“Why is that, doctor?” Tanner was intrigued, but stumped.
“Particularly when dealing with Europeans from a time before clothing began to be mostly imported from Japan and other places in East Asia, clothing manufacture in Europe was less a matter of mass production and more unique to the country of origin, especially for the more affluent. The sewing styles of various countries and regions were identifiable. During the Second World War, for example, British spies going behind German lines were carefully outfitted with clothing from the place where they were claiming to be from. If the Gestapo determined that a suit worn by someone who said they were Belgian was actually sewn in Tuscany, his cover was well and truly blown. The result was never pleasant.”
Tanner considered making a crack about the good doctor having minored in 20th century fashion history but couldn’t come up with anything clever enough quickly enough.
Dr. Haggard lifted off the ragged remains of the suit jacket and pointed to the label inside. “This certainly appears to be Italian and the sizing appears to be European, rather than for American customers. This looks to have been an expensive set of clothes.”
“I don’t claim to be an expert, but the lapel and look of the jacket seems to be old, like what you’d see in early TV shows,” observed Inv. Carrier.
“Yeah. Like what Rickie Ricardo wore in early episodes of I Love Lucy” said Tanner Saint.
As the clothing items were removed from the body and examined, they were then individually bagged and tagged, again in paper. The clothing, along with the wallet and its contents were to be taken to the trace evidence lab at the recently completed New York State Police Laboratory facility outside the City of Albany at the State Office campus off the Slingerlands Bypass.
The last item removed was a small pendant, hanging from a thin gold chain around his neck. It was shaped like a half circle, with an intricate design and had a straight, but jagged edge on one side. “That might be one-half of a split pendant, a kind of symbol that might be joined with the other half.” Carrier said. “My grandparents had a pair of those.”
By now, “Wally”, looking even more forlorn than before, was lying naked on the table, as the tarp had been carefully removed and likewise bagged to go to the trace evidence lab. Before bagging the notch of wood, Dr. Haggard and the two investigators looked over this item.
“This appears to be a piece of something larger, that may have broken off, given the jagged but linear surface on one side and the curved and shaped other surface that is smooth and regular, though curved” dictated Dr. Haggard as he examined the item under a magnifying glass. “It seems to be a hardwood, perhaps ash or maple, as I do not see the normal oak grain.”
“It looks like a piece of a handle of a tool, like a hammer or hatchet” observed Tanner Saint. “I have broken off pieces that look a lot like this, when I mis-hit something.”
“By something, you’re not talking family members, I trust”, grinned Carrier.
“Let’s see what the people at the lab make of it”, Dr Haggard said as he dropped the item into the paper bag that Inv. Carrier was holding open.
Now that the body was fully unclothed, the officers could appreciate the differences in mummification, as compared with normal decomposition. The overall color of the body was much darker than normal, resembling jerky, as Saint had previously noted. The skin appeared largely intact, though stretched taut, due to shrinkage. At the wrists, the skin seemed to have been pulled up from the end, as if the fellow had been wearing a sweater much too small for him. The area of the neck where the ring of disturbed flesh was, the skin above and below the line of marks was slightly pulled back, reminding Tanner Saint of puckered lips.
After dusting off the area of the throat with a soft bristle brush, Dr. Haggard picked up a tongue depressor and magnifying glass. “This area appears to have been transected, although by something much duller than a knife, as the skin has been more torn or abraded rather than sliced. The process of mummification has made the skin and flesh too tough to coax apart without tearing further, which might damage what I have to look at. Even with limited visibility, though, I can see that the depth of the wound is somewhat more at the front than at the ends below the ears, it does not appear that the wound is straight across, which in cross section would look like a ‘D’ ”.
“This wound may be more banana-shaped, suggesting a bending weapon, like a thin noose or garrote. In order to know for certain, I will first have to soften this portion of the body.
When I first saw this fellow, I was reminded of a famous case in Britain in 1960, known as the Rhyl case, owing to the location of the body in Rhyl, North Wales. I’ve made photocopies of a description of the case for you both and for ADA Drake. In that case, a woman’s body had been hidden in a large wooden cupboard in a house and was thoroughly mummified. In order to perform a full autopsy, the body was soaked in a solution of water and glycerin for more than 40 hours.
