ELYRIA, Ohio — In a day full of grisly autopsy photos and crime-scene video, a coroner who examined the body of a 4-year-old boy said the child was killed before a fire swept through his house.

The damage to his body prevented investigators from finding out exactly how he was murdered.

Lorain County coroner Paul Matus said he based his ruling on the fact that there was no carbon monoxide found in the lungs of Jacob Diar, indicating he was not breathing when the fire was burning.

"The mouth and nostrils were not inflamed with debris and soot from the fire," Matus said. The suspicious finding led him to rule the death a murder.

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"The cause of death was homicidal violence of an undetermined origin."

Jacob's mother Nicole Diar is accused of killing the child, dousing the two-story rental house with gasoline and setting it on fire to hide any evidence of the murder.

Prosecutors say Diar, who suffered severe burns over 22 percent of her body when she was 4 years old, was tired of caring for the boy and was more interested in partying than parenthood.

Diar's attorneys maintain that the early-morning Aug. 27, 2004, blaze was set by someone else, perhaps one of their client's acquaintances trying to settle an unknown grudge.

If convicted on an aggravated murder charge, Diar could face the death penalty. She is also charged with arson and several other felonies related to the fire.

Diar sat with her face in her hands, wiping away an occasional tear as Matus displayed gruesome photos on an overhead projector and described for jurors the autopsy he performed on her son.

The fire that swept through the house was so strong, Matus said, that parts of Jacob Diar's body literally disappeared in the flames.

"The bones of the forearms were incinerated. They were absolutely incinerated into nothingness," he said.

Matus said that Jacob was dressed in a large sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head. Prosecutors allege that Diar knew the clothes would feed the fire and help to destroy any physical evidence of asphyxiation or other manner of death.

Jurors also saw a crime-scene video shot by arson inspector Lee Bethun only hours after the fire ripped through the house.

Bethun said he found evidence of gasoline on the floor and on furniture in the living room, dining room and first floor bedroom of the house. The bedroom where Jacob Diar's body was discovered suffered the most damage, he said. The fire was so hot that the boy's body melted into the mattress he was found on.

The evidence of gasoline — he estimated it took about a quart to start the blaze — led him to rule the fire an arson, he said. "This fire was started by the direct action of a human hand and a flame device."

On cross-examination, however, Bethun sparred with defense attorney Jack Bradley about inconsistencies in his fire report. Bethun concluded in the report that the fire originated in the living room, but on the stand conceded that it could have started elsewhere.

The investigator also said he was unable to find any container or remnant of a container that could have held the gasoline.

Neighbor Laroma Penn testified about having drinks with Diar in the defendant's home the night before the fire. Penn said that while she and Diar drank rum on the porch until about 1 a.m., Jacob lay on a couch in the living room either sleeping or watching TV.

Providing jurors with the first glimpse of Jacob when he was alive, Penn said the boy would sometimes run around the neighborhood half-naked and would often come to her house for a "Kool Pop," a glass of frozen Kool-Aid.

For no reason she knew, Jacob was afraid of going into the first-floor bedroom where firefighters eventually discovered his body.

"He never went in there by himself," Penn said. "He would call his mother or somebody to go in there."

Court TV Extra is streaming the trial live on the Web.