Ramsland+Chapter+2

Death investigator is a medical examiner or coroner (29) Certified by the American Board of Forensic Pathology entails a five year residency with at least another year of training in a medical examiner’s office (29) Death investigation: how it occurred, when it happened, and what caused it (29) Death categories: natural, accidental, suicide, homicide, undetermined (30) Postmortem interval (PMI) (30) Unattended deaths (31) Bodies outside are categorized by how the body is found: buried, exposed, submerged in water (32) Bodies inside, crime scene is more preserved (32) Coroner authorizes body transport (32) DI decides if there is to be an autopsy (32) DI makes guess at when the individual expired (33) Estimates by: body temperature, discoloration (postmortem lividity or hypostasis this refers to the dark purple color of the body that is found closest to the ground where it’s lying), rigor motis (cadaveric spasm-which is an immediate stiffening of the hands and arms just before death), ocular indicators, food digestion, personal factors, decay/decomposition rates (34-36) Heart stops beating, skin looks pale/waxy (36) Discoloration, extremities turn blue (37) Body putrefies (37) Rot spreads, foul odor (37) Skin blisters from gases (37) Cheesy substance called adipocere forms as fatty tissues harden and keep the body preserved (in water) (37) Relationships between insects and corpses: necrophagous species (flies and beetles), predators and parasites of the flies and beetles, wasps, ants, and beetles that feed on both the body and the maggots, spiders that use the body as a habitat to prey on other insects (38-39) Insects and their activity can help in: showing that a body has been moved, serving as specimens for toxicological or drug analysis, providing DNA materials from insect digestion contents, supporting or contradicting an alibi, assessing when wounds were made to a body (40) Insects arrive in stages. As each feeds on the body, it changes the body for the next group, which is attracted to those particular changes. (40) Autopsy is a postmortem examination of a corpse to determine manner and cause of death for an official report (42) Y incision-cut into body from shoulder to shoulder, meeting at the sternum and then going straight down the abdomen into the groin (44) Rib cage is lifted as one piece (44) Blood sample from the heart to determine blood type, organ out, one by one, to weigh them, injuries are categorized as blunt force trauma, gunshot, sharp force trauma (45) Tattooing and stipling (burns from gas and powder residue) or fouling (soot) around the wound (neither of which is present with weapons shot from a distance of more than three and a half feet) (45) Blowback-hot gases from the gun that fail to penetrate the body and blow back to the exterior, ripping the skin (46) Rifle weapons-rifles and handguns fire single bullets stabilizing their trajectory with grooves in the barrel (46) Smoothbore weapons like shotguns have no grooves and often fire multiple pellets (46)