What happened to this California family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The necropsy on the dog failed to determine its CoD. The dog did NOT suffer heatstroke. hS in canine is easily detectable.

Eleven dogs with fatal heatstroke were examined grossly and histopathologically post mortem. All showed multi-organ haemorrhagic diathesis with coagulative necrosis. Hypaeremia and diffuse oedema were observed in the skin (eight dogs), lungs (11), brain (11) and bone marrow (one). Congestion of the splenic pulp (10 dogs) and hepatic sinusoids (nine) was also noted. Necrosis was observed in the mucosa of the small intestine (seven dogs), large intestine (eight), renal tubular epithelium (nine), hepatic parenchyma (eight) and brain neural tissue (four). The results showed that naturally occurring, fatal canine heatstroke induces acute multiple organ lesions affecting most body systems, and suggest that the more prevalent lesions include haemorrhagic diathesis, microthrombosis and coagulative necrosis. These are probable sequels of hyperthermia-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation and systemic inflammatory response syndrome, which lead to multi-organ dysfunction and death.

Easily detected if it hadn't been dead for 48 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The naïveté here astounds me.
Has anyone considered that not all women bond with their children? Or, even want them? Or attend to them properly?

Perhaps Gerrish was concerned baby M was being neglected during his office hours and employed a nanny so he could focus on his work without interruption and fear something might go wrong.

Maybe Chung didn’t want to “mother” and preferred screen and yoga time. Maybe she disliked dirty diapers, crying, snotty nosed, teething toddlers. Just because a few people say complimentary things doesn’t make it so. It only means what they observed appeared normal.

Off the top of my head I can list at least fifty cases of women
killing their kids. And most of the women had flattering comments about their parenting skills prior to murdering them.

You can list 50 cases of women killing their kids OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD?

Statistically it is not common, although yes it does happen, and is more likely to happen in the post partum period.

I am not saying that it is impossible she was a disconnected mother, or that Gerrish was a very connected father, but your post seems insane.

Cases, yes. Highly publicized cases. Postpartum psychosis is actually very common.

It is not "very common." It's actually quite rare - 0.1%-0.2% of births. Did you mean postpartum psychosis is a common reason given by women who kill their children and husbands?

You seem like a fairly nasty person, the way you are talking about this woman. It is positively ghoulish. It is possible to be interested in a case and speculate about what happened without being ghoulish.

. Thanks for the compliment. Wanna go back to pretending it got to hot for them?

It wasn't a compliment, I was never on Team Heatstroke, and try basing your theories on more than your own imagination if you want to sound like a thinking adult. You have zero basis for suggesting that this baby was neglected by either parent. The only basis you have for assuming that Chung was neglectful are statements about how involved Gerrish was as a father. They employed a nanny, which is something that probably 50% of the parents on this site do. He worked from home. She did other stuff. She didn't need to work to pay the bills, and there is no indication that that was a problem for anyone.

I 100% think that something strange happened here. Even if you are sure you are right, and even if you end up being totally right, it is still a very strange thing, and the length of time it's taking answers to arrive makes it all the stranger. That said, I think the heat was certainly implicated in at least one aspect of the deaths, if for no other reason than that as a person who has ever hiked in the heat before, I know it makes every dangerous situation that much more potentially dangerous. But I do not think it is the primary cause of the overall situation or likely no one on this site would ever have heard of these people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The positions they were found in could suggest heatstroke if the day went something like this- They start out on early hike and underestimate how hot it is going to get. They hike the easier part of trail first and then are getting worn out more quickly than usual. He is bigger than her and taller and was carrying baby and had dog/leash attached to him. He is exerting more energy and his body is heating up faster than hers. They could have been out longer because maybe at some point baby was fussy and they took baby out to cuddle or snuggle and were just sitting in heat longer. Or they let dog off leash and exerted more energy because dog wandered off. At some point they are on harder part of trail and he is not feeling well and says he needs to sit down. Dog/leash still attached to him. Mom goes over to him and takes baby out of carrier and attends to baby while she is waiting for her husband to feel better. Now he has no shade so his body keeps heating up rapidly and he has heat stroke and is dying. Meanwhile mom is in the same baking sun attending to baby , waiting for her husband to feel better and she starts to feel unwell. Her body is now heating up and she is panicked and starting to have signs of confusion. She can’t even hold baby anymore so she puts baby down next to husband and tries to get up and walk towards car and now she collapses from heatstroke and dies. Baby and dog will both die of heatstroke because dog is attached to dad and baby is helpless. This could have happened. But LE can’t know for sure until they rule out all other possibilities - toxins/drugs/MS/etc.

