National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 902 - 840 Stubborn Corpse

Tang Feng shuddered as he listened to Jiang Yuan’s answer, as if he had just finished an exam and was checking his answers, only to hear the top student next door coldly spit out two words: "Wrong."

"What do you feel?" Tang Feng knew it was unnecessary, but he couldn’t help asking.

"The degree of leather-like transformation of the corpse’s skin is somewhat abnormal." Jiang Yuan looked down at the body with a critical eye, touched the surface of the body with his finger, especially after examining the scrotum, he shook his head and said, "Let’s open it up and take a look."

Leathery transformation is a term specific to forensic science, referring to part of the corpse’s skin that has turned leather-like in appearance. The area most prone to this transformation is the "scrotum," because the skin there is thin, prone to dehydration, and can easily turn black and purple, similar to the leather of a handbag.

But leather-like transformation requires time and conditions.

It doesn’t happen just because one wants it to, nor can it be easily avoided. A typical example is a fair and attractive boy, who remains delicate and tender in the south, but if he recklessly runs into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the harsh ultraviolet rays and windy weather can roughen and darken his skin in just a few days, which is similar to the process of leather-like transformation.

A corpse that has been frozen can also partially exhibit leather-like transformation, which makes it easier to reveal imprints. Some older forensic doctors, whose judgment might not be very accurate, would freeze the body to see if there are any marks and what kind of marks they are.

This body was the same; many small marks on the skin, such as on the knees, the bends of the legs, and the arms, were all revealed. Upon close examination by Jiang Yuan, they were mostly falls and abrasions.

Imagine the victim standing and receiving a heavy blow to the head; he might stagger a step or two, hit surrounding objects causing slight abrasions, and then fall heavily on the ground causing fall injuries. If he were to survive, or live a while longer, these marks might have healed, but if he died immediately, the marks would be fixed in place.

However, these traces alone were not sufficient to solve the case.

Jiang Yuan took a knife and, using his height advantage, fiercely made a straight cut across the body, employing the traditional Chinese straight-line cutting method, also known as the straight-line method.

(T-shaped, straight-line, Y-shaped, inverted Y-shaped)

(Forensic Pathology Fourth Edition by Zhao Ziqin, People’s Health Publishing House.)

Tang Feng assisted Jiang Yuan.

The suturing after an autopsy involved pulling the two sides of the flesh together and stitching them crosswise, so the second autopsy still had to be cut open with a knife, and partially due to the freezing, some bits of flesh naturally fell out from the suture area.

But that didn’t matter as it was already a body that had been kept for several days; even in an ice coffin, there was still a certain degree of decomposition. This is also why meat in a freezer spoils, and repeatedly thawn meat spoils even faster.

Thus, after a second autopsy, there was basically no value left for further autopsies. A third or fourth autopsy, if not requested by the family, usually served only to confirm certain details.

Jiang Yuan thus examined particularly carefully. After all, this autopsy nearly determined the body’s ultimate fate. In terms of the case, it was almost equivalent to determining the fate of the case.

"He was quite overweight," Jiang Yuan said as he pushed aside the discolored yellow fat, with a rancid smell reaching his nostrils.

The rancid smell, like spoiled oil at home or high-fat pastries gone bad, is commonly stronger than the smell of a corpse.

And of course, there was still the presence of corpse stench.

Tang Feng, wearing a mask, grunted and said, "He must weigh about 180 pounds. The fact that the body hasn’t been dismembered suggests that the murderer probably didn’t act alone."

"The murderer acted alone in delivering a fatal blow, but might have sought help to dispose of the body," Jiang Yuan said, sighing. "If the victim was a village doctor, practically everyone in the village could be a suspect. But under the current circumstances, it’s uncertain whether it was premeditated."

If the murderer had abandoned the body at the scene, this kind of blunt force killing would often be impulsive. In cases of premeditated murder, the murderer usually ensures the victim is dead, leading to additional stabs or blows.

But through the stage of abandoning the body, premeditation becomes hard to assert as the murder could ensure death since the murderer was present, and since the crime was ongoing, the murderer’s attention could have shifted.

"Let Director Liu ponder over this matter," Jiang Yuan said, having examined the body thoroughly and took a magnifying glass for a closer look at the abrasion, ended up shaking his head in disappointment.

There was no debris or anything that could 动态光标 be used for trace evidence examination, further confirming that the victim was indeed wearing trousers prior to death.

—This is not a baseless conjecture; it’s not uncommon for victims to die in a semi-nude or nude state and be dressed postmortem. In some cases, the families dress the deceased to cover up, and sometimes family members even tamper with the scene afterward by putting clothes on the deceased.

As for examining the clothes and trousers for trace evidence, although possible, there seemed no urgent need at the moment. On one hand, the environmental complexity at the scene and the long duration the body lay in the reeds meant clothing-mounted evidence was excessive; on another, even if there were first-scene evidence on the clothes, it was now both hard to distinguish and identify.

This exemplifies why wilderness body dumping is more complicated than burial. If buried, due to the stable underground environment, the body generally remains as it was left by the murderer. Trace evidence can often offer more discoveries.

From this perspective, if a murder team were divided into roles, the ones disposing of bodies in the wilderness and those digging deep graves to bury bodies should be two specialties, two distinct training directions.

Jiang Yuan spent over an hour on the second autopsy before eventually leaving the dissected body and sitting on a chillingly cold adjacent autopsy table, pondering for a long time before asking, "What do you think?"

Tang Feng, in his thirties, his eyes as clear as a fresh graduate: "I’m out of ideas."

If he had any ideas, he wouldn’t have waited until a second autopsy.

Jiang Yuan respectfully consulted the forensic doctor before nodding and saying, "The previously judged time of death for this body, I think it’s inappropriate. But the exact time of death, I still can’t ascertain right now! It needs thorough investigation!"

Jiang Yuan said this with a very serious expression.

His Level 6 accuracy in determining time of death was now ambiguous, even after a re-autopsy, which itself was a major issue.

What kind of body would be so stubborn?