C13

"In the case of strangulation, how long will it take for the victim to be attacked to lose consciousness, and how long will it take for the victim to lose consciousness to die, are still difficult questions for the pathologist to answer. On what basis do you draw the conclusion that the victim was strangled in the shortest time possible?" Shen Yuan asked.

"If the neck is stifled, the superior laryngeal and vagal nerves will respond, enough to cause the victim to die within seconds before the blood vessels can rupture." Liu Zhiwei sneered, "Excuse me, how do you explain the so-called capillary rupture?"

"What we are seeing is a rope being placed in a paper bag to strangle the victim. The lack of obvious strangle is sufficient to show that the killer did not exert enough force to cause the victim's jugular vein to be compressed and the carotid artery to not be completely occluded. Vertebral artery patency only leads to late loss of consciousness and delayed death. In the meantime, it is inevitable that the victim's struggle will not lead to the rupture of the capillaries. "

"But, why isn't there a large amount of blood flowing out of the skin?" Liu Zhiwei sneered.

"There must be some other reason." Shen Yuan argued.

"You're just an insect researcher, you don't know anything about clinical forensic medicine. Your point of view and mine are on two parallel lines side by side. Do you think our argument makes sense?"

"No, my mentor has encountered similar cases. I learned from him how to identify the flow and distribution of blood at the time of death."

After two or three minutes of argument, Liu Zhiwei proposed a truce.

Shen Yuan also felt that there was no need to argue anymore. The only way to convince them was to find more reasonable evidence. Although he had never studied medicine, he had done his homework before obtaining a forensic license and pursuing a forensic profession. During his PhD years, he had not only read a lot of books on forensic science, but had also often followed the forensic doctors of the Forensic Center to the field to see how they could examine the body and collect physical evidence.

Shen Yuan carefully observed the wounds on the body's exterior. He suddenly noticed a few small circular scars that seemed to be caused by buttons on the chest of the dead person. There was a larger scar on the front ribs. The skin of the mouth has marked abrasions. With regard to these wounds, Liu supposed that the murderer was a male and had the intention to violate the victim's body while they were alive. Therefore, the deceased fought with the murderer and left some scars on the surface of the body. However, it is unknown why the murderer did not succeed in the end.

"The murderer should have been wearing gloves and holding a paper bag containing nylon rope to kill him. The first time might have been due to insufficient force, which caused the second time to kill him." Liu Zhiwei analyzed.

He speculated that the murderer at the coffee table had probably killed the deceased for the first time. The killer was someone she knew, at least someone she knew. The victim hadn't been on guard at first. It was probably when the killer killed the victim that the victim realized what the victim was doing, and as she struggled, she accidentally bumped into the tea table, causing the teapot on top of it to topple over. In order not to leave fingerprints, the murderer killed with gloves on his hands and then strangled with nylon string wrapped in a paper bag. Since he was not empty-handed and felt inferior, and it was the first time he had used such a method, the murderer might not be able to accurately judge the strength of the weapon, causing the victim to only temporarily lose consciousness. However, for some reason, the murderer did not escape the scene in time after the first killing. When the victim woke up, he crawled to the door to call for help and was killed a second time by the killer. This time, she was unable to escape this calamity.

Shen Yuan did not agree with this reasoning, as it did not fully explain the fact that the deceased did not bleed on the skin during the fight. Shen Yuan carefully looked at every part of the deceased's body, and also found a new scar that was not very conspicuous at the lower eyelid area, and was not recorded in the autopsy record. The tissue scars were clearly visible under the microscope and should have been left shortly before death. This time, he found out what the problem was.

When the body is injured, such as hitting the eyes with a fist, Shen said. At first we see bruises and bruises, and in an hour or so the body will slowly bleed. This is a form of self-healing of the body's immune system. However, all that was seen under the microscope were red blood cells. The absence of white blood cells or inflammatory cells to repair the tissue meant that the person died less than an hour after the wound was formed.

Thus, this extremely small amount of bleeding is clearly not consistent with the histopathological features of strangulation to the point of death.

"A man is conscious of the fact that when he is murdered, he will work hard to prolong his life. If the heart was beating at this time, the hard wounds caused by the struggle would result in a large amount of blood or subcutaneous hemorrhage. If the heart was not beating, although there would be some hard wounds, there would also be bleeding. Imagine that when the faucets are turned off and the garden pipes are turned on, all you get is a little bit of dehydrated running water, which, although there is very little water and no high-pressure drive, still flows forward; if the faucets are turned on and the pipes are turned on, the active pressure of the water forces the water to shoot out. " Shen Yuan said, "The wounds under the eyelids of the deceased were caused by the fact that the heart, which was equivalent to a tap, was tightly shut by the killer."

Therefore, Shen Yuan believes that the real cause of death is the blockage of the arteries in the heart with asphyxia rather than simply strangulation.

He pointed out that the cause of the victim's death was that the killer had placed his hand on the victim's mouth and nose while sitting on the victim's chest, thus preventing him from breathing. The bruise on the victim's mouth was caused by the murderer's violent hand covering the mouth, and the mark on the chest was caused by the downward pressure on the button on the victim's nightgown.

Ding Wei, wearing gloves, removed the buttons on the dead man's clothes and compared them with the marks on his chest. He found that the buttons on the dead man's clothes matched the buttons on his pajamas.

Thus, Shen Yuan's speculation was that the murderer discovered that the first time the victim was killed by the tea table, he did not succeed. During the second time of the murder, he suddenly changed his mind and used a suffocating method to murder the victim. The reason for the change in his mind might be that the killer felt it was a bit of a hassle to strangle him with a paper bag made of Bollon's string or, as Liu said, the first strangle was not strong enough.

Of course, Liu Zhiwei didn't agree with Shen Yuan's analysis and speculation. He said, "If it's really like you said, the killer covered his mouth and nose to suffocate his death, then the point of action is on his mouth and nose, which means there is no corresponding point on his neck. So, how do you explain the spots on his neck?"

"You're right, if the victim died from simple asphyxiation, there would not be any blood stains on her neck. However, my analysis does not deny that the killer had a strangulation. After all, the strangulation marks on his neck still exist. In addition, during the process of suffocation, the victim didn't immediately die. As she gradually lost her life, the victim was also constantly struggling. During the victim's struggle, the pressure is automatically transferred to the neck, which can also produce spots of blood. "

Luo Yin, who has been observing on the sidelines, said that Shen Yuan's analysis was reasonable and well-founded. Liu Zhiwei, on the other hand, didn't find a better reason to refute, so he remained silent and didn't respond.

Speaking about dissecting the body, Liu said he had only dissected the neck and stomach of the victim when he dissected the body, taking into account the obvious strangulation marks on the neck. Dissecting the neck, mainly to obtain histopathological evidence of strangulation; dissecting the stomach, primarily to consider whether the contents of the stomach could be used to estimate the time of death of the victim. He said that 90 percent of the food we eat takes two to three hours to drain from the stomach. Therefore, the state of food in the stomach of the deceased could be determined to be death after several hours of ingestion. Sometimes it is possible to determine where to eat, depending on the characteristics of the food. As a result of the dissection, in addition to the histopathological features of strangulation, numerous flies' eggs were collected under the eyelids and at the neck, and about 10% of the flies' eggs were hatched into one-year larvae. The stomach only found a little undigested apple dregs and a tiny worm that might have come from the flesh.

All these fly eggs and worms are kept in a special bottle.