Therefore, I believe that it's possible that Ms. Rappe had a ruptured bladder and was never raped at all. Sad that Mr. Arbuckle had to pay such a price for doctors with shallow knowledge of anatomy.

I read that a doctor gave drunken Rappe two shots of morphine for two days at the hotel. Could it contribute cause of her death somehow?

Not necessarily.

2. The initial autopsy was not done by the Coroner. Why? What was there to hide?

Most autopsies are performed without Coroners/Medical Examiners being involved. The reason autopsies are performed is to determine cause of death.

Now the doctors are said to know what they are talking about. That there was no sign of rape. Now if she had been ground to pulp by by a large but strong man, surely there would have been external evidence of same. Bruising? Signs of haemorrage.

Just say for fancy he did do it. O.K. he is guilty, but then so is Bambina Delmont for negligence in not taking that poor girl to a hospital, instead of sitting in a Hotel for days and then crying poor mouth. Explain that to me like I am a 4 year old.

1. How can fingerprints be faked?
2. Why did Prevon leave the entire USA?
3. Why were the victims utarus and anus removed?
4. Doctors and nurses found a lot of hand shaped bruises on her (ref: Nurses testify to bruises on Virginia Rappe, NYTimes 1921).

There was also something about a hotel room key that Fatty tried to buy from the attendant, some months previous to the death of Rappe.

Roscoe Arbuckles childhood would also fit the profile of a killer.

I think Rappe taunted Arbuckle, and he wasn't taking that from her and decided to throw her to the ground after he confronted her, where he would show her who was boss by laying on top of her and grinding her to pulp with his large but strong body. She couldn't cry out because the weight of him forced all air out of her chest, and causing her bladder to rupture. After which the agony would prevent her from speaking normally, while he enjoyed his frotage and her humilliation. At first he tormented her by telling her that he was a big name in comedy and no one would believe a 'Bum' like her anyway, then later felt guilty, but not enough to confess everything.

You can try to change the wikipedia entry. You might want to start a pool on how quickly someone removes your changes, there's quick money in it.

Wiki fans
Does anyone know that anyone can sign on and edit wikipedia? So if you find a error you can fix it.

> What happened to Ms Rappes' uterus?

Miss Rappe's bladder, uterus, and rectum were removed at autopsy, placed in a specimen jar, and presented into evidence at all the legal proceedings. After that it was probably discarded as medical waste.

> Why wasn't she taken to an acute hospital instead of a Maternity Hospital known for abortions?

Wakefield Hospital was an "acute hospital" that was "known for abortions" only by Minta Durfee and Adela Rogers St. Johns. Wakefield specialized in high-risk births, births which often culminated in caesarians; as it had two complete operating rooms, emergency patients of both genders were sometimes treated there, bed space permitting. The most likely reason Miss Rappe was taken to Wakefield is that it was located at 1065 Sutter Street, about 1/2 mile from the St. Francis Hotel, and was the closest hospital at which her attending physician had staff privileges. The building is now Raphael House, a shelter for homeless families:
http://www.raphaelhouse.org/).

>
> Why was the autopsy performed by a doctor there and not by a Forensics expert?

Autopsies are often performed at hospitals and the autopsy at Wakefield *was* performed by a forensics expert, Dr. William Ophuls. I might add that Dr. Ophuls was not just any old expert, he was one of the most respected pathologists on the west coast. Google establishes his bona fides; you can read more about him here:
http://elane.stanford.edu/wilson/html/photoalbum/index.html#id=portraits&num=14

Since Rappe's attending physician, Dr. Melville Rumwell, was as Assistant Professor of Surgery at Stanford Medical School (and the head of Stanford's outpatient clinic), I'm sure you can see that Dr. Ophuls participation in the autopsy is readily explained.

Witnesses Alice Blake and Zey Prevost did not say that they saw Rappe rip her clothing off. They said that when they entered the bedroom they saw Rappe pulling at the clothing at her waist. This behavior might have been the precursor to one of those incidents for which Rappe is well known–or perhaps she was trying to loosen the clothing around her waist because one of her major organs had just exploded and her abdomen had distended suddenly and painfully.

In any event, a propensity for ripping clothing after drinking does not satisfactorily explain a bladder rupture. Although it does argue phenomenal upper body strength.

I agree about St. Johns' unreliability. However, the first person to make the claim was Rappe's own manager who testified under oath to her propensity for tearing off her clothes at parties. See New York Times, Nov. 22, 1921.

