Andrea Dunlop

She also doesn't specify exactly when on Friday or Saturday she's talking about.

Unfortunately, the sergeant doesn't ask her to clarify.

In the far more detailed interviews she did with the lead detective and the prosecutor, she doesn't mention seeing Nolan walk or crawl.

Here's what John said to the police about Saturday morning.

So no mention of steps there.

In her police interview, Danica recounts Nolan reaching up to her, but says nothing about him taking any steps.

John insists that Nolan was walking after the original seizure on Friday and presents this as exculpatory evidence that he did not cause the fatal injury to Nolan.

This is partly tied to the medical examiner's report, which we'll get into a lot more detail in our conversation with Dr. Vega.

Larry never mentions Nolan walking or crawling, and by his account, he quote, never made it to the floor on Saturday.

These steps, however they happened or whether they happened at all, may seem like a small detail, but child abuse medicine is very much about trying to reconcile the information provided from caretakers, the child's medical condition, and whatever other evidence you may have.

And according to Dr. Steven Boos, an experienced child abuse pediatrician we consulted on this case, these two steps are crucial to putting the puzzle together.

But to break this down, the reason these steps are so crucial is that they can tell us if the cervical spine injury observed at autopsy could have been an evolution of one injury, or whether it was necessarily a second, separate injury.

The differences in Dr. Sally Smith and Dr. Russell Vega's reports were ultimately minor but important.

Both doctors recognized the old and new rib fractures as signs of ongoing abuse.

But when it came to the fatal injuries, Dr. Smith's opinion centered on one incident timeframe on Friday while John was alone with Nolan, opining that the injuries to Nolan's back, neck, and brain happened all at once and that the spinal cord injuries observed at autopsy were an evolution of those original injuries.

and that the spinal cord injury was a herniation caused by brain swelling rather than a discrete injury.

This is the phenomenon Dr. Boos is pointing out, and something that has been written about by medical examiners like Dr. Mary Case.

Dr. Vega's report points to the fact that the spinal cord at the state of evolution that he observed would have led to quadriplegia and could have led to immediate death.

His report notes that the child was injured at the time the photos and videos were taken, agreeing with Smith's report that some serious injuries had happened in that time frame, when only John was present.

But Vega's evaluation leaves space for the possibility of a second injury incident the next morning, right before 911 was called, when both Larry and John were present in the house.