The burning death of Georgia’s Debbie Collier was ruled a suicide late last year, months after police found her naked in the woods, fallen down an embankment and grasping at a tree with “charring” on her stomach – however, a newly revealed autopsy report found significantly more burns on her body.
Collier, a 59-year-old office manager from Athens, died from “inhalation of superheated gases and thermal injuries and hydrocodone intoxication,” a source told Fox News Digital in November.
Although she had a prescription for the opioid painkiller, the hydrocodone levels in her system surpassed the expected amount roughly four times over, according to the source.
Collier was found dead and naked on Sept. 11 in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest south of Clayton, a 90-minute drive from her home in Athens. Her husband, Steven Collier, reported her missing around 6 p.m. the previous day. She was discovered a few feet downhill from the site of a small fire that burnt up many of her belongings, with soot in her nostrils.
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Police found a gas cap nearby, scorched wood, burned personal items and the melted remnant of a plastic fuel jug.
An autopsy report obtained Monday by the New York Post reveals that the “charring” to her stomach was not a full description of the burns she’d suffered. She had “second- and third-degree burns involving 80% of the total body surface area,” leaving her with “charred leathery skin.”
“Autopsy examination revealed thermal injuries of the external body surface and of the traceal mucosa (windpipe), no deposited soot in the airway, and no significant elevation of blood carboxyhemoglobin,” the Post quoted in an excerpt of the report.
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She had “no other significant injuries” and the authors theorized the burns may have come from a “sudden, intense…
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