Let's talk about Richard Simmons' autopsy and whether or not we believe the official story

Here are two odd things i was thinking about, first the autopsy of Richard Simmons.

Richard's cause of death was determined by the medical examiner to be "sequelae of blunt force traumatic injuries" due to a "ground level fall" The manner of death was ruled accidental.

I am just going to share this link to the daily mail article regarding this new information and also a few quotes and my thoughts. Keep in mind, I am a true crime person so I do tend to view things suspiciously especially when we are talking about someone like Richard Simmons. And i can admit i am probably way off base, but here we are on a beautiful Friday morning and I've got my coffee and I'm just surfing the web here.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

I am actually hoping someone can debunk my thoughts on this information, i am hoping someone has experience with elderly parents injuring themselves. We will never know Richard's actual mental state or what type of person he was, deep inside. But for background we are probably all aware of the prior ongoing dramas about his whereabouts, or whether the assistant was doing something to keep him out of the public eye. TMZ even made a documentary about it.

Now, the medical examiner says this:

The autopsy report also showed Simmons had a 'palpable fracture' on his left femur and contusions and abrasions on his right forehead, posterior scalp, arms and other parts of his body.

Ok, sounds like he was pretty badly injured right? Broken femur which i suppose can be common for older people, perhaps Richard had some osteoporosis though i haven't seen that reported anywhere so far. Contusions and abrasions on his forehead AND the back of his head? That's a little more odd. Perhaps he had fallen more than one, we don't have information on that though. We have what the housekeeper/assistant said which i will get to in a minute. Also contusions and abrasions on his arms and "other parts of his body" whatever that means.

So apparently Richard fell, broken his femur which "palpable" as it is described means it could have been felt through the skin. So it was probably very obviously broken. In my mind. I have never dealt with an elderly person breaking their femur to know how they would react or what the pain level on that would be. Then maybe he got all the bruises and injuries to both sides of his head, arms and other parts of his body from the fall? I guess? I don't know that's why i am asking the questions, and your guys' opinions on whether this whole thing sounds plausible, if plausible, how possible, and what do you make of the statement from Richard's brother which i will get to after i tell you what the housekeeper/assistant said happened that night to Richard.

According to the report, Simmons did suffer a fall the evening of August 12 but decided not to seek medical attention right away because 'he wanted to spend his birthday' which was the next day at home. Instead, his caretaker helped Simmons back into bed. 'The decedent reportedly had an episode of dizziness after using the bathroom and collapsed on the floor,' an investigator with the LA County Medical Examiner's Office wrote. 'It is unknown if the decedent struck his head.' His secretary, who visited the fitness guru, told officials Simmons' 'speech seemed slurred'. His caretaker told officials Simmons did take medication before he went to sleep.

So he falls, breaks his leg, has all these injuries to himself and he is so stubborn he says, no i don't need help. Just get me back to bed??? Was Richard depressed? I think there is always an element of "man behind the mask" with these seemingly effervescent personalities, like Robin Williams also had this kind of inner demons that he masked with his dynamic personality. So i think it is possible maybe Richard just didn't want to go to the hospital because he was tired of it all. The medication on his toxicology report was all medication he had been prescribed and was in therapeutic amounts so he was not drugged. At least not drugged by something the toxicology tested for. If they didn't test for something, we won't know.

Now, the medical examiner also said that Richard had cardiovascular disease. But the actual cause of death was the blunt force traumas resulting from the fall. And the manner of death was accidental. Here is what the brother said about all this:

Simmons' brother, Lenny, announced last week the death was ruled 'accidental due to complications from recent falls and heart disease as a contributing factor.'

no, Lenny. heart disease was not a "contributing factor". The report simply noted it. The cause is listed as blunt force trauma injuries, and the manner is accidental.

I get that someone who has no medical background or who has never read an autopsy report might be confused and making misstatements, but i just think it is interesting that he says it's accidental, related to complications from "recent falls" when there is no other fall or recent fall noted. Just the one that happened when he supposedly "got dizzy" and fell which was the fall directly seeming to be related to the injuries listed on the autopsy report. Why not mention other falls? Why is the heart disease angle even relevant at all when the housekeeper says this:

The next day at about 9:30 am, his caretaker found Simmons unresponsive on his bedroom floor.