The baby was in the backpack, which was stood on the trail.

This strikes me as so strange. If the baby was in distress or even dead, I would imagine they would take her out. If she was suffering from heat, those nylon carriers are super hot. She was next to Jon but he was not wearing the backpack when he died.

If it was FA I think it would be her, he was, by all accounts, very attached to the baby.

Maybe mom took the carrier of her husband when she realized he was too sick to get back up. Maybe mom holding baby for a while while her husband was getting worse instead of better and then mom put baby back in carrier intending to carry baby to get help but then mom was feeling sick and confused and just starting walking but collapsed. Going from heat illness to death or collapse can happen quickly. I think where she was found suggests she tried to get help but collapsed and then died. She probably did not intend to leave baby but was confused caused by heat illness. She may not have died immediately but could have passed out. Lying in baking sun will lead to death.

What? Come on.

DP and this makes way more sense than any of those poison canteen water theories. If you read the earlier posts in the thread, dogs can get heat stroke very quickly. The dog probably was ill or died before the people, and they were carrying him on the trail. That's why they were all still together. Heat stroke in humans can also come on very quickly and by the time they realize they're having problems, they can't even move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The positions they were found in could suggest heatstroke if the day went something like this- They start out on early hike and underestimate how hot it is going to get. They hike the easier part of trail first and then are getting worn out more quickly than usual. He is bigger than her and taller and was carrying baby and had dog/leash attached to him. He is exerting more energy and his body is heating up faster than hers. They could have been out longer because maybe at some point baby was fussy and they took baby out to cuddle or snuggle and were just sitting in heat longer. Or they let dog off leash and exerted more energy because dog wandered off. At some point they are on harder part of trail and he is not feeling well and says he needs to sit down. Dog/leash still attached to him. Mom goes over to him and takes baby out of carrier and attends to baby while she is waiting for her husband to feel better. Now he has no shade so his body keeps heating up rapidly and he has heat stroke and is dying. Meanwhile mom is in the same baking sun attending to baby , waiting for her husband to feel better and she starts to feel unwell. Her body is now heating up and she is panicked and starting to have signs of confusion. She can’t even hold baby anymore so she puts baby down next to husband and tries to get up and walk towards car and now she collapses from heatstroke and dies. Baby and dog will both die of heatstroke because dog is attached to dad and baby is helpless. This could have happened. But LE can’t know for sure until they rule out all other possibilities - toxins/drugs/MS/etc.

The baby was in the backpack, which was stood on the trail.

This strikes me as so strange. If the baby was in distress or even dead, I would imagine they would take her out. If she was suffering from heat, those nylon carriers are super hot. She was next to Jon but he was not wearing the backpack when he died.

If it was FA I think it would be her, he was, by all accounts, very attached to the baby.

Maybe mom took the carrier of her husband when she realized he was too sick to get back up. Maybe mom holding baby for a while while her husband was getting worse instead of better and then mom put baby back in carrier intending to carry baby to get help but then mom was feeling sick and confused and just starting walking but collapsed. Going from heat illness to death or collapse can happen quickly. I think where she was found suggests she tried to get help but collapsed and then died. She probably did not intend to leave baby but was confused caused by heat illness. She may not have died immediately but could have passed out. Lying in baking sun will lead to death.

What? Come on.

DP and this makes way more sense than any of those poison canteen water theories. If you read the earlier posts in the thread, dogs can get heat stroke very quickly. The dog probably was ill or died before the people, and they were carrying him on the trail. That's why they were all still together. Heat stroke in humans can also come on very quickly and by the time they realize they're having problems, they can't even move.

These people lived in the desert for 10 days at a time. A hike on a warm day was nothing.

[Anonymous]

Here’s Anna Nicole’s final autopsy to use as an example of the detail necessary when tox’ is involved.

