Coroner's court determination - B Mackee, Case Ref No: 203.04BM
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Linguist involved
John Olsson (instructed by Coroner's officers)
Type of case
Coroner's court inquiry
Explanation of coroner's court work
A coroner is a government official appointed for each county or area in England and Wales. The coroner's task is to assess the probable cause of death in cases where the circumstances are either suspicious or unknown. Coroners are either usually highly experienced solicitors or medical doctors (or, sometimes, both).
Description of the case
Ms Brenda Mackee was found dead at her apartment in West Wales by a male. Earlier in the evening she and the male had spent the evening together in conversation. The deceased appeared to become distressed on hearing from the male that he did not consider the relationship as serious or permanent. She asked him to leave. He did so. However, Ms Mackee then texted him several times, and he replied, also by texting. Stating that he found the content of the texts 'strange', the male returned to Ms Mackee's apartment and rang her doorbell. There was no answer and, growing increasingly concerned, the male forced entry to the apartment. He found her on her bed, not clothed, and with a dustbin bag (bin liner) over her head. A canister was within the bin liner. She also had a collar around her neck. The male stated that, after attempting to resuscitate Ms Mackee and failing to do so, he panicked and deleted his texts from her phone, wiped the apartment of traces of himself, including his fingerprints and left. The following morning he reported to the police at a nearby town.
Linguistic input
The linguist had one side only of a cell (mobile) phone text conversation. The first issue was whether the texts of that evening, around the time of the incident, were consistent in style with the deceased's texting style. The second issue was whether analysis of the one-sided content would indicate that a 'conversation' was actually taking place, or whether it was possible that the available content had been fabricated. The third question asked was whether the content indicated any intention to commit suicide. On the first issue, it seemed the texts were consistent in style with those of the defendant, including several unusual features. On the second issue, the times of the incoming text messages were also available, in addition to the times of the outgoing messages as well as their content. A timeline could therefore be constructed of when messages went in and out, how long they may have taken to construct, etc. Both parties were highly experienced texters and appeared able to text between 15 and 25 characters per minute. The timeline showed that it would have been very difficult for the male to have fabricated the deceased's messages, given that there were sometimes overlaps between the two sets, sometimes delays, and sometimes almost simultaneous transmissions. These, the linguist suggested, appeared to resemble the way in which people converse through speech: they interrupt each other, talk over each other, there are long pauses between, interruptions, etc. It was suggested that the complexity of having to text, send it at a moment when a second text from another phone was in the process of being composed and about to be sent; decide the length of delay, or decide that two texts should overlap, or be simultaneous, would require a high cognitive load (memory, timing, dexterity) aside from having to send the deceased's texts in her own style, and that this - on balance - indicated that the deceased's texts were most probably not fabricated. On the third issue, whether the texts showed signs of suicidality, the linguist's ability to comment was limited, stating that this was more properly an issue for a psychologist. Examined by the coroner, the linguist noted that there was nothing in the content of the texts which referred to suicide. It was noted, for example, that the deceased appeared to express a desire to see the male again.
Outcome
The coroner found that there was no evidence to suggest the death had occurred suspiciously or by suicide, and ruled the cause to be accidental death.
Link
http://www.thetext.co.uk/cgi-bin/latest.pl?ref=
