So, the QB was hot and bothered and try to have some fun with Claire, but she resisted and he ended up killing her.

Sometime later, her body turns up in a river naked, with damage indicating she was dragged some distance.

From this we can obviously conclude that he stripped her down and tried to hide the body (very poorly).

Now, why did he strip her down? It could very well have been to hide her identity, by removing the cheerleading uniform and her ID, but that doesn't make much sense considering that he didn't run and did nothing further to obscure her features (meaning, her parents or someone else is going to ID her eventually).

So, he's got the dead, but still warm body of an attractive cheerleader at your feet, he's stripped her naked for some reason we're attempting to determine and he's still far, far away from prying eyes...

Just some food for thought.

edit: removing my comments so that no one else feels the need to quote and discuss the inaccuracies without reading the rest of the thread first.

Is it just me or does anyone think that rapist stripped her down, proceeded to rape her dead body, than dragged and dumped her body into the river!

I don't think Brody had his way with after she was "dead". Though it isn't uncommon, I just don't see it tying in much with the show.

I agree with someone elses theory, that he undressed her and tossed the body. He could easily burn the clothes in the bon fire or just tossed them somewhere else.

I hope that he didnt' do what people think he did after she was dead. I don't think the QB is that hell bent on getting some action.

actually, she was found in Odessa, TX..as she was taking to the local morgue...and at the beginning when she was on the autpsy table it read "Claire Bennet-Odessa, TX" (don't argue it...because when Ando and Hiro are in Las Vegas it reads "Hiro and Ando-Las Vegas"-it included their last names, but they slip my mind currently). And football is HUGE in the SOUTH...it's a damn religion here!

other than you coming across as a little harsh with your "don't argue it" comment, thanks for clearing that up for me. the episode wasn't fresh in my memory, and i didn't know that it said that when she was in the morgue. i was just putting forth a little added speculation.

Thank you for removing all of the elegance in the OP.


Figure this:
The coroner says she was pulled out at roughly 4AM. Figure due to transit time and other difficulties, she's on the table by maybe 5:30AM. She gets home right on time for her parents
to start calling for her to wake up and get ready for school.

So, seeing as how she also has to be relatively sneaky (going around in public in that small a town in just a coat = ), she can't possibly have been very far from home (if we assume a relatively early start fo her high school).

But, why proceeded with an entire autpsy, pull the stick out, or even bother being the only person in the room that has a surprised look on your face and be jumpy when the door shuts...makes no sense!

I just figured it out!


the coroner is Sylar!

He morphed in to a woman and was prepping to debrain Claire! The Qb works for Sylar as a spy and the whole thing was set up to get her to the morgue to make it look like an accident! Sylar just wasn't prepared for the powers she has.

He would have finished the job, but the phone call from the linderman stopped him from finishing.








/joke.

Sylar shut the door with his mind to ward off Claire from escaping. He assumed she was still hiding in the room..

As for doing the whole autopsy, he had to fool the HRG when he would come snooping about.

He was probably freaked out by her "death." With a live victim, he can play "he said, she said." Can't do that with a dead body. I don't think he would leave DNA evidence on a corpse. Pretty dead cheerleader with your DNA would be very difficult to explain, versus "last time I saw her she was drunk and wandering off near the river, she said something about skinny dipping; probably slipped down the bank and hit her head." He's going to be trying to think about how to get away with killing her, not adding to the evidence.

He threw her in the river to try to hide her. He stripped her to try to delay identification of the body.

Maybe. But that's giving him more credit than I'm willing to.

Seriously, I don't care how you rationalize things, but getting into the car with someone who you just killed, stripped down, and dragged to the river to be dumped the night before isn't the brightest thing you could do.

I guess they are going with the typical football players are idiots card.

Yeah...why did he let her in his car. Didn't he wonder what was up? He freaked out when he saw her at school, then after practice lets dead Claire drive his car?

Though I do agree that the quarterback is a ******, i'm not sure he did it. Looked like he ran off, i'm going for the super dark version here and gonna say that ...

the other girl that was supposedly raped moved the body b/c she likes the QB. or not. just a theory.

