Problematic Body Recovery Flashcards
What are the aims of problematic body recovery?
Find it Total recovery Max trace evidence Understand taphonomy Identify method of concealment Identify duration Interpret events Determine criminality Give a clear representation in court
What is taphonomy?
Combination of environmental and internal factors that contribute to why body looks the way it does
What specialists are used in problematic body recovery?
Anthropologist Archaeologist Biologist/chemist Botanist Entomologist Pathologist Soil scientist Vomitologist
What does an entomologist do?
Use insects to identify duration
What can a vomitologist discover?
Time of death by examining stomach contents
Where are specialists from?
SCA recommendation (serious crime authority)
SPA (Scottish police authority)
Private companies
Universities
What is a MISPER?
Missing person
What is involved for wide scale search?
Aerial photos
Maps
What is involved with small searches?
Field walking
Environmental profiling
How can you search for body if nothing visible on land?
Geophysics
Topsoil strip
Trial excavation
What is aerial photography?
Exclude areas
Look for hidden graves, disturbances in topography, compare images to royal commission archive
What do maps rule out?
Archaeological sites
Service tranches
Natural features
What is environmental profiling?
Work wth dog handlers and police search advisors (POLSA)
Look for changes of topography and trace evidence
30cm spikes for dog to smell down holes
What is stratigraphy?
Layers of soil
If you bury a body, what happens to the soil?
Initially it is raised, but it sinks as body decomposes
Layers are altered
How can roots be used?
Roots have growth rings so you can tell time since they grew through skeleton
What happens to plants initially after burying a body?
Nutrients and gases from body are toxic so plants die, apart from annual weeds
What is the long term effect of a buried body on plants?
Nutrients become beneficial
Plants grow well
What plants thrive in highly organic soil?
Brambles and nettles
When do lichens grow?
Over 100 years old
How high can brambles grow per year?
8ft
What are the three techniques for geophysic searching for bodies?
Resistivity
Magnetometry
Ground penetrating radar
What is resistivity?
Geophysics
Resistance to current between two electrodes
Soil and water conducts well
Why is resistivity not the ideal measure?
Not good in waterlogged soil or very dry
Electrodes will either conduct very well or not at all
