Forensic Friday: What Happened to Kenny? Part 2

March 22, 2013July 21, 2016 / Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

In the first part of this series on an actual death investigation, Kenny, a male corpse in various stages of decomposition, was discovered dumped in a wooded area near a Canadian west coast city on a hot summer day.

There was no immediate identification, no apparent time of death, no location where he might have died, and certainly no obvious cause of death. Even without these basics, the corpse and the scene still crawled with information. On the surface, thousands of things were going to help in narrowing down the length of time that Kenny had been there.

Insects.

Entomology is a long accepted forensic science in determining the progression of nature’s recycling program. It relies on the study of the insect life cycle; egg, larva, pupa, adult, and back to egg. Each species has a specific time frame and a collection of specimens from the scene is critical. By determining which insects were present and what stages of development they were in, you can simply count the days of production. Fortunately, two factors were in favor this day.

One is that the conditions were perfect for insect proliferation; early summer, hot and dry weather, being in a semi-shaded rural area, and having a huge supply of rotting flesh. The second was having a world renowned lady entomologist residing a phone call away at the University of British Columbia – the ‘Bug Bitch’ as she’s affectionately known in the forensic world.

The scene was held until the entomologist arrived and took samples of the insect life and surrounding vegetation. A forensic pathologist was consulted by phone but declined to attend. Contrary to popular police shows, pathologists rarely examine a body on site as there’s little they can do that the coroner and police forensic officers can’t. A common misconception is that time of death can be readily determined by a pathologist taking rectal temperature or pulling some rabbit from their hat. Absolutely not so.

A must-do was a manual search of the corpse for any identifiers; wallet with ID, jewelry, pocket contents – anything – and in Kenny’s case nothing was found. There were some apparent things for follow-up. His mummified left arm showed numerous tattoos and his teeth, very visible in the skeletonized skull, showed a large gap between the top incisors. Without a doubt, in life, Kenny would have been very recognizable when he smiled.

A scene search had been methodically conducted by a small army of police officers and two service dogs. This was done in a strict grid pattern and anything of interest was recorded on a GPS data point, then collected, catalogued as evidence, and mapped out in a computerized reconstruction. This sounds easy, but the thick woods and step terrain made the search a logistical hassle.

Compounding the challenge was that the site had been used as an unauthorized waste dump. For years, careless people had chucked stuff over this bank and it was strewn with plastics and papers, tires and tools, boards and bags and boxes. Determining what was current, what was historic, and what was relevant, was a judgment call however something of interest could be seen trapped under the body.

Remains removal is usually a matter of physically lifting the corpse and placing it in a body bag, then carrying it to a van and transporting to the morgue. In Kenny’s case – not so easy. His state of decomp was to the point of disarticulation; in other words coming apart at the joints. Now this is not the first time a rotting corpse had been transferred and a trick of the trade is to use large, plastic snow scrapers to effectively ‘team shovel’ the cadaver in one piece into a bag. Again, sounds simple, till you consider this was on an incline and the first disturbance caused a swarm flies and a reek of gassing off.

With Kenny now on his way to the morgue, a better look was taken at what had been underneath him. A white plastic bag was recovered which contained the usual garbage; 7-11 wrappers, Big Gulp cups, napkins, pop cans… and a receipt with a time and date.

This obviously had been down the bank before Kenny landed on top of it, but did it come with him? It’d eventually proved corroborative in determining Kenny’s time of death, but who was he? How’d he get here? And what or who the hell killed him?

There was a lot of science ahead. And some good ‘ol detective work.

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Garry Rodgers has lived the life that he writes about. Now retired as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective and forensic coroner, Garry also served as a sniper with British SAS–trained Emergency Response Teams and is a recognized expert-witness in firearms. A believer in ‘What Goes Around, Comes Around’ Garry provides free services in helping writers throughhis crime and forensic expertise. Garry’s new supernatural thriller No Witnesses To Nothing is based on a true crime story where many believe that paranormal intervention occurred. An Amazon Top 10 Bestseller, it’s available on Kindle and print on demand. You can connect with Garry via his Website: www.dyingwords.net

Forensic Friday: What Happened to Kenny? Part 1

March 15, 2013July 21, 2016 / Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Welcome to the first of a series on an actual death which I investigated; probably the most interesting of my career. What makes this case so intriguing is the wide variety of forensic and investigative methods that were used and the incredible challenge in mandating the Coroner’s duty of establishing:

Who was the deceased?

When did they die?

Where did they die?

What was the cause of death?

By what means did they die?

In Kenny’s case I had none of these answers… to start with. Let me set the scene.

One hot summer morning, on beautiful Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, a cyclist was coasting downhill through a curved, thick, wooded stretch on a rural road when she caught the overpowering whiff of decaying organic matter. Stopping to investigate, she peered over a steep bank, seeing a blackened mass crawling with insects one hundred feet below. Thinking it was a deer that’d been hit by a car, she was about to leave when it occurred that deer don’t wear running shoes.

She punched her cell and, in fifteen minutes, the place was swarming with cops.

