Michelle Von Emster case

Von Emster was last seen around 8 p.m. in San Diego on April 14. She was wearing a green trench coat and carried a purse, which would later be found along a busy stretch of beach the next day. This sighting helped establish a timeline for her last hours.[1]

During the early morning of Friday, April 15, 1994, two local surfers walking near the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park and Beach in San Diego discovered a body floating face-down in kelp.[3][1] The body was reported and moved to the San Diego Lifeguard Headquarters, where an official investigation was opened. Michelle von Emster was naked at the time of her discovery, wearing only jewelry. When medical examiner Robert Engle inspected the body, he described "large, tearing-type wounds with missing tissue". Michelle's right leg was missing from the thigh down. Engle believed von Emster had not been in the water a long time.[1]

Initially, the cause of death was marked Unknown, with the unproven assumption that it was simply a shark attack.

On April 16, 1994, an official autopsy was performed by San Diego Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne. According to the official report, Michelle's right leg was missing from the thigh down. In addition, von Emster suffered a broken neck, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and various scrapes and contusions on her face and torso. There were also large quantities of sand found in her mouth, lungs, throat, and stomach. The autopsy states that Michelle was alive when her injuries were inflicted, and would have had to have taken a large breath or gulp for all the sand to end up inside of her.[4][1]

Blackbourne ruled Michelle's death a shark attack. However, it's important to note that Blackbourne had never performed an autopsy on a shark attack victim before, and neither had anyone who viewed the body.

Von Emster's death is considered, officially, the result of a great white shark attack. The coroner's examination concluded that she had gone swimming, or "entered the water", around midnight and was shortly thereafter attacked by a shark. It also appeared that her body had subsequently been scavenged by blue sharks postmortem.

Unofficially the case remains a mystery for many who believe that her injuries are not consistent with a shark attack, and that something else must have caused her death before she entered the water. Proponents for an alternate theory regarding her death point to specific facts that appear to counter the evidence cited in the official autopsy report. For example, the water temperature was about 59 degrees Fahrenheit which is likely too cold for anyone to consider a nude midnight swim; and her injuries are, according to shark attack experts, inconsistent with shark attacks. These include facial bruising, a broken neck, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and sand in her stomach.

In particular, shark expert Ralph Collier commented "...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 leg was anything but."[1] A pointed separation might indicate multiple cutting events on that particular bone which would literally whittle it into a point. An event like this could be consistent with the bone being repeatedly cut by a boat propeller, which is one possibility that Collier allegedly suggests to Decker during a phone call in which Collier is quoted as saying "Michelle von Emster was unequivocally not killed by a shark."[3]

In addition, once Michelle's leg had been severed, she would have bled out quickly from a severed femoral artery.[1] This would have made it extremely difficult to take a large breath, as she would have had to have done to get the sand into her stomach. This makes the theory that a shark forced her to the bottom of the ocean (where she took a breath and swallowed sand) extremely unlikely.

Initial suspicion, among theorists, fell upon one Edwin Decker, who had a short-lived romantic encounter with Michelle two nights before her body was found. Suspicion was drawn to Decker after he penned a mysterious, morbid poem about Michelle after her death,[1]

Another potential suspect was revealed when a co-worker at an office supply store where Michelle had previously worked saw a man making several copies of the original autopsy report shortly after the investigation was concluded. This co-worker claimed the man had a motorcycle. This last suspect theory ties in with a workplace stalker Michelle once complained about, who also owned a motorcycle.[3][1]

Further adding to speculations of a possible murder scenario is the fact that her clothes were never found and her purse, with money and other items intact, was found in an obvious location not far away.[1]

At the urging of Edwin Decker and journalist Neal Matthews, Michelle's autopsy report was reviewed in 2008[5][1] by new chief medical examiner Glen Wagner who, according to an article by Decker, concluded that there seemed to be some questionable evidence but not enough to justify amending her death certificate.

Michelle's case was profiled on Buzzfeed Unsolved, a mystery series on YouTube reviewing the details of her case. Hosts Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej noted suspicious details in Michelle's autopsy, and developed three primary theories for Michelle's death: 1. That Michelle was indeed attacked by a shark, 2. that Michelle jumped and was later fed on by sharks, or 3. that Michelle was murdered, perhaps by a rebuffed love interest or by an unnamed stalker.[6]

While prevailing opinion has it that von Emster was the victim of a shark attack, authorities on scene had never investigated a death by shark attack before, and so may not have been qualified to pass on the cause of death. In addition, when experts were later shown the body, some claimed the injuries did not match the measurements of a great white shark. Officially the case is closed, but the case of Michelle von Emster's death remains a mystery to those who do not agree with the official cause of death: a great white shark attack.[4][5][1][3]

Currently, the Global Shark Attack File does not recognize von Emster's incident as a fatal shark attack.