Search

Intentional body dismemberment is usually associated with homicides. This chapter presents two unusual cases of postmortem body dismemberment following accidental deaths. The cases presented were accidental drug overdoses associated with body packing. Body packers are people who ingest packets of illicit drugs or insert them into body cavities for purposes of smuggling. Fatalities occur when these ingested packets accidentally leak or rupture. In the cases presented, accomplices cut the decedent’s bodies to remove the drugs and then dismembered the bodies for disposal. Annual trends of body packer fatalities in New York City are also presented.

A review of New York City dismemberment cases occurring between 1996 and 2017 was conducted, which resulted in a total of 55 dismembered decedents in a 22-year period. Annual trends indicate an average of 2.5 dismembered decedents. Additional results show that 53% of cases involved transection only, 35% involved disarticulation only, and 13% involved a combination of both. When the entire body could be accounted for, the average number of body portions per case was 5.5. Frequent locations for dismemberment were the neck, shoulders, hips, and knees. Dismemberment locations showed a general trend of anatomical symmetry. Seventy-eight percent of the dismemberments involve disposal of body parts in an outside location. Eighty-four percent were concealed from view with some type of covering. The findings from New York City are compared with other studies.

Sharp force trauma research lacks agreement on reported error rates for correctly identifying toolmark characteristics on bone and cartilage. This study provides error rates for determining blade class (serrated, partially serrated, nonserrated) and type of edge bevel (left, right, even). Three analysts examined cuts to a wax medium, cartilage, and bone using two types of microscopes. Additionally, the observers examined impressions taken from the wax medium and the cartilage. Overall, a total of 504 observations were performed. Serrated blades were distinguishable from nonserrated blades due to their patterned striations. Some difficulties were encountered in distinguishing serrated and partially serrated blades; however, when these groups were considered together as one classification type (serrated), classification accuracy improved from 79% to 96%. Classification accuracy for edge bevel was 65%. Error rates were similar when comparing direct observation of the cut marks versus indirect observation (impressions). Additionally, the type of microscope used did not affect error rates.

Body size reconstructions of fossil hominins allow us to infer many things about their evolution and lifestyle, including diet, metabolic requirements, locomotion, and brain/body size relationships. The importance of these implications compels anthropologists to attempt body mass estimation from fragmentary fossil hominin specimens. Most calculations require a known “calibration” sample usually composed of modern humans or other extant apes. Caution must be taken in these analyses, as estimates are sensitive to overall size and allometric differences between the fossil hominin and the reference sample. Am J Phys Anthropol 151:215–229, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Santeria and Palo Mayombe are syncretic religions created in the New World based upon African religious beliefs combined with Christianity. The main worship of Palo Mayombe involves religious receptacles that may contain earth, sticks, varied artifacts, and animal and human remains. Due to the use of human and nonhuman remains, discovery of these items often leads to involvement by the police due to a concern of homicide. We review in detail the medical examiner records of two of these ritualistic cases including the autopsy, anthropology, police, and investigators' reports. For the human remains, careful consideration of the context in which the remains were recovered, their state of preservation, and the associated artifacts (e.g., beads and mercury) are important in determining the appropriate level of forensic significance. Anthropological examination with particular attention to taphonomic characteristics also may help determine the origin and forensic significance.

Recently, Hefner and Ousley (2014) introduced the optimized summed scored attributes (OSSA) method that maximizes between-group differences in U.S. black and white populations by dichotomizing six cranial morphoscopic trait scores. This study tests OSSA using an independent skeletal sample (Hamann-Todd, n = 208) and positively identified forensic cases (Mercyhurst University, n = 28, and New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, n = 38). An evaluation of trait frequencies suggests shifting the heuristically selected sectioning point separating U.S. black and white populations from ≤ 3 to ≤ 4. We found a total correct classification of 73.0% (B = 50.9%, W = 89.2%) using the originally suggested sectioning point of ≤3, while the total correct classification increases to 79.2% (B = 80.2%, W = 78.5%) with a modified sectioning point of ≤4. With the increased total correct classification and reduced classification bias between ancestry groups, we suggest the modified sectioning point of ≤4 be used when assessing ancestry in forensic unknowns.

This chapter discusses the patterned thermal destruction of human remains in a forensic setting. In the rapidly changing world of forensic science, more specifically forensic anthropology, there is a necessity to understand and be able to interpret fire modification of human remains. With the enormous potential for fire and heat alterations to inhibit scientists’ abilities to interpret patterns to human remains, burn trauma analysis is inconsistent and has been slow to mature in many disciplines. The destructive forces of fire often significantly alter, damage or even destroy many recognisable patterns, characteristics and evidence that we normally depend on. This likely contributes to the existence and persistence of old and untested theories concerning burned bone where inaccurate interpretations, such as exploding skulls, persist for decades and terminology is inconsistent. In fatal fire cases, forensic anthropologists are primarily responsible for separating perimortem trauma from heat-induced fractures and for assigning temporal and sequential designations to trauma when possible. These findings may contribute to the determination of cause and manner of death, time of death and perpetrator behaviour.

Homo erectuswas the first hominin to exhibit extensive range expansion. This extraordinary departure from Africa,especially into more temperate climates of Eurasia, has been variously related to technological, energetic and foraging shifts. The temporal and regional anatomical variation inH. erectussuggests that a high level of developmental plasticity, a key factor in the ability ofH. sapiensto occupy a variety of habitats, may also have been present inH. erectus.Developmental plasticity, the ability to modify development in response to environmental conditions, results in differences in size, shape and dimorphism across populations that relate in part to levels of resource sufficiency and extrinsic mortality. These differences predict not only regional variations but also overall smaller adult sizes and lower levels of dimorphism in instances of resource scarcity and high predator load. We consider the metric variation in 35 human and non-human primate ‘populations’ from known environmental contexts and 14 time- and space-restricted paleodemes ofH. erectusand other fossilHomo. Human and non-human primates exhibit more similar patterns of variation than expected, with plasticity evident, but in differing patterns by sex across populations. The fossil samples show less evidence of variation than expected, althoughH. erectusvaries more than Neandertals.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

Body size reconstructions of fossil hominins allow us to infer many things about their evolution and lifestyle, including diet, metabolic requirements, locomotion, and brain/body size relationships. The importance of these implications compels anthropologists to attempt body mass estimation from fragmentary fossil hominin specimens. Most calculations require a known "calibration" sample usually composed of modern humans or other extant apes. Caution must be taken in these analyses, as estimates are sensitive to overall size and allometric differences between the fossil hominin and the reference sample.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the patterned thermal destruction of human remains in a forensic setting. In the rapidly changing world of forensic science, more specifically forensic anthropology, there is a necessity to understand and be able to interpret fire modification of human remains. With the enormous potential for fire and heat alterations to inhibit scientists' abilities to interpret patterns to human remains, burn trauma analysis is inconsistent and has been slow to mature in many disciplines. The destructive forces of fire often significantly alter, damage, or even destroy many recognizable patterns, characteristics, and evidence that we normally depend on. This likely contributes to the existence and persistence of old and untested theories concerning burned bone where inaccurate interpretations, such as exploding skulls, persist for decades, and terminology is inconsistent. In fatal fire cases, forensic anthropologists are responsible primarily for separating perimortem trauma from heat-induced fractures and for assigning temporal and sequential designations to trauma when possible. These findings may contribute to the determination of cause and manner of death, time of death, and perpetrator behavior.