I arrived within the hour to examine the corpse. The police had the scene secured, photographed, GPS’d, and were doing perimeter grid searches with a service dog. As required by law, no one had interfered with the position nor condition of the body. The first thing that struck me was the cadaver’s bizarre condition.

Post mortem mechanisms of body breakdown are fairly predictable and uniform. There is a long recognized scientific process of ‘Mortis’ or changes in composition. It starts with ‘Palor Mortis’ which is a color difference once oxygenated blood stops flowing. ‘Algor Mortis’ comes next – the cooling of temperature which heads towards an equilibrium of the surroundings. ‘Rigor Mortis’ occurs within a few hours. It’s the stiffening of muscle tissue caused by an enzyme change. ‘Livor Mortis’, or lividity, is the gravitational settling of blood which creates a distinctive pattern on the lower sections and pressure points. ‘Putrefaction’ is the breaking down of tissue and the gassing off which creates the horrible smell associated with rotting meat. ‘Decompositon’ is lengthier and leads to the finality of ‘Skeletonization’ or ‘Mummification’.

In Kenny’s case, everything was going on here. He was supine, or lying on his back, with his left arm folded across his chest and his right positioned under his torso. Both legs were outstretched with his buttocks lodged against a large stump, preventing him from descending further down the hillside. Kenny’s face was gone, exposing a grotesque sneer like something from Pirates Of The Carribean, but the back of his scalp was intact holding a long mess of light brown hair. His only clothes were a baggy T-shirt, athletic shorts, and a pair of brand-new, unlaced Nike runners.

Kenny was The Body-Farm’s poster boy. His skull was a combination of skeletonization and putrefaction. His anterior (front) torso was in decomposition, but his posterior (rear) still showed lividity with minor rigor present in the neck and shoulders. Algor was at scene temperature and palor was all over the place. Curiously, his left arm and hand had mummified, right ones were decomposing, his exposed legs – from thighs to ankles – were only bones, but his feet were perfectly preserved inside the rubber shoes. To compound matters, Kenney was a mess of maggots and a swirl of flies.

There was one clear culprit at work. Heat.

But a variance in heat.

Kenny was lying on a north downslope, positioned parallel to the summer sun’s high east-to-west path. There were rows of evergreens between Kenny and the openness of the upper road which created a picket-fence effect, letting direct sun exposure at different times on different body parts. Full sun had been most prevalent on his center which mummified the arm/hand, but the shield of his shirt trapped in torso moisture, allowing a normal decomposition. His pelvis had been semi-shaded, though his legs had full sun, resulting in skeletonized bone. Kenny’s face was also obliterated by sun exposure and the quicker breakdown of the sun-beaten areas was exacerbated by insects who found the softer tissue easier to feed on.

So all I had was an apparent male found deceased in a very suspicious manner, as if killed somewhere else and dumped off this roadside. But who was he? When did he die? Where did he die? What caused his death? What were the means? Was the classification a homicide? An accident? Suicide? Natural cause? It was also apparent he’d been there for a considerable time. How long?

Time would tell.

This was the start of a long, complex investigation before I found out what happened to Kenny.

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Forensic Fridays: All About Autopsies

February 22, 2013July 21, 2016 / Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Most living people never visit the morgue.

Most never speak of the morgue, except during shows like CSI, Bones, or Hawaii 5-0. The popularity of forensic TV series, however, is social proof that there’s hidden interest in finding out just what goes on behind the autopsy suite’s closed door.

The word autopsymeans ‘to examine for yourself’. It’s a medical procedure that sounds simple in principle – taking a look at the outside and inside of a cadaver to establish cause of death. In practice, a post mortem (PM) examination can be highly complicated and time consuming; employing leading-edge scientific expertise.

There are three types of PM’s. A hospital autopsy is a non-legal process where the cause of death is known, but the caring physician wants to confirm a specific issue – such as a cancer tumor. A routine autopsy is conducted when the cause of death is not known, but foul play is not suspected. Then there’s a forensic autopsy – the one that’s going to be torn apart in a murder trial.

All autopsies follow a standard protocol. It’s the nature of the investigation that determines just how in-depth the procedure gets. The deceased arrives at the morgue and is catalogued with personal details and a registration number. Yes, they really do use toe-tags. The body is then placed in a refrigeration unit and waits its turn for examination. In a busy morgue this can take several days.

Usually two people conduct the autopsy. The pathologist, or medical doctor who is trained in the study of death and disease, is assisted by the deiner (German word for helper). Often there’s observers present; police officers, students, or technicians who come and go. The length of time varies – fifteen minutes to confirm a tumor, two hours routinely, and up to eight for a complicated forensic ordeal.

External observation can take a good portion. The body is removed from its shipping shroud, stripped, photographed, X-Rayed, weighed, measured, and identifiers such as race, age, hair and eye color, markings, abnormalities, as well as evidence of trauma or medical intervention is recorded. In homicide cases, the bulk of the evidence can be recovered in the external exam – clothing perforations, gunshot residue, lacerations, abrasions, hair, fiber, DNA, chemical contamination, or foreign objects. The observations are recorded on notes, diagrams, photos, and verbal dictations.