Link:

https://media.local10.com/document_dev/2017/02/10/Anna%20Nicole%20Smith%20autopsy_1486758359438_8983351_ver1.0.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they moved to Mariposa (really outside Mariposa) BECAUSE she was having mental health issues. Also TBI has a definite link to suicide. It’s so easy to underestimate another persons true state of mind with depression. Especially when it’s brought on physically.

Someone in the know said there was no TBI, that E quit her job to be available to travel with J and used TBI as the reason for her abrupt departure. Remember when she left work for “funemployment”?
It is weird a newly diagnosed TBI patient would risk pregnancy just months after diagnosis.

She wasn’t newly diagnosed with TBI. The TBI was over a decade earlier. She went on adventure travel and trips around the world after the TBI. No reason to think the TBI was limiting her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here’s Anna Nicole’s final autopsy to use as an example of the detail necessary when tox’ is involved.

Link:

https://media.local10.com/document_dev/2017/02/10/Anna%20Nicole%20Smith%20autopsy_1486758359438_8983351_ver1.0.pdf

Note the date here:

MARCH 21, 20079:52 PMUPDATED 14 YEARS AGO
Anna Nicole autopsy results to be released Monday

See how long it took between death, autopsy and tox? For ONE person?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they moved to Mariposa (really outside Mariposa) BECAUSE she was having mental health issues. Also TBI has a definite link to suicide. It’s so easy to underestimate another persons true state of mind with depression. Especially when it’s brought on physically.

Someone in the know said there was no TBI, that E quit her job to be available to travel with J and used TBI as the reason for her abrupt departure. Remember when she left work for “funemployment”?
It is weird a newly diagnosed TBI patient would risk pregnancy just months after diagnosis.

She wasn’t newly diagnosed with TBI. The TBI was over a decade earlier. She went on adventure travel and trips around the world after the TBI. No reason to think the TBI was limiting her.

In her own words in 2018 “recently diagnosed with tbi….”.
Right after meeting Gerrish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The necropsy on the dog failed to determine its CoD. The dog did NOT suffer heatstroke. hS in canine is easily detectable.

Eleven dogs with fatal heatstroke were examined grossly and histopathologically post mortem. All showed multi-organ haemorrhagic diathesis with coagulative necrosis. Hypaeremia and diffuse oedema were observed in the skin (eight dogs), lungs (11), brain (11) and bone marrow (one). Congestion of the splenic pulp (10 dogs) and hepatic sinusoids (nine) was also noted. Necrosis was observed in the mucosa of the small intestine (seven dogs), large intestine (eight), renal tubular epithelium (nine), hepatic parenchyma (eight) and brain neural tissue (four). The results showed that naturally occurring, fatal canine heatstroke induces acute multiple organ lesions affecting most body systems, and suggest that the more prevalent lesions include haemorrhagic diathesis, microthrombosis and coagulative necrosis. These are probable sequels of hyperthermia-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation and systemic inflammatory response syndrome, which lead to multi-organ dysfunction and death.

The dog has always been the sign that something very strange happened IMO. A dog would not die at the same time as the people without some type of outside intervention, and no dog dying of heatstroke would quietly sit next to their human, leashed or not. It would have sought out water.

I knew it wasn’t heatstroke!!! Ha

Lol💡💡💡
Of course it wasn’t HS.
If you have a small animal vet, text or email and ask him/her if it is even remotely possible for HS to go undetected in canine.
It can’t happen!
FYI, the dog’s specimens got shipped out. To where, you ask. The TOX LAB!👍

I assume to check to see if he had consumed some of the toxic algae from the river, known to be possibly fatal to dogs. Dogs die of HS on trails all the time, esp in CA this year. For a double coated dog to LIVE when out in temps of 109+ and direct sun is what is unlikely. They simply cannot discharge heat.

SAR dogs were pulled, they were burning their paws on the trail in Devil's Gulch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The naïveté here astounds me.
Has anyone considered that not all women bond with their children? Or, even want them? Or attend to them properly?

Perhaps Gerrish was concerned baby M was being neglected during his office hours and employed a nanny so he could focus on his work without interruption and fear something might go wrong.

Maybe Chung didn’t want to “mother” and preferred screen and yoga time. Maybe she disliked dirty diapers, crying, snotty nosed, teething toddlers. Just because a few people say complimentary things doesn’t make it so. It only means what they observed appeared normal.

Off the top of my head I can list at least fifty cases of women
killing their kids. And most of the women had flattering comments about their parenting skills prior to murdering them.

