SINGAPORE: Two US pathologists on Wednesday supported Singapore police findings that an American scientist found hanged last year in the city-state committed suicide and was not murdered as his family claims.

Medical examiners David Fowler of Maryland and Valerie Rao of Florida testified as independent experts a day after the family of the late researcher Shane Todd walked out of a coroner’s inquest in Singapore.

Fowler rejected a theory put forward by the family’s star witness, Missouri deputy medical examiner Edward Adelstein, who said Todd may have been killed by assassins working for two Asian high-tech firms involved in a secret project.

Fowler, chief medical examiner of Maryland, said marks on Todd’s hands cited by
Adelstein on Tuesday as proof of a fight with killers in his apartment were “the most classical example of post-mortem lividities” in hanging cases.

There was also nothing suspicious about a bruise on Todd’s forehead, he said, declaring that “the cause of death was asphyxia due to hanging.”

Rao, chief medical examiner of two districts in Jacksonville, Florida, also cited “asphyxia due to hanging” as the cause of death and agreed that there were no injury marks indicating a struggle.

Asked by a Singapore state counsel to give her opinion on the means of death, Rao replied: “Suicide.”
AFP