Chapter 46 Autopsy
Chapter 46 Autopsy
Lin Sheng sighed: "Oh my god, this is the most outrageous case of a body hidden in cement that I have ever seen!"
Xu Yiqing also shook his head: "Don't mention it's you, this is the first time I've seen it either."
Xu Yiqing had seen too many common cases of dismemberment and bodies hidden in cement, but this was the first time he had seen a case where the victim died so much later than the time the statue was built.
It's like burying a person alive in concrete...but when the concrete base was built, He Yunke hadn't even disappeared yet.
Besides, this was a case of dismemberment. The murderer mixed the body parts into cement, which resulted in the body being torn into pieces.
He looked around at the pile of concrete debris in the corner of the autopsy room. When it was delivered, the concrete was in lumps, and each part was filled with highly decomposed corpses.
Lin Sheng couldn't help but wonder: "How did the murderer do it?"
Xu Yiqing thought for a moment and said, "I don't know. After all, we are not detectives. But I think as long as we can catch the murderer, the method of committing the crime will be revealed."
The main responsibility of the medical examiner is to find out the cause of death and provide sufficient evidence for the criminal police to investigate the case. In this way, it can be regarded as worthy of the deceased's time lying on the dissection table.
Mr. Lin was recording the autopsy report. He asked, "Does the source of the corpse simply say that the deceased is He Yunke?"
Xu Yiqing replied: "DNA alone cannot confirm blood relationship. We need to be absolutely sure and have absolute evidence to confirm the identity of the deceased."
Mr. Lin asked: "What should we do? The body has already rotted into this state."
Because he switched from a surgical major to a forensic doctor and his career was short, Mr. Lin lacked experience when facing many major and important cases.
At least Jiangcheng hadn't seen such a terrible dismemberment case for a long time, and the body was already highly decomposed, with only some rotten organs and muscle tissue between it and complete skeletonization. It can be said that this was the first time that Lin Sheng had faced such a severely decomposed body since he became a forensic doctor.
Xu Yiqing said: "Then I will teach you two methods to confirm the identity of the deceased even in a highly decomposed state. The first method is used when there is information about the suspected source of the corpse, such as when the corpse is claimed by someone, or when a decomposed corpse is found in a residence."
He walked to the side of the dissection table and straightened the skull with both hands: "Overlap the skull images and compare the skull of the unknown body with the head photo of the suspected deceased. Take photos in the same direction and angle and then overlap and observe. Focus on the position of the mouth, nose and eyes to determine the similarity of the eye sockets, nasal septum and gums."
Lin Sheng took note of it silently in his mind, hoping to improve his ability to stand on his own in the future.
"But Brother Xu, is it necessary to do a skull rematch when the blood relationship has been confirmed?" He thought for a moment and sighed, "It would be great if we could extract fingerprints."
The body of the deceased was highly decomposed, and the fingers were almost entirely covered with grease left over from decay. In this case, the possibility of extracting fingerprints was zero.
Xu Yiqing was confident: "This is the second method... Go and prepare the dichlorotoluene solution."
Lin Sheng did as Xu Yiqing said and brought the dichlorotoluene solution.
Xu Yiqing said: "Soak the corpse's fingers in the solution, wash them several times, and then apply acetone."
Mr. Lin applied acetone on the fingers of the deceased that had been washed with solution many times. After the acetone dried, he suddenly found that fingerprints reappeared on the ten fingers of the corpse that were originally covered with grease!
"Have it!"
He scanned the extracted fingerprints and transmitted them to the Investigation Section of the Criminal Police Brigade.
Soon the logistics police gave feedback that the deceased's fingerprints basically matched He Yunke's fingerprints!
After confirming the source of the corpse, Xu Yiqing did not show a relieved expression, but sighed softly: "Now the source of the corpse information can be written as the deceased He Yunke."
He Yunke is really dead.
You have to investigate the truth behind that photo bit by bit on your own.
And just as Du Yu worried, the people in the photos died one after another in bizarre circumstances, and he didn't know when the unfortunate curse would fall on him. After confirming the identity of the deceased, the focus of the autopsy became the cause of death.
In most ordinary criminal cases, the identity of the unidentified corpse is determined by the forensic doctor, and the rest of the work is handed over to the criminal police. The criminal police will investigate the murderer and the motive based on the interpersonal relationships of the deceased, and finally let the murderer explain the process of the crime.
Therefore, the police are the ones who are most tired and stressed in homicide cases.
But in Jiangcheng, Xu Yiqing will do all his duties to the utmost and try to reduce Du Yu's workload.
The identity of the corpse, the cause of death, the time of death, and even the crime tools and motives, as long as the information could be obtained from the corpse, he left out no detail, which greatly relieved the pressure on the criminal police.
Xu Yiqing and Lin Sheng stood beside the pieces of flesh and bones that were pieced together to form a human shape, and began to examine any details that could determine the cause of death.
Lin Sheng first observed the broken bones of the body. He held it in front of his eyes and examined it carefully, then stroked the cut surface and said, "It was a saw. The murderer used a tool like a saw to dismember the body. The bones were not chopped open, but sawed open. The murderer was experienced and very calm. He knew how to dismember the body with the least effort... The broken ends were all at the weakest parts of the bones."
Xu Yiqing examined the few remaining muscles and tissues and concluded: "The murderer froze the body before dismembering it. Frozen meat is easier to handle with a saw, and the body of the deceased has some tissue dissolution left over from thawing."
Mr. Lin wrote in the autopsy report: "The body was frozen. The murderer had a freezer that could hold the whole person."
After writing, he began to check other bone injuries. Due to the severe decay, the surface injuries could no longer be investigated, and the cause of death had to be determined from the wounds left on the bones.
It was finally determined that there were two major injuries to the bones of the corpse:
There are cracks and scars on the skull, and very thin gaps on the tibia and ribs, all of which could be fatal injuries!
Xu Yiqing said: "We need to first determine whether these wounds were caused before death or during the dismemberment process... Let's make bone slices."
Mr. Lin said, "I'll do it. I'm good at it."
Bone slices, as the name suggests, are made by cutting the bones near the wound into slices about one millimeter thick and observing them under a microscope.
If the scars were left by the murderer before He Yunke's death, then the bleeding around the scars would have infiltrated the bone, and hemoglobin would appear under a microscope. On the contrary, if the scars were left after freezing or dismemberment or during the decay process, there would be no hemoglobin on the bone slices.
Lin Sheng took the grinding stone and started processing. The bone grinding disc he made was very standard, comparable to a textbook.
"Brother Xu, there are small spots of hemoglobin on the bone grinding disc!"
Xu Yiqing nodded: "Then it is certain that the wounds were formed before death, and such dense wounds in fatal areas can be preliminarily determined to be the cause of death."
Lin recorded his new discovery and carefully observed the wounds on the skull, tibia and ribs: "The bones are all sharp wounds, similar to those caused by an axe. But the depth is too shallow if it was really an axe."
He frowned and thought, the original intention of the design of the axe was to be used for chopping, so the mechanical design was more labor-saving.
Even people with less strength, such as women and teenagers, can easily split the human skull and cause penetrating injuries to the skull, rather than just leaving such bone surface scars.
Xu Yiqing thought for a moment and said, "It's something like a machete, cutting through the flesh and leaving scratches on the bones."
So what kind of knives are most common in cities and can leave similar wounds?
The two looked at each other and said in unison: "Cleaning knife!"
He Yunke was stabbed several times on the head, neck and chest with a kitchen knife and eventually died from excessive blood loss!
(End of this chapter)