“More than two weeks since the discovery of Shelly Hayden’s naked body in the swirling rapids below the Church Falls dam and Sidney was not even close to reaching his own conclusion in the child’s death. That day, the coroner’s inquest had released its own official verdict: death by misadventure. Womack was skeptical.Unable to determine a precise cause for either how the child found her way into the river or how she died, the coroner’s report suggested Shelly had plunged accidentally from the fu...ll seventy-five foot height of the Church Falls Bluff. She had taken the brunt of her impact with the water on the upper abdomen and chest, the force stopping her heart and causing her death. Her fully clothed body, the coroner postulated, remained swirling in the whirlpool at the base of the falls, possibly for days, before finally dislodging and becoming wedged in the rocks below the dam. During the time she was in the water, her lightweight summer clothing had been stripped from her body.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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