Death And Decomposition: A Handy Guide For Fellow Crime (fic) Writers

Death and Decomposition: a handy guide for fellow crime (fic) writers

I decided to repurpose an old study guide I made for educational purposes because maybe some people will find this useful, or interesting at the very least! (Sorry about the American-English and Fahrenheit)

If the body is “limp”, how long has the person been dead? They will only be limp immediately after death (up to ~2 hrs) or very long after (nearly a day and a half). As for stiffness, complete rigidity doesn’t occur until ~12 hrs, and it doesn’t last very long before rigor reverses. Your characters can end up tearing muscles and breaking bones trying to force body parts in rigor to bend or move if they’re not careful enough because everything is very tense and rigid. Fingers will snap like twigs. Ever heard the expression “you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands”? Yeah, it’s really not supposed to be easy.

Blood follows gravity! Livor is one of the first noticeable signs of death as in some cases it can begin as near as 30 minutes to 2 hours after death, before even rigor sets in. Has your body been moved before 6-8 hrs? The bruising likely won’t be uniform. Were they lying atop something? Objects can interrupt the bruising. Perhaps they were in a vehicle and the silhouette of a tire lever is visible. Clues! The color of the bruising can also help determine different types of poisoning.

Body temp can be tricky and unreliable at the best of times because there’s so many factors. I’ve been told it’s rarely used to exclusively determine TOD. The magic number is 3. Find three different ways to back up Time of Death. For example: if you’re using algor mortis, find two other indicators of time of death (livor, rigor, insect activity, scene markers). Most writers (myself included) avoid being specific about temperature because really, it can be hard. If you’re really keen on it though, I can show you a fairly simple way of calculating time of death based on temperature in average conditions. Just let me know.

The body is not going to look like a pristine preservation of a human being the whole time! They can’t just be pale and immobile. Other things happen. Was the body found in a river? A lake? It’s not going to be pretty. Adipocere is wild. There’s more to open eyes than just a hazy blue film. If it’s exposed to air and debris, you bet it’ll show. Tache noir can happen in ~7-8 hours. It looks vaguely terrifying if I’m honest. But hey, that’s life! Er, death, rather.

Basically, when you’re writing a crime scene and you want a model corpse with mobility and the fewest visible markers of decomposition, you only really have about 2 hours at most so plan your timeline accordingly if you’re counting on these things! Also, I know pallor mortis is a thing and I didn’t include it because it’s basically useless in determining TOD. Dead bodies get pale. That’s probably the one thing anyone knows. Anyway, happy writing!

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in the field! I’m still just a student. This is information accumulated over the course of my studies and has been reinforced by various sources, primarily my forensics teacher who spent years working in the field before moving to the classroom.