Like the case before us, the woman in Rhyl had a disturbed area around her neck. In her case, it was found to be that there was a groove left in her neck by a twisted scarf that was still in place, covered over by the flaps of skin. Strangulation was the probable cause of death, although the jury in the subsequent murder trial was not satisfied that the woman was not already dead. One might wonder if the throttling of already expired corpses was a common hobby in that part of the world, but that would be unkind to suggest.”
As the group chuckled at the prospect, Dr. Haggard suggested a short break for coffee, which they drank in an area of the room away from the body.
Following the short recess, Dr. Haggard with the help of his assistant, turned the body face down, so that the sides and back of the neck could be more clearly seen. “You see that the marking and disturbance of skin continues along both sides of the neck to the spinous processes, the backs of the neck vertebrae. We may well find this to be consistent with the use of a wire garrote, a length of non-stretch wire which is connected on each end, with a piece of wooden handle, perhaps pieces of a broom handle.
“The wire is formed into a loop and then dropped over the head and pulled tight from behind, with the left hand pulling back on the right end of the noose and likewise on the other side. If the wire or whatever had not first been formed into a loop, the force of the pulling would be more straight back on either side of the neck, leaving undisturbed flesh and skin on either side of the vertebrae.”
“So are we any closer to knowing when this guy died” asked Inv. Saint?
“Not really,” replied Dr. Haggard. “The woman from Rhyl had gone missing some twenty years previously, but there was nothing in the autopsy to confirm that. While it can be assumed that she gave off a strong odor until the mummification had progressed, the landlord was the accused murderer, so he would have been unlikely to complain about the smell to anyone.
“In another case, a burglar attempted to perform his best Santa Claus imitation by trying to enter a house via the chimney. He lowered himself into the opening, raising his arms above his head and then took the plunge, as it were. Unfortunately, as he was a burglar and not a brick mason by trade, he did not know that his downward progress would be halted by a 90-degree change in direction in the flue. He was stuck standing there, unable to climb back up.
“Geez. That must have been agony to go that slowly and to be awake the whole time.” Tanner shuddered visibly at the thought.
“When someone finally got around to trying to figure out the reason for the poor draft that this chimney exhibited, he was discovered where he still stood, and interviews with his family established that he had gone missing two years prior. The depth of the soot and dust on him was consistent with this time period.”
“I wonder if anyone thought to take into account the amount of soot and creosote that would have landed on him when a chimney sweep attempted to clear the flue, thumping the poor bastard on the top of the head with the chimney brush,” remarked Inv. Carrier, as they all indulged in some of the
slightly guilty laughter that accompanied the macabre humor. While gallows humor would be likely to offend the casual listener, it was an indispensible part of life in the world of criminal justice, as without it one might well break into tears or go nuts.
After a good laugh from picturing that slapstick scene, Dr. Haggard then turned his attention to the battered mouth of the mummified remains before them. He first looked carefully at the frontal and lateral head x-rays, which his assistant had taken, developed and hung from light boxes before the beginning of the autopsy.
“If the intent was to prevent identification of this fellow through dental records, then they did a poor job. There is a molar, #19, which means lower left six year molar, which seems to have been dislodged and pushed nearly back into the throat. You can see right here, that it has a large filling that is perhaps distinct enough to help in identification, assuming we are able to find dental records and maybe an earlier x-ray. As there are no other teeth either in the mouth or in the throat, just some odd fragments, I suspect that a hammer-like tool was used to dislodge the teeth and then they were scooped out of his mouth. This indentation on the cheek has corners, as though hit by something square, which is unlike most hammers I know.”
Inv. Carrier interjected, “Geologists and shoe cobblers have hammers with square heads.”
“The back of a hatchet often looks like that too”, said Tanner Saint.
“I could ask you gentlemen how those particular items came quite so quickly to mind.” played Dr. Haggard.
Tanner suggested, “Any answer we might give can only get us into trouble, so we would ignore the question if it was asked.”
Ed continued, “Let’s get some of my guys down here to photograph those indentations and see if they can do a casting for comparison.”
“Once they are done doing that, and after we soften up the body, I will retrieve the tooth and send it to Leonard Lewis, to see if he can discern anything about the filling”, remarked Dr. Haggard.
Dr. Leonard Lewis was a forensic odontologist attached to the New York State Police Lab. Known fondly as “The Tooth Fairy” by police investigators around the state, his specialties included the identification of human remains using their dental records and the comparison of bite marks with the perpetrators who made them on their victims. He had a worldwide reputation, putting names to bodies in various stages of disrepair, from war heroes to war criminals-in-hiding and everyone in between.
