Annie Borjesson
A post by Stronta Investigations
WHO MURDERED ANNIE BORJESSON?
To understand why Annie Borjesson did not deliberately drown herself in the sea on Saturday afternoon on 3rd December 2005 at Prestwick, Ayrshire, let’s explore the science.
The first post-mortem, carried out at Crosshouse hospital in Kilmarnock on Monday 5th December 2005 provided a standardised report of a death where there are ‘no suspicious circumstances’. In other words, the pathologists who were responsible for the report were indirectly supporting the police narrative – Annie’s death was a suicide so there was nothing further to investigate – just provide a report please.
The fact that the police said this in advance of Annie’s post-mortem result is disturbing and it was even reported in the local press, the information provided by ‘a police source’ that this was a tragic accident.
So, Annie was a young woman who had taken her own life despite a lack of corroborating evidence or any reasoning by the police, even basic conjecture, to explain why anyone living in Edinburgh would travel across Scotland to commit suicide by drowning at Prestwick.
So, was it a ‘tragic accident’ or ‘a suicide’?
There are some fundamental questions to answer which have never been fully addressed.
Annie’s body was subject to a second autopsy in Sweden in May 2007, some eighteen months after her body had been repatriated to Sweden.
Why wait eighteen months?
Bizarre though it sounds, the Swedish authorities had forgotten about Annie.
Analysis of Annie’s bone marrow revealed two frustules of a freshwater diatom, Navicula lanceolata. According to Professor Bertrand Ludes, based at the European Council of Legal Medicine in Strasbourg, the initial findings of this diatom should have been further confirmed or validated by analysis of other body organs such as lungs, liver and brain.
He stated that it was mandatory within the EU in cases of unexplained deaths.
His report is instructive and is quoted below:-
“it is mandatory to perform the analyses on closed organs (brain, liver, kidney and on
lung samples to validate the results obtained on bone marrow. The identification of
diatoms in the lungs may allow us to have an idea of the site of drowning.”
No such further analyses were carried out, despite the expected mandate to confirm the existence of the diatom in other body organs. Based on the police narrative in Scotland, the presumption of
‘suicide’ and the mind-set of the personnel involved would preclude further investigation, nor the provision of a forensic pathologist.
Professor Bertrand Ludes (9th May 2013) reported that he was in favour of a death by drowning but that his hypothesis should be confirmed by further tests on the tissue samples kept in paraffin at RMV, the Swedish Institute of Forensic Medicine.
Referring to a Swedish diatom expert, Professor Pauline Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, and the presence of the freshwater diatom found in Annie’s bone marrow, she indicated that the salinity of the seawater at Prestwick bay was between 29 and 34 parts per thousand, meaning it was 2.9%-3.4% parts per hundred.
So, what does the science tell us? Again, the words of the Swedish diatom expert make chilling reading:-
“that is a salinity halt where Navicula lanceolata should not occur.”
Professor Ludes concluded in his letter to the Borjesson family:-
“there are thousands of other species that are more common in sea water.”
There is a major difficulty here because if Annie took her own life by walking into the sea at low tide, casting off her goose down jacket and travel bag and drowning, then there should be significant volumes of marine diatoms in her stomach, lungs and from the frothing found in her nasal cavities.
No mention of marine diatoms can be found in the pathology report from Crosshouse hospital. nor the later report from the Swedish authorities.
So, can a conclusion be reached that Annie did not drown in the sea, that she was not suicidal, that she did not take her own life?
Is it more likely that between arriving in Prestwick, being seen on the Esplanade around 4:30 pm, which has never been confirmed, and being found below the Esplanade wall the following morning at 8:23 am that she was dumped there?
In other words, she had been drowned in a freshwater environment, murdered, and then conveniently found on the beach below the parapet on Sunday morning.
How long had she been in the water?
What forensic information was collected at the time Annie was found which may have helped establish the time of death?
No one has ever reported the state of her body, the degree of rigor, the likelihood of a time-line suggesting how long she had been in the water.
Seemingly, overlooking this essential part of the forensic investigative process means that if Annie was seen on the esplanade at 4:30 pm on Saturday afternoon and then walked into the sea, a forensic pathologist would be able to determine if the body had been in the sea for a significant length of time before being found on the beach at 8:23 am the following morning.
One police source suggested that the body was in such a poor state because it had been in the water for ‘a few days’ when in reality, the maximum length of time could not have exceeded sixteen hours.
The state of the body reported in the pathology report did not suggest a time of death.
There is only a death certificate giving the time of death as 10:30 am on Sunday 4th. December when her body was removed from the beach.
Several requests to the Crown Office about the investigation into Annie’s death have been met with very limited responses. Most disheartening, replies to our investigation are that further disclosures are ‘not in the public interest.’
There is something very disturbing about the reluctance of the Scottish authorities to fully investigate this death.
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