixed.

Could he have been lying on his back shortly after death? Clark wondered. Could someone have moved him?

And those bruises. Deep purple discoloration in strange places -- by his ears and under his armpits.

Clark looked closer at the image of Yano turned on his side on the morgue gurney. She peered at the peculiar purple design impressed upon Yano's flesh, across his shoulder blade.

"Is that a boot print?" she thought.

Clark stared at the photographs until 2 in the morning, asking herself again and again, "Am I being overly critical? Are the things that I'm seeing real?"

She returned to Gary Yano's Westlake dojo two weeks later with 15 pages of notes and a deep sense that Yano's suspicion was correct -- that his son might have been murdered.

Tuesday: Who is Jennifer Clark and how did her experience in Iraq prepare her for the case of Stephen Yano?

