Houseguests of Demi Moore are offering conflicting accounts of how a 21-year-old non-swimmer entered the actress’s pool on his own volition and accidentally drowned there.
In one version, Edenilson Valle was missing “only 10 or 15 minutes” when a search of the lavish estate revealed his corpse “floating” in the deep end.
That’s interesting, because bodies sink quite soon after taking in that final gulp of water, and won’t rise again until they start to rot internally.
Refloat therefore requires some time to occur, and depending on air and water temperatures as well as the water’s depth, can happen in as little as 24 hours or, more normally, can take days, weeks, and even months.
In fact, certain frigid lakes and oceans have become notorious for never giving up their dead.
Moreover, despite Hollywood’s persistent portrayal of the act and process of drowning, it isn’t very pretty, regardless of where it takes place, and never peaceful.
If the young man naturally died in a body of water (as opposed to being killed first and then dumped in it) and was quickly found in the customary facedown position, then the posture of his corpse would likely still reveal his agonizing struggle against death.
Indeed, if it’s also true that he was discovered so soon thereafter, then there should have been a milky foam around his lips, his eyes should have been wide with terror and moist from being submerged, his fists clenched.
As well, even though the victim was allegedly beyond resuscitating when recovered, his body could still display “cadaveric spasms” that mimic his lost battle; which, to be sure, would have been a frighteningly unforgettable thing to witness.
On the other hand, if he “fell in overnight” and was at the pool bottom for many hours, his corpse might seem slightly more relaxed, posed as it were in the classic semi-fetal posture with its head and shoulders turned downward.
According to the CDC’s annual mortality statistics, almost all drowning deaths do occur in domestic swimming pools and not outdoor bodies of water, albeit the vast majority of casualties in either instance are young children.
Like a child, Valle was also an inexperienced swimmer, reportedly, and most individuals who don’t know how to swim develop an instinctual dread of the water, for good reason.
Little doubt then that a toxicology test will be part of the coroner’s inquest to rule out foul play in the youth’s unexplained drowning, and to substantiate instead that he was either on drugs and/or intoxicated when he entered the pool, which led to a fatal accident.
But this approach too, in cases of genuine water fatalities, will prove unreliable unless such tests are performed on the vitreous fluid (which they rarely are).
That’s because the human eyeball, as an enclosed organ, is last to decompose and less likely to be contaminated during the process.
Still, even if the eye of a drowned man, and not his urine, blood, muscles or heart, is tested for mind-altering toxins, the results can be false and misleading.
Why? Because, as a true drown-victim inevitably draws more and more water into their stomach and lungs, it begins to rapidly circulate throughout their bloodstream, diluting blood by as much as 50-percent, and everything in it.
Worse, if putrefaction has already begun by the time of autopsy, this could in fact cause BAC levels to spike far beyond what had been consumed antemortem, since ethanol is a natural byproduct of decay, and water has a tendency to escalate its production.
In short, there is nothing common or ordinary about any drowning, and an un-witnessed one should always be viewed initially as suspicious, with great pains taken to ascertain the circumstances that led to such a dramatic death.
It’s not specious, however, for Demi Moore’s guests to claim they didn’t hear Edenilson Valle call out to them for help, if he was really going under. People need air to speak or yell, after all, and, in the case of those who are drowning, they’re actually suffocating first.
But it isn’t credible that no one heard his desperate thrashing, though, considering he was in a pool situated very near the mansion and it was, allegedly, “very early” in the morning.
Drowning only takes a few short minutes, of course, but throughout the extremely violent act there is always telltale, frantic thrashing before the victim wordlessly succumbs to his fate.
And, so close to home, that kind of commotion would have been hard to miss…