Read a biography of Arbuckle. He never told anything to a 'manservant'.

Jerry Stahl based his book on the biographies and newspaper accounts but added a lot of material. It's called 'dramatic license'.

"I, Fatty" is a novel. It is fiction. Arbuckle wrote nothing about the case.

However, injury by catheter can almost certainly be ruled out. Catheterization took place at about 4:00 am the morning of September 6, about twelve hours after Rappe began giving abundant evidence that something was radically wrong. According to medical testimony catheterization was effected without incident; the catheter itself was submitted into evidence. None of the physicians who testified (this includes doctors who treated her when she was alive, those who were present at autopsy, those who performed the later pathological exam of her bladder ordered by the court, and both prosecution *and defense* expert witnesses) ever suggested that a catheterization mishap was responsible for the bladder rupture.

Arbuckle’s attorneys never questioned the fact that Rappe’s bladder ruptured during the time when she was behind closed (and locked) doors with Arbuckle. Their position was that absolutely no accident of any kind took place and that Rappe’s bladder ruptured spontaneously due to her allegedly diseased state.

As to the allegation of quackery (and I assume you derive that idea from Edmonds book?), all I can say is that Edmonds’ definition of quack is different from mine. All the doctors involved in her care were well respected; many were prominent. I can list their extensive qualifications if anyone is interested.

Why was Rappe not taken to a hospital immediately? I don’t know. All I can do is speculate based upon available evidence. But I will point out that the time of hospitalization isn’t germane to the cause of the bladder rupture.

As for Edmonds’ story about the knee in the gut; Edmonds states she was told this story by comic Joe Rock, and that Rock claimed that he got that version of events directly from Arbuckle. The story is a little strange. It is not in the least exculpatory and neither Rock nor Edmonds thought the scenario through to its logical conclusion. If Arbuckle did, in fact, accidentally knee Rappe in the abdomen, he never said a word about it to anyone at the time, including the doctors. If Rappe died as the result of that alleged blow, his silence constituted manifest negligence, and ergo, he would be guilty of manslaughter. And since Arbuckle never mentioned this incident while on the witness stand, Edmonds is implying that he lied under oath–which is perjury. I think that Mr. Rock was yanking someone’s chain.

As to the clothes-tearing story…the main source for that information is the spectacularly unreliable Adela Rogers St. Johns. YMMV.

The drinking and the fall could have done it. There was also one report that Arbuckle accidentally kneed the girl in the abdomen when she tickled him (FRAMED! by Andy Edmonds.)

There were several ways her bladder could have ruptured; the girl was also catheterized by some quack doctors. I would like to know more than anything why she wasn't taken to a hospital when she showed obvious signs of a surgical abdomen (hardness, thick blood in urine.)

Forensic evidence definitely ruled out rape (and any kind of previous surgery), but an autopsy performed four days after the event would not necessarily produce evidence of consensual sex. Arbuckle, however, entered room 1219 anywhere from 20 minutes to a half an hour after Rappe did, so if he was consumed with overwhelming lust it took him a while to figure it out. Pathological exam on Rappe's bladder showed evidence of cystitic inflammation, so the reason she entered room 1219 is because she really, really wanted to pee. It's not the most erotic scenario…unless you are *very* strange, and if you are Andre will just yank your response, so don’t bother. But I think we can safely conclude that neither party entered the room to get frisky.

You can read about bladder ruptures here: http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2856.htm

From that article: "Frequency of bladder rupture varies according to the following mechanisms of injury:

External trauma (82%) (car accident, fall, kicked in the gut, shot, or stabbed)
Iatrogenic (14%) (surgical or other medical screwup)
Intoxication (2.9%) (usually means the drunk doesn’t remember the blunt force trauma)
Spontaneous (<1%) (bladder just explodes for hell of it, statistically insignificant or not bloody likely, pal)

Of all bladder injuries, 60-85% are from blunt trauma and 15-40% are from a penetrating injury. The most common mechanisms of blunt trauma are motor vehicle accidents (87%), falls (7%), and assaults (6%). In penetrating traumas, the most frequent culprit is gunshot wounds (85%), followed by stabbings (15%).

We can rule out the car accident, gunshot, stabbing, and surgical screwup. In other words, while there might be other explanations, the overwhelmingly likely reason that Rappe's bladder ruptured is that she somehow got clocked in the abdomen.

1: Dunno, working on it! No publisher yet.
2. Yes.