Problematic Body Recovery

Question 1

What are the aims of problematic body recovery?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What is taphonomy?

Answer 2

Combination of environmental and internal factors that contribute to why body looks the way it does

Question 3

What specialists are used in problematic body recovery?

Answer 3

Anthropologist
Archaeologist
Biologist/chemist
Botanist
Entomologist
Pathologist
Soil scientist
Vomitologist

Question 4

What does an entomologist do?

Answer 4

Use insects to identify duration

Question 5

What can a vomitologist discover?

Answer 5

Time of death by examining stomach contents

Question 6

Where are specialists from?

Answer 6

SCA recommendation (serious crime authority)
SPA (Scottish police authority)
Private companies
Universities

Question 7

What is a MISPER?

Answer 7

Missing person

Question 8

What is involved for wide scale search?

Answer 8

Aerial photos

Maps

Question 9

What is involved with small searches?

Answer 9

Field walking

Environmental profiling

Question 10

How can you search for body if nothing visible on land?

Answer 10

Geophysics
Topsoil strip
Trial excavation

Question 11

What is aerial photography?

Answer 11

Exclude areas

Look for hidden graves, disturbances in topography, compare images to royal commission archive

Question 12

What do maps rule out?

Answer 12

Archaeological sites
Service tranches
Natural features

Question 13

What is environmental profiling?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

What is stratigraphy?

Answer 14

Layers of soil

Question 15

If you bury a body, what happens to the soil?

Answer 15

Initially it is raised, but it sinks as body decomposes

Layers are altered

Question 16

How can roots be used?

Answer 16

Roots have growth rings so you can tell time since they grew through skeleton

Question 17

What happens to plants initially after burying a body?

Answer 17

Nutrients and gases from body are toxic so plants die, apart from annual weeds

Question 18

What is the long term effect of a buried body on plants?

Answer 18

Nutrients become beneficial

Plants grow well

Question 19

What plants thrive in highly organic soil?

Answer 19

Brambles and nettles

Question 20

When do lichens grow?

Answer 20

Over 100 years old

Question 21

How high can brambles grow per year?

Answer 21

8ft

Question 22

What are the three techniques for geophysic searching for bodies?

Answer 22

Resistivity
Magnetometry
Ground penetrating radar

Question 23

What is resistivity?

Answer 23

Geophysics
Resistance to current between two electrodes
Soil and water conducts well

Question 24

Why is resistivity not the ideal measure?

Answer 24

Not good in waterlogged soil or very dry

Electrodes will either conduct very well or not at all

Question 25

What is magnetometry?

Answer 25

Identify changes to magnetic field by burning buried metal or refilled holes
Fast
Works in all types of soil

Question 26

What is the downside to magnetometry?

Answer 26

Affected by overhead power/cables

Question 27

What is GPR?

Answer 27

Ground penetrating radar

Question 28

What is ground penetrating radar?

Answer 28

Radar frequencies bounce off features under ground, can go through concrete
Don’t need to dig

Question 29

In what conditions does GPR not work well in?

Answer 29

Wet, standing water or clay rich soils

Question 30

What is monitored top-soil strip?

Answer 30

If disturbance not visible

Removal of top soil can reveal a grave cut

Question 31

Graces can either be a mound or

Answer 31

A hole