How are coroners able to find specific details about a dead body, like the time of death, cause of death, and even the distance between the victim and the attacker?

Question

How are coroners able to find specific details about a dead body, like the time of death, cause of death, and even the distance between the victim and the attacker?

In: Biology

Answer 1

The coroner figures this out by examining the body. Things like rigor mortis (the stiffening of the body’s muscles) happen in under 15 hours; determining how close the body is to full rigor mortis can help them nail down a timeline.

Bodies decompose; examining how much the body has decomposed adds another datapoint. The eyes in particular have a series of changes they go through that can help a coroner determine time of death.

As for cause of death, the coroner can look at a few things. The stomach’s contents can be tested to rule out poisoning. The type of impact wound can help determine what killed an individual. For example, finger marks around the neck could be consistent with strangulation. A bullet wound could explain cause of death as well. You could check for blood/water in the lungs, etc…

There’s a lot you can find out from a person’s body.