You can list 50 cases of women killing their kids OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD?

Statistically it is not common, although yes it does happen, and is more likely to happen in the post partum period.

I am not saying that it is impossible she was a disconnected mother, or that Gerrish was a very connected father, but your post seems insane.

Cases, yes. Highly publicized cases. Postpartum psychosis is actually very common.

It is not "very common." It's actually quite rare - 0.1%-0.2% of births. Did you mean postpartum psychosis is a common reason given by women who kill their children and husbands?

You seem like a fairly nasty person, the way you are talking about this woman. It is positively ghoulish. It is possible to be interested in a case and speculate about what happened without being ghoulish.

. Thanks for the compliment. Wanna go back to pretending it got to hot for them?

It wasn't a compliment, I was never on Team Heatstroke, and try basing your theories on more than your own imagination if you want to sound like a thinking adult. You have zero basis for suggesting that this baby was neglected by either parent. The only basis you have for assuming that Chung was neglectful are statements about how involved Gerrish was as a father. They employed a nanny, which is something that probably 50% of the parents on this site do. He worked from home. She did other stuff. She didn't need to work to pay the bills, and there is no indication that that was a problem for anyone.

I 100% think that something strange happened here. Even if you are sure you are right, and even if you end up being totally right, it is still a very strange thing, and the length of time it's taking answers to arrive makes it all the stranger. That said, I think the heat was certainly implicated in at least one aspect of the deaths, if for no other reason than that as a person who has ever hiked in the heat before, I know it makes every dangerous situation that much more potentially dangerous. But I do not think it is the primary cause of the overall situation or likely no one on this site would ever have heard of these people.

It’s not about being right. It’s about the obvious and critical thinking. The length of time alone means one thing! Drugs or a toxic agent was found and deeper analysis is underway. A tox test can yield positive for meth. However, the presence of meth would not conclude a fatal dose was used, so back to the drawing board for quantitatives. If tox’ tests on this case had returned negative results, we’d know. Really quite simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they moved to Mariposa (really outside Mariposa) BECAUSE she was having mental health issues. Also TBI has a definite link to suicide. It’s so easy to underestimate another persons true state of mind with depression. Especially when it’s brought on physically.

Someone in the know said there was no TBI, that E quit her job to be available to travel with J and used TBI as the reason for her abrupt departure. Remember when she left work for “funemployment”?
It is weird a newly diagnosed TBI patient would risk pregnancy just months after diagnosis.

She wasn’t newly diagnosed with TBI. The TBI was over a decade earlier. She went on adventure travel and trips around the world after the TBI. No reason to think the TBI was limiting her.

In her own words in 2018 “recently diagnosed with tbi….”.
Right after meeting Gerrish.

The TBI was in her late teens, long before meeting Gerrish.

There is at least one poster who seems full of drama and disinfo.

TBI was not the reason for leaving her corp job and becoming a yoga teacher + going back to school, a debilitating illness that was not specified was given as the reason for an employment shift from corp pharma work to studying to become a counselor.

The TBI does not seem to have prevented world travel, motherhood, a career, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The positions they were found in could suggest heatstroke if the day went something like this- They start out on early hike and underestimate how hot it is going to get. They hike the easier part of trail first and then are getting worn out more quickly than usual. He is bigger than her and taller and was carrying baby and had dog/leash attached to him. He is exerting more energy and his body is heating up faster than hers. They could have been out longer because maybe at some point baby was fussy and they took baby out to cuddle or snuggle and were just sitting in heat longer. Or they let dog off leash and exerted more energy because dog wandered off. At some point they are on harder part of trail and he is not feeling well and says he needs to sit down. Dog/leash still attached to him. Mom goes over to him and takes baby out of carrier and attends to baby while she is waiting for her husband to feel better. Now he has no shade so his body keeps heating up rapidly and he has heat stroke and is dying. Meanwhile mom is in the same baking sun attending to baby , waiting for her husband to feel better and she starts to feel unwell. Her body is now heating up and she is panicked and starting to have signs of confusion. She can’t even hold baby anymore so she puts baby down next to husband and tries to get up and walk towards car and now she collapses from heatstroke and dies. Baby and dog will both die of heatstroke because dog is attached to dad and baby is helpless. This could have happened. But LE can’t know for sure until they rule out all other possibilities - toxins/drugs/MS/etc.

