UPDATE: For documentation of my hassles with Microsoft Word (as much documentation as Microsoft will allow me to have, that is) see my post at https://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/i-did-not-lie-about-microsoft-word/ .
Summary of that: For one session, and one session only, the rotate function was corrupted in my Word program. Word crashed that session dozens of times this morning and will not let me restart Word until I agree to have it do so without recovering the files with the history of that corrupted session. Microsoft Diagnostics could find no explanation for what was wrong, and I was able to start a NEW session of Word with the rotate function working fine, even as the other session of Word is stuck in an infinite loop waiting for me to say it can close without recovering the history of the corrupted session.
OK, big update here. A commenter told me to do the proportions using the whole photo and I would come up with a width of 16 or maybe 17 inches. Didn’t make sense to me but I tried it. He/she was right. I wasn’t sure whether Word was being weird on me as it sometimes does so I did the math, using proportions. The original image was 7 squares wide by 27 squares high so I did the proportion 7/27=x/62 which came up with x being 16.
So then I sought to understand why it didn’t work to use half the image. The proportions should stay the same no matter whether I used half the image or the whole image, because I used the corner arrow to enlarge. So I got the image of Fuddy beside Mark Miller again, cropped it to the width of the elbows (since that’s where the funeral home measures) and used the corner arrow to enlarge it to a height of 62 squares. The width was 20 squares. So the corner arrow wasn’t the problem. I was baffled.
I wondered how the body really would lay in the casket so I rotated the image to the left so I could put it next to the rectangle representing the size of the bottom of the casket. When I dragged it there Fuddy’s width was even with the width of the casket. I knew that wasn’t right, because her width was supposed to be 20 squares and the width of the casket was supposed to be 25.
I hit the undo button to get me back to the point before the image was rotated left. 20×31. Then I rotated it left again and counted the squares. Instead of being a rotated 20×31 it was 25×26. Word’s rotation totally changed the image.
Moral of the story: Never trust Microsoft. How many of the rest of you get the same result when you rotate an image? Please let me know because I need to know if something bad has been done to my computer to make it act like this.
Thank you, Raicha, for pointing out the error. That’s why I “show my work” – so somebody can show me where I’m wrong, if I’m wrong. The name-calling and insinuations about my mental health get nowhere with me, WordPress posters. If you want me to listen to reason then try reasoning with me. I go where the facts take me. In this case it helped me find out that either Microsoft Word is a worthless piece of crap, or else my computer has once again been messed with.
So my conclusion is totally reversed now: Fuddy would have easily fit inside a standard casket. My apologies to everyone for being stupid enough to think that Microsoft would ever be accurate.
I still don’t believe she WAS in the casket at the funeral, because the image of her in it had to be photoshopped by KITV. And there’s more that I haven’t gotten to yet also but I suppose I first better find out what else on my computer is pretending to work but doesn’t. Please let me know if this is a problem everybody has, or whether it is peculiar to my computer for some reason…
I will update the PDF so that everybody can know what happened.
Conclusion: Fuddy would barely have fit in this casket. Her arms would have had to be above the rest of her body. To have her wrists at the angle portrayed in the photoshopped image she would have had to be in an oversized casket but this is not an oversized casket.
Casket Analysis with Gridlines – Revised Twice
Looks like the grid lines didn’t transfer to the PDF and photos of the screen weren’t clear so I’ll try jpg’s made from screenshots of my screen. We’ll see if this works:
Butterdezillion's Blog 
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In response to Butterdezillion’s essays on whether Loretta Fuddy was in the open casket viewed by hundreds of people who knew her well on December 21, 2013:
A. Let’s Start With Casket Dimensions
What the actual experts say:
The funeral director will measure the person at their widest point, this is typically from the bend in the elbow to other while the hands rest on the deceased’s abdomen. By this measurement, the funeral director can determine if an oversize casket is needed. Our normal caskets have an inside width of 23.5” and are 79” long (6 foot 7 inches). Men that are 6 feet tall and 240 pounds can usually fit in a normal casket.