I don't think the QB raped her after he thought he killed her. The autopsy would have shown signs of rape and the woman never mentioned it.

When she's talking to her friend who knows about her powers, she tells him flat out that he didn't do anything, and he says "well, yeah, because you were dead..." or something like that.

So I think its a safe bet that she didn't actually get raped.

Nah, I don't think she was raped post-mortem. I really don't think mr. QB would do that- he was shocked and suprised, and also probably nervous as hell, so he probably only removed her clothes, again, simply to slow the ID process.

I agree that he probably didn't rape her but I bet he still felt her up a bit. Think about it, drunk ******, naked defenseless cheerleader... He at least rubbed on her boobs or something!

Really hard to say, when i first heard the coroner say she was found naked and in a lake my first thought was that he raped her anyways

but then I remembered how scared he was when it happened and thought he would have run off, I figured maybe someone else hid the body

At that point the qb was scared to hell. He's confident enough that nothing will happen to him for rape. They're all "******" after all, who would believe them over him? When Claire get killed though, suddenly it's different. There's a party going on not too far away, he's going to worry about being caught, so he drags her body to a creek not far away, strips her and dumps her in.

Seriously, the kid was going to be too frightened out of his mind at being thrown into jail to even have the ability to rape her at that point. Stripping her was probably just because someone would spot a bright red skirt or white top a lot quicker than a muddy body..

She was dead at the time..he could've raped her and she wouldn't have known..and FYI: If, you're thrown naked into a river..all the semen would be washed a way...and as far as the other physical evidence..firstly, the ME hadn't gotten that far in the autpsy..and secondly, her body has rapid cellular regeneration!

The plotline required that she have been stripped, actually. As the previous poster said, the person who found the body would have noticed the cheerleading uniform. There can't be too many members of that squad . . . And the scriptwriters have been trying to keep all their heroes unknown so far.
Of course, there were FCC-related problems with this approach. Check out a certain rather tasteless thread called "Claire the boobless woman!"

I really dont think it was the QB that dragged Claire to the river. For some reason I believe it was the other chick.

All10xs: ...QB ... was shocked and suprised, and also probably nervous as hell, so he probably only removed her clothes, again, simply to slow the ID process.
THANK YOU! I'm glad to see someone else here have the right imagination. The damn jock was shocked, surprised, slightly drunk, and operating on a short schedule.

That morning, he would have been studiously avoiding any conversation about Claire. Probably his mind was obsessing over the murder he'd committed and what it meant for his chances for a football scholarship. So when Claire showeed up alive and perky, no wonder he needed to go vomit. And he had to start wondering if it was all some drunken nightmare he had. I have little doubt that by the time Claire convinced this idiot to let her drive, he had convinced himself the attack never happened. He'd probably also convinced himself he actually had successfully raped her and that she had run off afterwards.

According to the comic, "Aftermath", the QB was awake after the accident long enough to see Claire had puleld him out of the wreck and was pulling a glass shard out of her abdomen. "Claire, what are you?" he asked..

And for those keeping score, Claire has now lost or wrecked three cheerleader outfits--
(1) Charred sleeve torn off by fireman.
(2) Entire outfit removed and destroyed by the QB.
(3) Outfit torn and bloodied by car crash.
Makes you wonder how many more she has! We know she has at least one left, the outfit she wears while being threatened in Isaac's painting.

Hmm, good thing Claire pulled the ****** out of the car. This way she can say HE was driving.

LOL I was keeping track of chearleader uniforms myself and trying to imagine Claire's explanation for why she needs yet another new uniform.

Exactly. Most people, especially when slightly drunk, angry enough to assult and rape someone, and pumped up on testosterone when they wind up commiting a crime haven't got much of a backup plan in mind. They'll try to hide the evidence as best they can in a state of panic and simply do the first thing that pops into their head (usually then leaving idiotic amounts of other evidence behind). This guy isn't a professional hit man, he's a panicked high school kid who did a big boo boo and now has to fix it up, stat!