So when did the broken femur actually happen? Did Richard try and get up in the morning and fall yet again and that is when this all happened? or did the broken femur happen the night before? Was he not badly injured in the fall the night before and if that is the case, why was he slurring his words when the secretary visited him? Did some injuries happen the night before and then when he tried to get out of bed in the morning he fell again and broke his leg and got even more injured? Does that explain the injuries to BOTH sides of his head front and back? And other places on his body? Because for the life of me, I can't imagine anyone getting that badly injured and then just saying, "no of course i don't need a doctor, just help me get back into bed I'm fine"

I just found this to be just odd. But again, i don't know about what goes on when elderly people fall, so i don't know if all these injuries and things are normal par for the course from a fall with an elderly person or not. Just seems like a terrible end for a bright light in the world, know what i mean?

You guys the weirdest thing just happened. I was going to have a second case here that is of a recent celebrity adjacent supposed suicide and as I was typing it up i got the strongest, strangest feeling that not only am i right about this, i should not post about this because it will somehow put me in danger. I don't know why, i have no connection to these people whatsoever, but i listen to my gut on things and i am not going to post about it at this time. So, Let's talk about Richard. What do we think is going on here? Typical fall for an older person? Something more sinister???

The injuries sound consistent with a fall down the stairs. Any healthy adult could easily sustain such injuries depending on the height and number of stairs including whether you only slid or rolled down in a rapid tumble. Falling down the stairs is no joke and kills people every year everywhere on Earth. We add in an elderly individual with weaker bones over time and easily a fall down the stairs can cause these injuries and death.

Whether he was pushed/thrown, accidentally slipped in some way, or tossed himself from mental health issues is to be determined. However those injuries sound very close to a fall down the stairs, likely the rollig tumbling kind not the slide.

Just wanted to add stairs arent the only possibility, rocky hillsides and other stepped public structures (decorative, artistic or agricultural) could also do this. It seems though, the statement is not very specific about a fall, is this what you are inferring?

To some extent people must trust whatever a coroner says, not withstanding if the coroner was somehow coerced into a wrong diagnosis. As you say you're interested in true crime, but, blunt force trauma is a very wide ranging diagnosis. IE. Blunt force trauma from a fall would not be the same as blunt force from, say, a hammer. This is where you trust a coroner (the man who deals with death making injuries) to recognise the difference.
As you've put, if a person is suffering or starting to suffer from osteoarthritis, it can lead to breaks that even the recipient doesn't know what they've done. As my cousin suffers and she just broke an arm getting up from a chair, and in the ensuing scans they said she had broken her spine a while ago but she didn't know or feel it.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
The injuries sound consistent with a fall down the stairs. Any healthy adult could easily sustain such injuries depending on the height and number of stairs including whether you only slid or rolled down in a rapid tumble. Falling down the stairs is no joke and kills people every year everywhere on Earth. We add in an elderly individual with weaker bones over time and easily a fall down the stairs can cause these injuries and death.

Whether he was pushed/thrown, accidentally slipped in some way, or tossed himself from mental health issues is to be determined. However those injuries sound very close to a fall down the stairs, likely the rollig tumbling kind not the slide.

Just wanted to add stairs arent the only possibility, rocky hillsides and other stepped public structures (decorative, artistic or agricultural) could also do this. It seems though, the statement is not very specific about a fall, is this what you are inferring?

According to the medical examiner all this happened from a "ground level fall" yes i thought it did sound consistent with a fall down stairs or something similar, but ground level fall means like either he tripped and fell or like they said he was supposedly dizzy and just fell down. like not down stairs, just on a level surface and THAT is what sounds so strange to me. Like all of the injuries don't seem possible from a ground level fall. To me. But i am not an expert or anything.

I am not a "spring chicken" anymore. I have Arthur as a permanent friend as we say. I can walk up and down flights of stairs but I have trouble on flat ground moving because just walking hurts but going up and down seems to be a different motion. I can even jog somedays for a short burst, but mostly my stability would be an issue other days due to acute pain making my leg lock up. My guess is one of his legs locked up near the stairs on the way down or on them. Once, my friends parents started with falls on flat ground I saw them seem to go fast. IfI start getting that kind of wobbly, I expect to not be able to handle the stairs like I do now. For now, I am wobbly on rocky ground and loose soil and have to be careful.

a reply to: crayzeed

This is what i was wondering, I haven't been able to find out whether or not Richard had osteoporosis or something similar, but I was wondering if someone could break their leg like that and not feel so much pain. I haven't ever broken any bones so i don't know how painful it is it just sounds and looks very painful to me. I don't doubt the medical examiner's opinion, i am questioning more the circumstance of how these injuries actually happened. The story from those surrounding Richard doesn't quite add up to me with the injuries. It just seems like a lot of injuries to not get medical help for, which is why i was also wondering about his mental state. It seems like a lot to happen just from falling at ground level, but it's possible he fell more than once. The injuries to both the front and back of his head are odd to me if he didn't fall more than once, so some injuries must have happened the night before and then i guess he must have tried to get up in the morning and fallen again and sustained more injuries that is the only thing that seems plausible to me.

