Handling+Bodies+Notes-Spencer

Handling Bodies

Death Investigator -Death Investigator is a coroner, and they are in charge of handling the body -Their main job is to determine several things -How it occurred -When it happened -What caused the death? -The manner of death falls into one of five categories -Natural -Accidental -Suicide -Homicide -Undetermined -Body discovery also plays a key part in determining some of these answers -If the body was found inside, then the scene of the crime is more preserved -The DI is in charge of making sure that nothing is disturbed on the body its self that could affect them understanding what happened -Sometimes he will have the photographer take some more pictures of specific areas -The DI also determines if there is going to be an autopsy. This always occurs for homicide, some most of the time for natural death -The body is then transported from the scene of the crime to the morgue, where it becomes refrigerated in order to stop the decomposition

Time of Death - The DI tries to make a guess at what time the person actually died. This is hard to do without a witness who saw something -The following factors are an insight to what happened -Body Temperature -Discoloration -Rigor Mortis -Ocular Indicators -Food Digestion -Personal Factors -Decay/Decomposition Rates -Decomposition is a factor that all DI’s must encounter, and its something that can really limit their investigation -What helps with this process are insects -Insects can help in the following ways -Showing that a body may have been moved -Serving as a 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 -This is part of the Death Investigation process, especially is the death is suspected to having been part of a crime -They can be partial, sensitive, or complete, but most of them are partial -Before anything is done, the body is photographed -The body is then cleaned and striped down -The ribs are then cut and broken, so that all of the organs can be removed -Next a blood sample is taken from eh hart to identify the blood type -Wounds are examined -The last thing to be examined is the head and the brain -The eyes are taken out first -The skull is then cut, and the skullcap is pried off -The brain is then lifted and weighed