Heres my take: Ruby, her dog, was laying down in front of the basement entrance. Amanda, on the phone and not likely paying attention, enters the room from the “north” room we see in the chair photo. She trips on ruby, ruby out of surprise goes running into the chair at the table, knocking it over, her phone goes flying and in an attempt to recover, she puts her hand out to brace against the wall by the basement door. She misses her mark in the midst of her fall, and winds up shifting all her weight meant for the wall, towards the stairs, sending herself careening downwards. Her forehead hits the piggy bank and she falls again. She starts bleeding badly. She struggles to stand after the fall but manages to do it eventually, and stands at the foot of the stairs before succumbing to the blood loss and lying on the ground.
This is the only way I personally think the accident theory could work. She was high and disoriented as it was, you add traumatic blood loss to the mix and you are going to fall over very quick.
I have a similar theory. I think it is most likely that she tripped over the dog and fell down the stairs. The fact that the piggy bank clearly had a mark in the wall were it had been pushed into basically confirms it. The staircase also looked very poorly made with a big area that was easy to fall into. I also know Calgary very well and have seen the kinds of drifters they were describing. The idea that one would enter your yard for anything other than bottles is pretty absurd to me and no way would some random one sneak in and kill you without a motive.
I know her family is very convinced she was killed, but it seems very obvious it was a freak accident. The ones to blame though really are her husband and neighbours. The fact that they all heard the dog yelping panicked and did not call the cops basically killed her. Especially the fact that her husband was on the phone with her and it cut off suddenly. Then he could not get a hold of her for days and just thought she was busy. He talked to her everyday. He should have asked someone to check on her. Very likely it would have saved her life.
My only thing with the piggy bank is, she hit it hard enough to crack the wall, but only that tiny chunk broke off? Why didn’t the whole thing shatter?