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

Human bodies decay on specific time lines. From when rigor mortis sets in to when it releases, the cooling of the body, and so on. Specific modalities of death, strangulation, gunshot wounds, stabbing, blunt force trauma (beating someone to death) all deliver specific information. Like, after a certain distance, you no longer get gunpowder burns on a body and so on. Then there are insects. Certain bugs will be in/on the body at specific times during decomposition. All of these various details add together to build a specific picture of when a person died and the modality of that death.