reading+notes+pg.29-38-+rebecca


 * HANDLING BODIES**
 * The death investigator is a medical examiner or coroner.
 * to certify you need a five- year residency, with at least another year of training in a medical examiner office.

How to determine several things about death:
 * 1. how it occurred
 * 2. when it happened
 * 3. what caused the death.

The manner of death falls into one of the 5 categories: 1. natural ( died in an environment not considered hostile) 2. accidental (fell victim to a hostile environment.) 3. suicide (the person caused his own death) 4. Homicide (someone else caused the death) 5. undetermined


 * not all homicides are criminal, but those that are include death by auto, manslaughter (recklessly caused a death) and murder.
 * any death not a result of natural causes, such as disease or expiring in bed from old age, should be investigated.
 * even natural deaths can be investigated in case the community around that disease is in harm.

unattended deaths: when someone die, but not in a hospital or a hospice or long term care facility and no doctor had done any examinations recently.

body discovery scenes outside are categorized by how the body is found
 * buried, exposed, or submerged in water.

bodies are wrapped in white sheets. then it is placed in a body bad for transportation. the body then gets refrigerated at the morgue.

the DI makes an approximate guess of when the person died. Time of death is difficult to determain unless there was an eye witness.
 * TIME OF DEATH:**

1. body temperature 2. Discoloration 3. Rigor mortis 4. Ocular indicators 5. food digestion 6. personal factors 7. decay/ decomposition rates

decomposition takes place in the following stages:
 * when the heart stops, the skin pales and starts to look waxy.
 * the part of the body where the blood has settled discolors into a purplish red. The eyes flatten and the extremities turn blue.
 * desiccation or the appearance of burning, shows up on drying mucous membranes.
 * the body then putrefies, signaled by a greenish discoloration in the skin, starting in about two or three days in the lower abdomen and caused by the proliferation by bacteria.
 * As rot spreads, the odor begins. bacteria in the intestines produce gases that bloat the body and eventually turn the skin black. Bloating of the body begins.
 * soon the skin blisters from the gases, detaches from the muscles and bursts.
 * under certain conditions, such as bodies submerged in water a cheesy substance called "adipocere" forms as fatty tissues harden and keep the body preserved.

left alone in a warm or moist climate the body can decompose to a skeleton within a few weeks, while in other conditions it can take month or years.
 * in hot weather the bodies will mummify.
 * water preserves twice as long as open air and burial extends that time frame by several weeks

Insects and their activity can also help in:
 * showing that a body may have been moved.
 * serving as specimens for toxicological or drug analysis
 * providing DNA materials from insect ingestion contents
 * supporting or contradicting an alibi.
 * assessing when wounds were made to a body.

THE AUTOPSY:
 * provide the most crucial pieces of evidence.
 * examining the dead body and figuring out how it died.
 * most are partial- parts of the body are examined.
 * family members are always notified when an autopsy is going to take place.

1. a blunt- force injury comes from impact with a blunt object or something with no sharp edges. 2. a gunshot wound- the coroner looks for tattooing and stippling (burns from the ga and powder residue.) 3. a knife or incised wounds- a cut and a stab or puncture wounds.