http://www.thecasketdepot.com/faq.html
Casket are available in a huge variety of sizes (and shapes, for that matter, but that discussion is best left for another article), but most casket sizes fall within an inch or two of the following dimensions: 84 inches long, 28 inches wide, and 23 inches tall. When you consider that the average person’s body is about 60 inches long (6 feet), 18 inches wide and 6 inches high, the typical casket size should be certainly large enough to fit all but the largest of people.
http://www.funeral-caskets.com/Casket-Sizes-information.php
Standard caskets are between 24 and 27 inches wide at the hardware panel, and 80 to 88 inches long. An oversize casket is anything larger than a standard casket. Most of the major casket manufacturers carry a line of oversize caskets.
http://www.oversizecasket.com/funeralprofessional.html
The average casket dimensions are 84 inches by 28 inches and 23 inches in height.
http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/casket-dimensions/
16. What are the dimensions of a casket?
Standard casket dimensions interior are 74″L x 23″W x 12″H. Exterior dimensions are
83″L x 28″W x 23″H
Click to access FAQ_Funeral.pdf
Conclusion 1:
The Fuddy casket interior was at least 23” wide and 74” long. According to the experts, this would hold a man of 240 lbs and 6.1” tall.
Determining the size of an object from a partial photo taken from the internet is not acceptable scientific method under the law of any state in the union. Butterdezillion’s methodology is flawed in that:
• She assumes the casket is 84” long without any proof whatsoever. While many caskets are that length, some are only 80” and others are 88”, according the experts.
• She assumes that this was not an oversize casket, without any proof whatsoever. The interior width may have been much wider than 23”.
• The “scaling” of a photo of Loretta Fuddy is completely invalid, since we don’t know the dimensions of the casket. Placing Ms. Fuddy’s photo against a 31” scale, measured at her widest point, proves nothing if it is compared against a casket of unknown dimensions.
B. Loretta Fuddy’s Dimensions
Although I cannot find a source online to determine Loretta Fuddy’s height and weight, it is undisputed that she was nowhere near 6 feet tall. But let’s take Butterdezillion’s assumption that Ms. Fuddy was 5’2” and also assume that the full length photo she used was not distorted to begin with.
1. Place the full length photo on a grid where each square is 1” and the assumed height of Ms. Fuddy’s body is 62”.
2. Then take the measurement across to find the body width: 16” approximately, 17” to be generous.
Conclusion: Ms. Fuddy could be buried in a standard casket 23” wide.
You’re right. Thank you for posting this. When you rotate the image on your computer, does it change the dimensions of the image?
Amazing. So you get the wrong results because you use the wrong tools and seem to have no grasp of even junior high level maths…
and you interpret this as possible evidence your computer has been tampered with?
On the plus side, you could always apply for a job on Arpaio’s team of photoshop experts 🙂 you seem to have the required level of expertise.
I’ve got the photos to show that this was a hit-job, where the rotate function was corrupted for just one session – and Microsoft won’t let me exit that session until I agree to do so without having the records of the session recovered. See my latest post.
In response to your points, we use what information we have. I was trying to get perspective on relative sizes because it had been said that the dark blobs protruding in the Honolulu Diocese photo were her hair, chest, and folded hands. The only reason I did anything besides get a perspective from which to evaluate those claims is because Microsoft Word changed the image when I rotated it. Why do you think that happened? Does that happen on your computer?
My methodology was as factually sound as I could make it given the information I had. I was looking for a ballpark idea of how the body would fit in the casket. The basic information that you gave pretty much comes to the same average numbers as I used, and the information you gave about the method of determining casket size is what I’ve been saying this afternoon on Free Republic.
IOW, where we differed is that your Microsoft Word worked and mine didn’t. Congratulations.
Again, I do thank you for alerting me to the inaccuracies of Microsoft Word.
I didn’t use Word. I took the full length photo directly from your pdf. I didn’t alter it in any way. I placed in an Excel sheet and adjusted the size of all cells in the sheet so that I had a grid that measured 62 units down the length of the photo. Then I counted the units across the width.
All of this, either your method or mine, is nothing more than an approximation, given that the image used may be distorted to begin with and Ms. Fuddy may have been taller or shorter than 5’2″. I took trigonometry. Determining measurements from internet photos is not how it is done.
I also took trig.
