Don’t worry this isn’t anything alarming. I’m in the process of writing a whodunit and I just want to know if there are any signs that occur/do not occur in a stab wound that is made after death? Any answers would be a great deal of help. Thanks!
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in most cases the coroner/pathologist will be the one doing that.
but the main difference is blood, on a live person the heart is stil pumping blood which would be getting pumped into the wound and out.
there is no blood flow on a corpse to push blood out of the same wounds whihc would in turn also allow any remaining blood to clot in the area of that wound.
I might be mistaken but if you are alive the wound will start to try to scab over. if you are already dead it will just be a cut without any attempt at scabbing.
Essentially the question, whether it be stab wound, or water in the lungs etc, is ‘are there tell tale signs that the body tried to respond/react to this danger’. If not then it was probably because they were already dead when it happened.
This isn’t a full and complete answer, but the answer is something called lividity. Basically if you’re alive, your body will start to engage alarms if you get injured in a major way, the flesh around the wound will be red and inflamed as the body sent extra blood to try and clot the bleeding, if someone is stabbed post Mortem there are no signs of this as the body isn’t alive to start these processes
If a bunch of blood came out of a wound, it was probably made while the person was still alive and the heart was still pumping. If you make a hole in somebody and very little blood comes out, they were probably already dead, so the blood mostly just stayed where it was.
Whether it actively bleeds or not.
If you’re dead, your heart doesn’t pump, therefore you bleed less when stabbed, than if you are alive.
If you stab someone when they’re alive, there will be some blood loss around the stab site. Much more so if the knife is removed as there is no more pressure of the blade on the internal blood vessels. After than, the body tries to stop the bleeding, so you’d see inflammation of the surrounding tissue. If the wound was not fatal, you might see some blood clotting around the wound where the body tried to stop the bleeding, whilst fatal wounds tend to bleed so much the body doesn’t get to try and close it. A person that died on the site of the stabbing will usually be surrounded by a pool of blood, or if they were able to walk about, leave a trail behind.
Post mortem wounds don’t bleed as there is no blood pressure anymore. You’ll see clean cuts, no inflammation of the surrounding tissue. You may however see some superficial coagulation as the blood inside the tissue is exposed to air and dries, but only if the wound was made soon after death. There is no large blood pool to be found.
It also depends how long after death the stab wound occurs, if it’s just minutes you may still see some bleeding as the blood hasn’t fully coagulated yet. The longer you wait, the more the blood pools towards the lower body parts due to gravity and coagulates, to the point where unless you cut through large vessels, you can make a fully blood free stab wound, kind of like when you stab a chicken carcass before you cook it.
Inflammation status is usually determined by a pathologist using a microscope and tissue samples collected from the stab site, not by the detectives on site.
In addition to what others have said, angle of the stab wound is a determinant. The shape of the wound can indicate what position the victim was in when the attack happened, as well as the height and strength of the attacker, and even whether the attack was made with the left or right hand.
A lot of forensics is based in math. Forensic science can determine whether someone jumped from a building or was pushed, how tall a person is by the size and spacing of footprints, and more. It’s really a fascinating field.
There’s a series of how to books for mystery writers called Howdunits. Look for the ones called ‘Cause of Death’ and ‘Body Trauma’.
Big one is blood. Bleeding is a product of your blood pressure. If you’re alive when stabbed, your heart is still pumping. That means blood is gonna be trying to get out, and it’s gonna be all around messy.
A corpse on the otherhand? Heart isn’t beating. No real bleeding. There is blood, but it’s akin to cutting into a block of playdough; no real mess outside of the dirty knife
Similar logic can be applied to things like blunt force trauma; You’re not gonna bleed much if nothing is pushing the blood out.
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