WARWICK — Strangulation, not a drug overdose, is what killed Kelly Ann Andersen, a state medical examiner testified yesterday in the murder trial of Brian Mlyniec.

Mlyniec is being tried in Kent County Superior Court on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Andersen, 41, whose body was found lying in the living room of Mlyniec’s home, in West Warwick.

“She was definitely strangled,” Peter A. Gillespie, the assistant medical examiner who performed the autopsy, told the jury.

Gillespie, who said he has performed more than 1,600 autopsies, said Andersen’s autopsy took “several hours” because she had multiple injuries –– bruises to the head and face, cuts inside the mouth, abrasions to the neck, scratches on the chest and back and injuries to the inner thighs, knees, calves and ankles. Prosecutors showed several photos of Andersen’s external and internal injuries.

Gillespie pointed to photos showing bleeding in the “strap” muscles that help in neck movement. He also said the hyoid bone, serving as a fastening location for those muscles, was fractured. Both are signs, he said, that Andersen was strangled with a ligature — a belt, tie or some other kind of cord thicker than a rope.

Friends and relatives of Andersen were in the courtroom yesterday, but they left the room before the medical examiner took the witness stand.

Gillespie estimated that Andersen probably died 12 to 15 hours before another medical examiner inspected her body in Mlyniec’s house at about 3 p.m. on June 23.

Gillespie ruled out drugs as the cause of her death, although he said there were high levels in the blood of methadone, alcohol and an antidepressant.

“In my opinion that is definitely not what killed her,” he testified.

Under cross examination by defense lawyer Andrew A. Bucci, the medical examiner said he didn’t know the exact amounts of the chemicals in Andersen’s blood when he announced his cause-of-death finding three days after the body was found, but that he knew the levels were high. He said he received the final report on concentrations the following September.

On Tuesday jurors were shown much of Mlyniec’s videotaped interview with West Warwick detectives on June 23 in which he testified that Andersen had seemed “out of it.” He told the detectives he put ground coffee and water in Andersen’s mouth to wake her up after putting her in a tub of cold water in the bathroom. He also said he had tried to perform CPR.

But examiner Gillespie, under questioning yesterday by prosecutor John Corrigan, said he found no traces of coffee or large amounts of water in Andersen’s stomach. He also said he saw no evidence CPR had been performed.

Michael Rothermel, Mlyniec’s neighbor, testified Tuesday that Mlyniec talked to him on the morning of June 23. To explain blood on his face and arm, Rothermel said, Mlyniec told him a woman he had “picked up” in Providence was having her menstrual cycle.

But Gillespie said yesterday that based on his examination, Andersen was not menstruating the day she died.

Other prosecution witnesses who testified yesterday included Bill Healey, Mylniec’s childhood friend; Mark Townsend, a neighbor; Jason Young, a coworker in 2006, and Mary Ellen Andersen, daughter of Kelly Ann Andersen.

Healey testified that Mlyniec telephoned him at 1 a.m. and told him that he had taken an ex-girlfriend home and that she was going in and out of consciousness. He said he advised Mlyniec to call the police but that Mlyniec told him he didn’t want the police at his house.

Mary Ellen Andersen and other relatives and friends of her mother sobbed openly when the prosecutors showed a smiling picture of Andersen, taken about a year before her death.

Defense lawyer Bucci will continue questioning Gillespie when the trial resumes at 10 this morning before the jury and Judge Edwin J. Gale.

njayakri@projo.com