The ruling of blunt force trauma and manner accidental leaves it pretty wide open for speculation on how those injuries actually occured, if they weren't the result of a ground level fall.

a reply to: Justoneman
my problem is with the injuries on all sides of the body. If we accept the integrity of this examiner, my only other theory is a disturbed individual just throwing their body into surfaces to induce injury, unless he was beat and abused by another who has yet to be identified.

Palpable means 'can be touched or felt'. For this kind of fracture to occur with the femur, the biggest bone in out body sounds nasty. With all the other injuries sounds more like he got beat up rather than just falling in the bathroom.

A bad heart can cause fainting and dizziness and be a cause when some people fall.

Something about this case stinks with the image presented so far.

I was going to have a second case here that is of a recent celebrity adjacent supposed suicide and as I was typing it up i got the strongest, strangest feeling that not only am i right about this, i should not post about this because it will somehow put me in danger.

Does it somehow involve a migrant and you are worried about the UK police locking you up for talking about it? Be careful with that self censorship, that is what the system wants to maintain its control. I have has a similar feeling at times when posting about some things, some crimes are just too big to ignore. It is a test of character if you do push on regardless.

If you are personally entangled in some situations, can be a place for discretion if there is a valid and real threat around.

Now look into Bob Saget and Mathew Perry who we now know was being manipulated by 2 DOCTORS!

Equally good that you are at least looking into this!

a reply to: worldstarcountry

That's the fall location I was coming to myself. Stairs will do that. It may be he crawled somewhere where he was found and nobody realized he took a tumble on the stairs. If he was wearing long pajamas or loose pants, a broken leg, assuming it wasn't a compound fracture he may not have felt, especially if he had other injuries triggering pain.

Having a 90 year old dementia victim mother and my conversations with others; many, many others, dementia is very common in the elderly. My mother for example has had UTIs over the past year that put her in the hospital as the infection went from her bladder into her blood - and she never complained about any pain associated with it, just became unresponsive and fell down.

originally posted by: crayzeed
To some extent people must trust whatever a coroner says...

Nope.

The coroner is an agent of the state. I take everything the state or an agent of the state says with a grain of salt. Question everything. They even lie when it'd be better for them to tell the truth.

Was a timeline given for the injuries, I.E. were some older than others?

It's not unusual for older folks to lose their balance or feel light-headed, especially if rising too fast or turning quickly. My grandad (84 y/o)was walking in the yard and fell after a slight dizzy spell. He managed to walk back to the house with a broken hip, but it took Grandma quite a bit of time to convince him to be seen by a doctor. Older people can be pretty stuborn. lol

My son is only 51 but he seems to break easily. He turned to get something from the fridge, his foot rolled and his ank,e snapped. I've broken my foot the same way-twice. lol

I just wonder if Simons injuries could have happened over a one or two day period. Maybe injuries from the initial fall, and perhaps one or more falls during trips to the bathroom during the night?

He had Diphenhydramine (an antihistamine), Trazodone (an antidepressant) and Zolpidem (a sleep aid) in his system which could certainly have made him a bit wobbly as well as the heart disease (atherosclerosis) he suffered from.

a reply to: nugget1

No timeline! They just talk about him falling on his way back to his bedroom from his bathroom. They don't mention previous falls but the housekeeper said she found him on the floor that morning so thats why I think he had to have fallen at least twice in a short time span IF the story we are being told is accurate from the housekeeper. But there has been controversy over whether this person was controlling Richard before and keeping him out of the public eye like I said there is a short documentary about it called I think "Where is Richard Simmons?"

It just seems like a lot to happen from one fall at ground level like what they're claiming or the only information we have so far.

a reply to: Shoshanna

Yeah, too much information missing to draw any kind of conclusion. The most key question in my mind would be is how would the housekeeper -or anyone else- benefit from his death? If some kind of motive could be found I'd be more inclined to believe it was suspicious.

Simions disapperaed from the public due to some mental health issues and years later he died, which reminds me of Howard Huges, sans the vast fortune.