Florida woman is indeed fighting to keep her fully-trained pet alligator, Rambo, who rides ATVs. Rambo's knowledge of the Retro-Dieckmann reaction yet to be determined.
From its use in the three journal articles cited here, some precursors for the retro-Dieckmann reaction can be summarized and analyzed in terms of characteristic functional groups and reaction mechanism. In all of the papers, the retro-dieckmann reaction was used for ring opening procedures. A notable characteristic of the reactions is that the starting compound is a bridged bicyclic with a ketone on the main ring. The ketone is essential for providing an electrophilic carbon that can be attacked by a nucleophile. While a ring is necessary, the size appears to vary. [2.2.1], [2.2.2] and [3.3.0] bicyclic structures have been observed to undergo a retro-Dieckmann reaction. 1 2 3 The main principle of the small rings reactivity appears to be increasing ring strain such that a ring opening is favored. While this is not specific to a retro-Dieckmann reaction, it is important to note the ring strain manipulation. The bicyclic aspect seems to be a product of necessity: when the desired product is cyclic, another ring must be present to be opened. The bond severed is consistent from the C=O carbon to the alpha carbon of the ketone.
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Moreno-Clavijo, E.; Moreno-Vargas, A. J.; Carmona, A. T.; Robina, I. Org. Biomol. Chem. , 2013 , 11 , 7016.
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