I'd have to go back and look at the report but I believe he was dead for around a week before being autopsied. I believe that the examiner said it was not possible to confirm or deny any marks on his skin that would have signified external trauma, such as that from a syringe or something if Lamo was "assassinated covertly".

In all honesty, Lamo did a lot of drugs in his earlier years and in his later years he was overweight... I suffer from similar kidney problems at just age 27 so it is honestly possible that he simply died of natural kidney failure from our supremely processed American diet.

How fast could kidney failure have reached a critical point? Couldn't he have sought medical assistance?

I just read the article and the journalist did a really good job of getting the medical examiner to cough up a few more details, as well as other people in Lamo's life.

Based on this evidence, I am relatively confident that Lamo died from acute toxicity that was accelerated by advanced stage kidney failure.

The cause of this kidney failure is almost without doubt due to the quantity, type, and lack of purity of all the internet drugs he was taking. He was obese at the time of his death, stealing pills, walking with a limp, and falling asleep in his food according to the people he lived with before he was evicted and transfered to a different apartment by himself.

He also hurt his leg on the night of his death and likely ingested a "normal" dose that for most people would be fine, but for a kidney failure patient would be deadly.

I am confident that he had kidney failure because his serum creatinine score was 55x above normal. Mine is just 3x above normal and I already have to eat a really restricted diet =0

That certainly looks like the cause then did they say what his Creatine level was.

When I was in hospital for my kidney transplant one of the patients in my bay was an older man who was self dosing with zinc and due to a reaction with his prescription meds had a total shut down of kidney function.

The score as measured at autopsy is in the medical examiner's pdf which is on his wiki page. I have really limited internet access right now otherwise I would get you a link!

I dont want to get the units or numbers wrong, but I remember it being something like 55 mmol when a normal score is 1mmol. It's been almost a year since I read the report in full. The examiner said that his creatinine score is higher than lethal injection recipients, hence the speculation about foul play.

Very interesting story you relayed~~ the kidneys are an incredibly sensitive organ compared to the stomach or lungs, it seems!

You can have catastrophic kidney failure and that can have very serious outcomes as opposed to a slow decline which is caught early on.

I suspect living out in the country and with the USA's medical system he may not have wanted or be able to access suitable medical advice.

For what it's worth, per the article: "...the manager of Shadybrook Senior Apartments found Lamo's body. He was lying on a pile of clothes in the bedroom and when she saw the blood pooling under his fingernails, she pulled a medical alert cord in the apartment."

So I would guess he wasn't that far along, relatively speaking, if it wasn't immediately obvious at a glance.

> how do we have a precise date for when he died?

maggots can tell us that. And there are the last messages sent also, that will help a lot to narrow the date.

If the data obtained by maggots predates the last messages we could expect foul game (sending messages after their death would need some explanation), but this is probably not what the researchers will find.

Based on all of the true crime stuff I watch/listen to...don’t we have a pretty good idea how long decomposition takes under many different circumstances?