So how DO you get a perspective – using objective measurement rather than the “you’re crazy” and “I think it would be like this” methods employed by everybody else thus far – for how the body would fit in a casket, given the resources that are available? What does your trig book tell you to use?
The lengths of the sides of a right angle triangle and the angles between those sides have fixed relationships: that is, if at least the length of one side and the value of one angle is known all other angles and lengths can be determined algorithmically.
Since you cannot determine the length of one side or the value of any angle from a photograph, you cannot use trigonometry to find the other values either.
The only way you can estimate anything about Ms. Fuddy’s placement in the casket is by assuming her height and assuming a casket size. That’s not the same as a factual, scientific conclusion.
Thank you. Like I said, we use what we have. This method wasn’t perfect but it was a lot better than “That must be her hair, chest, and hands because I just think so”. And if Word’s rotate function hadn’t been corrupted for that one session where I was working on getting perspective, the method would have given an accurate picture and we would be trying to figure out the Diocese’s photo so this can make sense to me.
As someone who not only worked with Loretta Fuddy, but also mourned her loss and paid my respects to her family at the funeral service where this shameless picture is purported to have been taken, all I can say is that the memory of a wonderful woman is being disgraced by feckless, soulless, disrespectful, and unscrupulous morons like yourselves.
The state of Hawaii lost a champion of the vulnerable among us. Her death was a tragedy. And the remembrance ceremony for her drew hundreds. I was there. I saw her resting in peace. I wept for her.
This speculation of yours about her arms and caskets is not only wildly off-base but it is idiotic. It is pathetic. I wouldn’t wish this kind of cruelty on my worst enemy, but for you to do this to a woman I respect makes me realize that there is evil in this world, and it comes directly from people like you and all the ones just like you, who stand in superior moral judgement of others while exhibiting the most vile, malicious, and hateful behavior.
Why did KITV photoshop in an image of the casket with the hands folded?
Also, what shameless picture are you talking about? The Honolulu Diocese picture? The kitv photoshop of the hands in the casket? Which picture is shamelsss and what makes it shameless?
I’m sure Loretta was much loved and I mean no disrespect to anyone. I just want to know the truth.
Butterdezillion, on other issues, I have long admired your brave and thorough reporting and the scientific sturdiness of your analyses. But this issue evokes such a degree of windmill-jousting that Don Quixote would have to blush.
Butter, have you not considered the likelihood that image #1 is a stock photo used for funerals in general? Note that the casket in image #1 has white cloth outside and lavender cloth inside, while images #2 through #5 of the casket in Ms. Fuddy’s funeral service show similar lavender cloth within and without.
No one else, and specifically, no one who attended the funeral, has made mention of a body swap in the open casket. In any case, Ms. Fuddy’s body (the real one!) is being autopsied, although by a medical examiner who is subject to government control.
All this fuss seems unwarranted, especially if the purpose is to arouse suspicion about a fatal heart incident in a sedentary, 65-year-old office worker, who had just lived through the terror and chaotic excitement of an extraordinary crash landing on a choppy ocean, with no engine.
Come on, get real! We have enough bogeymen in Washington, fake and genuine, that we don’t need to keep going back to Hawaii to make more.
Again, thank you for all your good work, researching and reporting.
It’s possible that it’s a stock photo. There are anomalies such as you’ve noted. The wall of the casket right behind the head is straight across in both the photo with the hands and in the photos of the mourners passing by the casket at the front of the church, but the Diocese photo, taken when Abercrombie was speaking, has that same wall with a lower and a higher part. James Ahlo called one of the photos “shameless” and said that it “purported” to be taken at the funeral, so it seems like he’s saying that at least one of those photos was NOT taken at the funeral. Which one? All the photos I used were from KHON, KITV, or the Honolulu Diocese, claiming that it was from her funeral. In the case of the hands showing, there is video of a woman patting that casket, seemingly in the line at the back of the church at Fuddy’s funeral. It is reasonable to have questions, and no harm is meant to the family or anybody else by asking for clarification.
Regarding the bigger picture, I know some things that you don’t about what happened out there in the ocean and what the people who were there know about it. That’s all I’m going to say right now. But this hit-job was to try to discredit me before the new information comes out. Irrefutable information that doesn’t depend on Microsoft at all.