To break your hyoid bone in a suicide, you need to tie a rope around your neck and jump off something high enough that there is a drop before the rope tightens, and the rope tightens before your feet hit the ground. And there needs to be a decent drop distance before the rope tightens.

An “Introduction to the Work of a Medical Examiner” by John Miletich and Tia Lindstrom says that the “drop distance needed to break a neck depends on the person’s body mass…the hanged person’s neck breaks when his falling body reaches the end of the rope, rapidly tightens the noose, and wrenches his neck sideways, dislocating or snapping his neck’s axis bone.”

For Epstein to suicide, he would have had to tie the bedsheets around his neck, and then lift his feet of the ground, which can be done, but requires a fair bit of crazed determination and will not break your neck bones. Why would Epstein want to kill himself when he still had the goods on powerful people, and had gotten out of trouble before? Even if he wanted to suicide, he would not have sufficient determination or madness to kill himself that way.

A correctly applied chokehold, where you are behind your victim, your right elbow is at the front of the victim’s neck, your right hand is nestled in your left elbow, and your left hand is gripping your right arm, will not break any neck bones either, but if the victim is struggling effectively, and he gets your feet out from under you, you both wind up rolling around on the ground, then you are likely to break his neck bones. You want to lift the victim of the ground, so that your eyes are protected by his back from an eye gouge, and he has no leverage to get you off balance and get his feet behind your feet.

That Epstein was screaming, and that his hyoid bone was broken, indicates his killer was having a hard time of it. A correctly applied chokehold will instantly silence the victim, incapacitate him in ten seconds, render him unconscious in eighteen seconds, and dead in three minutes, leaving no indications that this was not another convenient suicide.

This post was posted under party politics, this being the way that party politics is conducted these days.