The baby was in the backpack, which was stood on the trail.

This strikes me as so strange. If the baby was in distress or even dead, I would imagine they would take her out. If she was suffering from heat, those nylon carriers are super hot. She was next to Jon but he was not wearing the backpack when he died.

If it was FA I think it would be her, he was, by all accounts, very attached to the baby.

Maybe mom took the carrier of her husband when she realized he was too sick to get back up. Maybe mom holding baby for a while while her husband was getting worse instead of better and then mom put baby back in carrier intending to carry baby to get help but then mom was feeling sick and confused and just starting walking but collapsed. Going from heat illness to death or collapse can happen quickly. I think where she was found suggests she tried to get help but collapsed and then died. She probably did not intend to leave baby but was confused caused by heat illness. She may not have died immediately but could have passed out. Lying in baking sun will lead to death.

What? Come on.

DP and this makes way more sense than any of those poison canteen water theories. If you read the earlier posts in the thread, dogs can get heat stroke very quickly. The dog probably was ill or died before the people, and they were carrying him on the trail. That's why they were all still together. Heat stroke in humans can also come on very quickly and by the time they realize they're having problems, they can't even move.

These people lived in the desert for 10 days at a time. A hike on a warm day was nothing.

It was hotter in Devil's Gulch than it was on their Gobi trip.

[Anonymous]

I haven't commented in 50-100 pages, but I am here agree with the PP upthread who said the dog dying of something else doesn't preclude heatstroke for the humans. In fact, that was a leading theory for a while-- that the dog was sick or injured and trying to lug him back slowed them down/kept them out long enough to cause heatstroke in the rest of them (baby having no real agency).

I can't remember if we'd confirmed dog was tethered to the people, but if so, that might imply the dog was not yet dead, but dying of [whatever he died of] as they began to die of heatstroke partly as a result of carrying/dragging/attending to him.

I'm actually not a big buyer of the heatstroke theory, but I don't think it's been definitively ruled out yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The necropsy on the dog failed to determine its CoD. The dog did NOT suffer heatstroke. hS in canine is easily detectable.

Eleven dogs with fatal heatstroke were examined grossly and histopathologically post mortem. All showed multi-organ haemorrhagic diathesis with coagulative necrosis. Hypaeremia and diffuse oedema were observed in the skin (eight dogs), lungs (11), brain (11) and bone marrow (one). Congestion of the splenic pulp (10 dogs) and hepatic sinusoids (nine) was also noted. Necrosis was observed in the mucosa of the small intestine (seven dogs), large intestine (eight), renal tubular epithelium (nine), hepatic parenchyma (eight) and brain neural tissue (four). The results showed that naturally occurring, fatal canine heatstroke induces acute multiple organ lesions affecting most body systems, and suggest that the more prevalent lesions include haemorrhagic diathesis, microthrombosis and coagulative necrosis. These are probable sequels of hyperthermia-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation and systemic inflammatory response syndrome, which lead to multi-organ dysfunction and death.

Easily detected if it hadn't been dead for 48 hours.

And exposed to baking sun and extreme temps for 72 hours+.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they moved to Mariposa (really outside Mariposa) BECAUSE she was having mental health issues. Also TBI has a definite link to suicide. It’s so easy to underestimate another persons true state of mind with depression. Especially when it’s brought on physically.

Someone in the know said there was no TBI, that E quit her job to be available to travel with J and used TBI as the reason for her abrupt departure. Remember when she left work for “funemployment”?
It is weird a newly diagnosed TBI patient would risk pregnancy just months after diagnosis.

She wasn’t newly diagnosed with TBI. The TBI was over a decade earlier. She went on adventure travel and trips around the world after the TBI. No reason to think the TBI was limiting her.

In her own words in 2018 “recently diagnosed with tbi….”.
Right after meeting Gerrish.

The TBI was in her late teens, long before meeting Gerrish.

There is at least one poster who seems full of drama and disinfo.

TBI was not the reason for leaving her corp job and becoming a yoga teacher + going back to school, a debilitating illness that was not specified was given as the reason for an employment shift from corp pharma work to studying to become a counselor.

The TBI does not seem to have prevented world travel, motherhood, a career, etc.

The irony. Corp’ pharma’.