Elena Moore Death: Natural Causes, Troubling Questions
New findings reveal a longstanding heart condition, a psychiatric hospitalization and unanswered questions about the final hours of Lexington woman’s life…
New findings reveal a longstanding heart condition, a psychiatric hospitalization and unanswered questions about the final hours of Lexington woman’s life…
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Jenn Wood’s summary of Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher’s press conference (which I watched in its entirety on WLTX-19) is impeccably accurate.
But both Ms. Fisher and Ms. Wood missed points which I have, qualifications, and a right and duty to highlight for everyone.
First and foremost, cardiac arrythmias DO KILL the apparently healthy young. Witness the young athletes and/or military recruits who sporadically succumb during training, games, or marching, specially in extreme heat. But that diagnoses is an electro-physiological, not anatomical, one and cannot be made with any certainty through an autopsy of a five-day-decayed body whose decay was accelerated by the extreme ambient heat. So, it would have been better to call it a diagnosis by exclusion rather than imply it was a definitive anatomical diagnosis.
Second and seriously, “get help” is bandied about by almost every Jill and Joe Schmo to basically anyone with whom they disagree. It is likely as frequent a proposed “solution” as “lock them up and throw away the key.” But no one asks “where?”
Long in-patient hospitalization of one patient means a bed unavailable for the next patient.
Long prison terms mean prison over-crowding, inability to recruit prison workers, and temptations of more criminality even by prison workers themselves.
So, what are the answers? First, admit that we have no guaranteed cures or even diagnosis for all mental illness any more than we have guaranteed early detection and cures for all cancers. Next, keep and publish good, politics-free, statistics. Third, think outside the box and propose biologically-plausible innovative solutions and test them rigorously.
More “mental health beds” cannot be simply bought in the mattress store.
They need more psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and other workers all the way to hospital orderlies. And where do you get those while ensuring they do not become mental health patients themselves?
Nor does merely throwing money or prisons at any problem solve anything.
Case in point: his mother is SUPER good looking (super-model Cindy Crawford) and his father is SUPER rich (Gerber empire heir Rande Gerber); but 27-year old model and athlete Presley Gerber died 20 September 2026 in a VERY expensive and exclusive rehabilitation facility. So, probably no body-shaming, bullying, etc. was involved.
So, what was probably involved? In my opinion free from false humility, moral vacuity.
Many young men would figuratively and/or literally have killed to have Presley Gerber’s looks and/or money; and many women would have done so to have Elena Katerina’s looks. But did either victim of self-harm/self-neglect have a moral core unimpregnable with belief in what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:25 and Luke 12:22-23?
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”
’22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.[“]’
And a missed nugget in the news conference is Coroner Fisher’s revelation that completed suicides now exceed overdose deaths in the relatively-affluent Lexington County, South Carolina.
Again, PLEASE never demagogue or politicize human deaths which could have been prevented by moral clarity and true, innovative, science.
I can tell you what the facility (it was Three Rivers) criteria for discharge is. It’s when the insurance approval ends. It’s that simple there.
But keeping a patient hospitalized longer than necessary means no hospital bed is available for the next patient whose case may be even more urgent.
You can’t just buy psychiatric hospital beds in the mattress store. Providers, from board-certified psychiatrists to hospital orderlies, are needed; and they do NOT grow on trees.
So, please see the supply-demand side of the story.
Since everything in South Carolina does or could have a Murdaugh connection, here is my most recent VIC (very important comment) on the Murdaugh issues:
The Prosecution does NOT want to test the male DNA in the swab from Maggie’s phone because it knows that, like the DNA from Maggie’s fingernails, it will EXCLUDE Alex because Alex NEVER had Maggie’s phone that night and was eager to help the responders on the scene find it the next morning.
Besides, Alex NEVER ever actually said “I was never at the kennels” or ANYTHING like that. TO THE CONTRARY, when Rogan Gibson told “Grandmar” (Maggie’s mother) that he heard Alex’s voice in the background of the phone conversation with Paul which preceded the unsent video, Alex WAS in the room with Rogan Gibson and Grandmar but did NOT “stand up and say no I wasn’t there.”
Here is the trial transcript, with page and line numbers, from the OFFICIAL Record on Appeal (RoA):
[RoA_2669, line 25] Q. 172. Is that another screen shot of your phone?
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [Transcript page 1437 = RoA_2670])
[1] A. It is.
[2] Q. And are those other missed calls that came in?
[3] A. 10:25 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
[4-6] Q. When you spoke to Special Agent Croft on June 8th of 2021, did you tell him and Special Agent McCallister who you thought you heard on that phone call at 8:40?
[7] A. I did.
[8] Q. And who did you say you heard?
[9] A. I thought it was Mr. Alex but I wasn’t exactly sure.
[10] Q. And did you give him a percentage?
[11] A. I did.
[12] Q. What did you say?
[13] A. 99 percent.
[14] Q. That you heard Mr. Alex on that phone call at 8:40.
[15] A. That’s correct.
[16-17] Q. As time went on after the murders, did you go to Moselle where all of the family and friends were gathering?
[18] A. I did.
[19] Q. Were you there a fair amount?
[20-21] A. Probably the whole part of that — or that — later that week.
[22-24] Q. While you were there at the house where the family and friends had gathered, did anyone ever ask you about your last contact with Paul?
[25] A. There was.
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [RoA_2671 = 1438])
[1] Q. And who asked you?
[2] A. Grandmar.
[3] Q. And that would be Ms. Branstetter?
[4] A. That’s correct.
[5] Q. Maggie’s mother?
[6] A. That’s correct.
[7] Q. And what did you say?
[8-10] A. I told her, yeah, that I had talked to Paul about the dog. I told her that I heard Ms. Maggie in the background, and I heard a male voice that I thought was Mr. Alex.
[11] Q. Was he in the room then?
[12] A. Yes.
[13] Q. Did he stand up and say no, I wasn’t there?
[14] A. He didn’t.
[15-16] Q. Did you ever have any conversation with Alex Murdaugh about what happened that night?
[17] A. No, sir.
[18-19] Q. Did he ever ask you about whether or not you heard him on that phone that night?
[20] A. No, sir.
[21] Q. Did he ever tell you what he did that night?
[22] A. No, sir.
[23] Q. Did you ever ask him what he did that night?
[24] A. No, sir.
I can’t believe they didn’t consult all the stay-at-home-Facebook-investigators. Don’t they know creative writing exercises masquerading as conspiracy theories counts as evidence?