The corpse is placed supine, on its back, on the examining table which is an angled stainless steel tray draining fluids to a disposal sink. A plastic block is placed under the back to elevate the chest and recline the head and arms, making internal operations practical. A Y-incision is sliced from the tip of each shoulder, horizontally to the center of the chest, then vertically down to the pubic area. The skin is scalpeled back in a butterfly pattern accessing the thorax and abdomen, then the ribcage is removed exposing the upper and lower organs.

The major ones are removed, weighed, and cross-sectioned – lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach, and intestines. Tissue sections are exscinded and fluids are extracted – blood, urine, vitreous humor, and digestive contents. These can be of immediate visual interest, or may tell later tales in toxicology and microscopic processing.

Cranial examination is the part that most newbies find difficult. The neck is now propped to elevate the head and the scalp is cut from ear to ear, peeled over the face and down the neck, then the skull cap is severed with a vibrating saw. The brain extracts easily and is often preserved in formalin to gel for later sectioning.

Completion involves returning the organs to the central cavity and sewing the incisions before releasing the body to a funeral home. Tissue and liquids are retained for histology and toxicology. In forensic cases, exhibits such as bullets, trace evidence, DNA standards, and clothing are transferred to the crime lab.

Often the cause of death is conclusive at autopsy. Occasionally nothing is known until the lab results come in. And sometimes… it’s never determined just why the subject died.

Our scientific understanding of life and death is extensive, but it’s far from perfect.

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Do Do I Need a Coroner, Medical Examiner or Pathologist?

February 15, 2013July 21, 2016 / Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

I’m so excited to have Garry Rodgers join my honored team of medical experts. To be honest, I’ve been looking for someone on the “other side of life” to offer their insights because I do see a fair number of forensic questions and this is not my area of expertise. I try to keep the living from crossing over.

Garry will be here on a regular basis doing Forensic Fridays and I’m so glad to have him. I hope you’ll check out his novel, No Witnesses to Nothing.

Welcome, Garry!

Hi. I’m Garry Rodgers and I’m delighted to be a guest on Redwood’s Medical Edge.

For over three decades I’ve been involved in the death business. I’ve been a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective, served as a sniper on Emergency Response Teams, and finished up my forensic career as a Coroner. So I’ve seen my fair share of bodies.

Everyone knows what a homicide cop does, and most would rather not be in the sights of a sniper, but there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the role of a Coroner as opposed to a Medical Examiner (ME) and to a pathologist. A bit of a history here.

All civilized jurisdictions have a judge of the dead whose duty is to find fact. Not fault. The facts to be determined are the Who, When, Where, How, and By What Means that the deceased expired. Once these facts are determined, the death must be classified into one of five categories; Natural, Accidental, Suicide, Homicide, or Undetermined. This method of fact-finding and classification is universal, whereas the structure of appointing the judge is not.

The office of the coroner dates back to 10^th century England when the Crowner of the King (hence the word coroner) investigated any number of matters, including sudden and unexplained human deaths. This evolved into an inquisitional role where the coroner would conduct simple inquiries, or in cases of public interest, would hold inquests and compel witnesses to testify. Coroner appointments generally went to upstanding citizens of the community, not necessarily to those of a medical, legal, or investigative background.

As science progressed, it became prudent to retain the expertise of medical professionals, particularly in the clinical areas of autopsy and toxicology. This coincided with the massing of population in urban areas. Out of practicality and economics, the cities would employ full time medical doctors as examiners who’d delegate field investigations to lesser qualified persons. The rural areas, having a lower caseload, adopted the reverse where they’d contract out the specialties.

A pathologist, on the other hand, is a medical examiner who’s been specifically trained in the study of death and disease. The term pathologist dates back to ancient Greece; pathos meaning suffering, and logos meaning writing. Taking it a step further, a forensic pathologist signifies a specially-trained medical doctor who’s qualified to testify in court.

I can’t say the Coroner system is any better or worse than the Medical Examiner system. The professionals may have inverse roles, but all are exceptionally well trained. Both speak to the deceased’s interests and that’s what’s important. Death investigations have become more complex as science advances and, regardless of the administrative issues, having the right people doing the right jobs is key to determining the proper cause and classification of death.

Just a note on the personal qualities required to investigate deaths. First you need an inquisitive mind. Often things aren’t what they seem on the surface, and it’s through attention to detail that the facts rise. Second – empathy. You deal with those in the world which the deceased suddenly left; families, friends, co-workers, and to them it’s not just another case. Last, you need a strong constitution. Some of the death scenes can be exceptionally unpleasant.

In an upcoming sequence of posts, I’ll take you deeper into the world of a coroner. We’ll follow a true case which I investigated that employed the spectrum of forensic techniques. I was able to correctly classify the death, but I’ll assure you… it wasn’t what it seemed on the surface.

So stick around. I promise to be interesting!

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