WARWICK — Under persistent cross-examination yesterday, a state medical examiner refused to budge from his finding that Kelly Ann Andersen, found dead in a former boyfriend’s home in June 2006, had been strangled.

The former boyfriend, Brian Mlyniec, 45, of West Warwick, is on trial before a Kent County Superior Court jury on a charge of first-degree murder.

Peter A. Gillespie, the assistant state examiner who performed the autopsy on Andersen, 41, said the evidence pointed conclusively to strangulation as the cause of death. He said he ruled out a drug overdose although he found high levels of methadone and alcohol in her blood.

Mlyniec’s lawyer, Andrew A. Bucci, asked if a person can survive strangulation.

“Hypothetically, anything is possible,” Gillespie replied. “In my opinion, that’s not what happened [to Andersen].”

Under redirect questioning by prosecutor John Corrigan, the examiner testified that the hemorrhages in the “strap” muscles of Andersen’s neck could not have occurred after death.

Prosecutors yesterday showed the jury a videotape of a second interview of Mslyniec by West Warwick detectives, this one conducted on June 26, 2006 — three days after the body was found and the day he was arrested.

In the interview, Mlyniec added details he had provided under questioning three days earlier, when he reported running into Andersen on Kennedy Plaza in Providence on June 22.

He said Andersen, a recovering addict, told him she had started using heroin again and that upset him. He testified that he told her he’d marry her if he had the means. They took a bus to his house, he said, where they performed a sex act in which he tied a belt around her mouth. The belt later slipped down to her neck, he said. Everything that happened was consensual, he told the detectives.

As he had told detectives initially, Mslyniec said Andersen started going in and out of consciousness and that he put her in a bathtub of cold water to revive her. But he added that, nearly 40 minutes later, he picked her up to bring her into the living room and dropped her, possibly causing the injuries found on her face and knees. Earlier he had said she fell while trying to get out of the tub.

West Warwick Detective George Winman testified yesterday that he was escorting Mslyniec to a cell after the interview when the defendant told him he had submerged Andersen’s body to check for bubbles that would show she was alive. Msylniec told him he saw none, the detective said.

On Tuesday, West Warwick Detective Ray Lemoi, who works in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, testified that three items collected from Mlyniec’s living room –– a silver-colored belt, a length of wire and a set of earphones –– had been sent to the state Health department for testing but had been missing since they were returned to the police.

But Sharon Mallard, a forensic biology analyst at the Health Department, testified yesterday that the items were never returned to the police. The prosecution presented them yesterday as evidence.

Mallard, who analyzed all three items in June 2006, testified that there was no saliva on the belt but that it did have blood stains. She said DNA testing of the blood revealed that it had a mixture of DNA –– most of which, she said, could have been Andersen’s, while a small part belonged to a male.

Mallard testified that the oral, vaginal and rectal samples from Andersen’s body that she analyzed had blood but no seminal fluid in them.

The prosecution also presented as evidence two shirts collected from the bathroom tub at Mlyniec’s house in which he said he had placed Andersen.

The trial will resume at 10:30 this morning before the jury and Judge Edwin J. Gale.

njayakri@projo.com