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Two fatalities due to unusual impalement injuries are reported. (1) A large branch broken off during a storm had entered a passing car and perforated the chest of the driver and the back of the seat. The chest organs were grossly lacerated. The car was subsequently stopped by another tree and this second impact removed the wood from the body. (2) A man suffered anorectal impalement by the leg of a stool turned upside down. He had introduced one stool leg into his anus for sexual stimulation and fell onto it. This resulted in a wound channel 36 cm long including perforation of the rectum, urinary bladder, mesentery, transverse mesocolon and liver. Before autopsy, the mode of death was unclear because the man had removed the stool leg himself, his wife had hidden the stool from the scene, and there were no relevant external injuries. In both cases, a reliable reconstruction required investigation of the scene and consideration of extremely unlikely circumstances or of bizarre human activities.

The described case underlines all difficulties which arise in identification procedure of totally burned human remains. The main problem is the fragility of bone and tooth fragments and the radiological screening of structures of high individual specificity. After the fire in an old beekeeping a totally burned corpse has been found. The fragments of the bones and jaws were fixed with sodium silicate immediately. The viscero-cranium was reconstructed and x-rayed in an modified orthopantomography-x-ray-equipment. The comparison of pre- and postmortem radiographs made a positive identification possible.

Two suicides with home-made guns firing conventional ammunition are reported. Three different classes of homemade guns can be distinguished. Special characteristics of the interior and exterior ballistics of the home-made guns caused unusual muzzle imprints, intensive soot deposits at the entrance wounds and on the hands, intensive CO-effects, burns and in one case a skin laceration of the hand holding the weapon. The bullets showed a reduced penetration depth, characteristic firing marks were missing.

A man committed suicide by a contact shot to the left chest from a nail-gun. The nail caused a slit-like entrance wound and a penetrating heart injury. The front side of the nailgun led to an outer "muzzle imprint", the muzzle and the nail to an inner "muzzle imprint". Wound ballistics of nails are discussed.

Dactyloscopic fingerprints of longer time in water laying corpses can be taken from the surface and rear face of the epidermis and from the corium with a simple method. Used are in household occurring or easily available substances. For best results in identification it is important to get all fingerprints without exchanging them.

Three car accidents are described in which microtrace analysis was of special significance in the clarification of the seating positions. In all three cases the occupants were under the influence of alcohol. In each case the accident occurred at night and without witnesses. The pattern of injuries in two cases was non-specific. In the first case, no fiber traces were visible to the naked eye; in the other two the fibers were recognizable to the naked eye after close examination. In all three cases, the seating position was ascertained by means of fiber trace analysis.

Measurements of the ethanol flow from the blood into the gastrointestinal tract revealed an exponential characteristic. The rates of transport were proportional to the differences in concentration. The constants of the exsorption were equal to those of the insorption. The constants of the exsorption were 0.033 min-1 for the stomach, 0.071 min-1 for the small, and 0.019 min-1 for the large intestine.

Taking electronographs from fingerprints is a technique with expense and circumstantiality. Moreover this technique yields bad results when finger-prints were taken from the skin of dead persons.