Volume 22 (2016): Issue 2 (December 2016)

Most ligature cases feature everyday, innately-tied Overhand Knots, Half Hitches and Half Knots. These knots are the result of habitual behaviour and individual tiers demonstrate consistency, except when certain contextual factors come into play. This survey focussed on comparing the chiralities of basic knots to those of Figure Eight Knots, which occur in case evidence and require similar tying actions. It is important to note that real-world Figure Eights are oriented relative to their working ends and are therefore chiral, whereas topological Figure Eights have no ends and are amphichiral. Data summarizing the tying habits of 184 survey respondents were collected and analysed. The majority of volunteers surveyed tied common Overhand Knots and Figure Eights of equal chirality, consistently or nearly consistently, irrespective of any general learning effect. A minority tied knots of opposite chirality. The knots tied by the remaining respondents varied, and the data suggested a potentially complex pattern which may be related to previous findings. Similar but less pronounced patterns were exhibited in the Half Hitch and Half Knot data. This information could be useful when analysing case evidence and making links to suspect samples, provided cautious attention is paid to context and knot function.

Skeletal remains of 12 individuals were found in a grave in a tar-burning pit. There were no coffins or other belongings to help with identification or reveal the cause of death.

Methods: Forensic osteological and odontological methods were used to establish sex, age and height. Histological and chemical tests, including the determination of C-14 content, were applied to dating the skeletal remains.

Results: Out of 12 skeletons, 8 were adults; 5 females, 2 males and 1 probable female. Four skeletons belonged to children (ages 1-12 years). The bones had been in the grave for more than 100 years as concluded from the deterioration of the distal parts, embrittling of the surface to 1 mm depth. C-14 results gave the radiocarbon years 95 +/− 65 Bp (before present, i.e., 1950). The calibrated years correspond to two time periods, 1670–1780 AD and 1798–1944 AD, as a possible period of death.

Conclusions: Starvation and illnesses are the most plausible explanations for the deaths. Historical studies show that during the 17^th and 19^th centuries, there were famines in Finland accompanied by severe infections (severe famines in the years 1866–1868 and 1696–1697), forcing a lot of people to leave their homes.

This is the story of the serial killer, Mrs. Gesina Gottfried from Bremen, Germany. She was executed in 1831, being charged and convicted for having murdered at least 16 people, partly from her own family, with arsenic trioxide.

Teeth are some of the most resilient tissues of the human body. Because of their placement, teeth often yield intact indicators even when other metrics, such as finger prints and DNA, are missing. Forensics on dental identification is now mostly manual work which is time and resource intensive. Systems for automated human identification from dental X-ray images have the potential to greatly reduce the necessary efforts spent on dental identification, but it requires a system with high stability and accuracy so that the results can be trusted.

This paper proposes a new system for automated dental X-ray identification. The scheme extracts tooth and dental work contours from the X-ray images and uses the Hausdorff-distance measure for ranking persons. This combination of state-of-the-art approaches with a novel lowest cost path-based method for separating a dental X-ray image into individual teeth, is able to achieve comparable and better results than what is available in the literature.

The proposed scheme is fully functional and is used to accurately identify people within a real dental database. The system is able to perfectly separate 88.7% of the teeth in the test set. Further, in the verification process, the system ranks the correct person in top in 86% of the cases, and among the top five in an astonishing 94% of the cases. The approach has compelling potential to significantly reduce the time spent on dental identification.

This article presents the results of a study undertaken to evaluate how parents experience voluntary Death Scene Investigation (DSI) in their homes. In total, 35 parents were interviewed using semi-structured qualitative interview guidelines developed for this project. These focused on the parents’: 1) appraisal of information provided prior to the DSI and motivation for participating in the study, 2) experience of, and reactions to the DSI, and 3) thoughts and reactions following the DSI. The evaluation shows that performing a DSI is an important part of providing good care for bereaved parents following Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. If such an investigation is undertaken by professionals with extensive professional knowledge and experience in meeting bereaved parents in an empathic and caring manner, it can be a positive experience for parents, and help support them in coping with the painful death of their infant.