Unsolved cases

The odd death of Michelle Von Emster

On Friday, April 15th, 1994 in San Diego, California on Sunset Cliffs. two surfers noticed seagulls perched on top of what appeared to be floating keel. Upon closer inspection, they notice that it was in fact the body pf Michelle Von Emster floating face down in a kelp bed.
Eventually, the body was taken to San Diego lifeguard headquarters at 4 p.m.

Michelle was found naked wearing only a brass bracelet and two rings. She had a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and had long brown hair. Medical Examiner, Robin Angle examined the body directly upon arrival to the Lifeguard headquarters and reported
"Large, tearing type wounds with missing tissue"
As the body was missing most of its right leg.

One thing worthy of note is hat he believed Michelle had not been in the water a long time, although he did not claim a cause of death in his report. The consensus on the boat was that this was most likely a shark attack. One day later, on April 16th, 1994, a formal autopsy was performed by San Diego medical examiner, Brian Blackbourne.
In addition to large tearing type wounds, the right leg was missing from the middle of the high down, her neck was broken:
"As if she'd been in a car wreck"
And had broken ribs, scraped bruises and contusions on the face, sand was found in Von Emster's mouth, throat, lungs and stomach. Furthermore, the report concluded that Von Emster had been alive when the injuries were inflicted upon her. According to Blackbourne, Michelle Von Emster was last seen in 8 P.M, which Blackbourne use establishing his timeline and place Michelle in the water at Midnight. Blackbourne arrived at the conclusion that it was a shark attack because lifeguards, Harbor police and local marine biologists at Scripps Institute said according to him, Michelle was attacked by a great white shark, forcing her to the bottom of the ocean where she broke her neck and swallowed sand and then died from blood loss and drowning and when you briefly look at the detail that seems highly plausible.

Let's look at a couple things that don't add up in regards to Michelle dying due to a shark attack. First off, Medical Examiner, Brian Blackbourne, in the man who concluded it was an attack by a great white had never seen a death caused by a shark attack before and neither had anybody who saw the body, the experts that Blackbourne consulted with at Scripps Institute never saw the body instead Blackbourne came to Scripps institute himself,  making the institute's assessment of Michelle's cause of death questionable to say the  least.
Additionally, many experts do not think this was a great white shark attack including Ralph Collier, the leading expert on Pacific Coast White Shark behavior and Ecology, after seeing the remains of Michelle's leg bone. Collier said:
"When a white shark bites off part of a limb, the break is clean, almost like you put it on a table saw. What remained of Michelle's femur was anything but. It looked like what happens when you get a piece of bamboo and whittle it down to a point with a knife. I've looked at close to 100 photos of cases that i have reviewed over the years, and I've never seen any bones that came to a point"

Another thing that seems strange was the notion that the sand had entered Michelle's body after her leg had been torn off:
" The damage would have severed her femoral artery and she would have bled to death quickly but for her to have sand in her stomach, she had to take a big gulping breath as she made contact with the sand"

Here's one last thought from Collier:
"There are too many things in this case that are not consistent with white shark behavior"

Another person against the notion of a great white shark attack is Richard Rosenblatt, the chairman of  Scripps Institute at the time, who initially consulted with Medical Examiner, Brian Blackbourne, on the case without seeing Michelle's body and when actually given the measurements of Michelle's wounds, Rosenblatt said that none of the marks on Michelle's body were caused by a white shark. And furthermore, if she had been bitten by a white shark, they most likely would have found a great white tooth broken off into her body and no great white teeth were found inside her body. There were however, bite marks left by blue sharks who definitely did feed on Michelle's body, but the Pathologist, Harry Bonnell, who examined the case, states that there was no evidence these bites occurred before her death. Another medical examiner, Glenn Wagner, re-examined the case in 2008 and also felt that her body had been scavenged by sharks after her death. One final point to disprove the theory of a shark attack is the fact that Michelle's leg was missing. Here's another quote from Scripps Institute Chairman, Richard Rosenblatt:
"If a shark had taken the leg, it could only have been a white shark"