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London: In a big aid to detectives faced with investigating
gruesome crimes, a leading Italian forensic scientist claims to
have built up data that may help determine whether marks on a
dead body were due to violence or work of insects which moved in
after death. Dr Stefano Vanin at University of Huddersfield says
that tiny creatures very often can cause lesions to a corpse
which closely resemble injuries left by a human assailant. For
example, ants which clamber over a dead body’s face can deposit
marks which mimic the effects of a punch.
It is vital that detectives are quickly able to separate
post-mortem insect damage from wounds that were caused before
death by a killer, he says. Dr Vanin is building up a body of
knowledge about the various ways in which insects can distort
crime scenes. This time he investigates the damage caused to
dead bodies that are found underwater, where they are preyed on
by aquatic creatures. It was the retrieval of the body of a
28-year-old man in in Italy, that provided Dr Vanin with the
opportunity to add another piece to his jigsaw of knowledge.
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