Follow the Clues to Solve a Grisly Mystery

For about a week, I smelled something dead in the bushes by the horse barn and outhouse. Then a bevy of Turkey Vultures, juveniles by their black heads, circled and flew low over the area. Johnny even saw one sitting on the ground near an apple tree... which is not far from the photos below. From these photos, can you tell what died?

This is a close-up over the 2nd photo above

Thanks to naturalist Lisa Millbank for identifyiing this wee carcass. We have many young brush rabbits here so this makes sense. She writes: "There are some features that are difficult to see in the photos, but the jaw looks like it's probably from a cottontail, either an Eastern Cottontail or a Brush Rabbit. It looks like it has one incisor and 5 pointy premolars+molars on each side of the jaw, and is about the right size. On the cranium, the orientation of the ear hole in the skull looks more rabbit-like. The hairs are banded like rabbit fur. The pelvis looks about right too...

If a rabbit skull is mostly intact, it can't be confused with anything else, because the main upper incisors have a tiny extra pair behind them, and because the bone over the nasal cavity has a fine, lace-like appearance. But those parts of the skull got crunched in this case."