“Just as clothing manufacture has, until recently, been regionalized, so too has been the practice of dentistry. In different countries, there were variations in techniques, and in the materials used to repair teeth. Perhaps Leonard can tell us more about ‘Wally’.” The cops glanced at each other and smiled, realizing that Dr. Haggard had adopted their nickname.
The doctor then, unexpectedly, began examine to the right forearm of the unfortunate soul on his table, looking at a slightly darker portion of skin about three inches above the stump of the wrist.
“Now I am truly guessing, but this might just be a small tattoo. Perhaps, when we soften up the body, I will be able to excise this portion of skin and get a good look at this.”
Finally, they began to examine the ends of the body’s arms. Starting with the x-rays, Dr. Haggard pointed out that on the left arm, the radius and the ulna had severed ends that were fairly clean and parallel, as though both were cut by a single effort with a single instrument. In contrast, the right hand had been removed at the wrist, and the x-ray showed that the wrist bones had been shattered with a number of fragments still lodged under the dried skin.
“Once the softening process is complete, I will be able to microscopically examine the ends of these bones and look for things like saw tooth marks, cut angles and the like, but preliminarily, what I can see in the x-rays suggests that the hands were chopped off, as opposed to sawn or sliced. The left hand was removed more cleanly, perhaps with a single blow. They made a mess of it on the other hand, striking too close to the hand and probably needing more than one strike to complete the amputation.”
“Was he alive when they did this?” asked Saint.
“I doubt we will ever know for certain, given the state of the body, but look at the partial shirt sleeve on the right arm. The ragged end may have gotten in the way of the blade, causing the failed first blow. While there is some discoloration of the sleeve from blood, it is far less than I would expect had they severed the arteries while he was still alive. I suspect that these injuries were post mortem.”
“I wonder what they did with the hands…throw them into the lake?” surmised Carrier.
“Actually, they may have been left with the body”, said Dr. Haggard, cryptically.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember that odd pile of ‘stuff’ next to the body? I was examining it earlier today. We will test it, but it looks to be dried meat and chunks of bone. And then I remembered that the room next to where the body had been found was, at that time, a kitchen for an Italian restaurant. It almost certainly would have been equipped with a hand-cranked meat grinder.”
“Yuch! Doc, that’s gross!”
“That’s it! I’m swearing off sausage, as of now.”
They wrapped up the procedure and went over to the sinks where they removed their protective clothing, throwing it into a hamper and then washing their hands thoroughly, although the chance of any sort of contamination was slight in this instance.
“I will not try to soften the flesh until I have decided on how to take the DNA samples” concluded Dr. Haggard.
***
While the autopsy was underway, Peter, who was at his desk doing something novel…reading, got a phone call from SP Inv. Abe Dorn, who had finally heard from the Colonie Police investigators.
“Wow, Peter. You’ve got yourself a fan club down there.”
“Oh, no! What vicious and totally untrue rumors are they spreading now?”
“No! Really! Those guys miss you. Especially Inv. Zant, who immediately broke into a bad Elmer Fudd imitation he claimed you would remember.”
“Oh God, yes! We had a drug case that went to trial and the dealer had an unfortunate speech defect…either that or he had watched way too many Warner Brothers cartoons as a kid. I was terrified that he might testify on his own behalf at the trial. I would not have been able to keep a straight face during cross examination, and the jury might find him too amusing to be capable of selling drugs. Andy loves to remind me about that by saying, ‘Pwease, Mr. Dwake, selwing dwugs is the only phing I know how to do!’”
“They both told me that you would tell me about the garage door opener?”
“Remember what I told you about Sgt. Heinemann. It was in this same case, when they executed the search warrant on the defendant’s apartment. The team was collecting evidence and photo’ing everything first. Steve had the collection boxes in the kitchen and was inventorying the items they found and marking each item on a hand-drawn map of the apartment. At some point, he saw what looked like a garage door opener on top of the fridge. He brought it down to examine, because this perp did not own a car and had no garage. Curiosity got the better of him and while holding it in one hand, he pressed the button.”
“In other words, he never got the memo about the red button?”
Peter chuckled. “Turns out, it was a stun gun, and according to sworn witness testimony at the trial, he screamed like a little girl. The jury was in tears laughing when they heard about it.”
“No way!”
“You just can’t make this stuff up”, laughed Peter. “Anyway, what did they have to say about our foreign friend? Did they know him?”
“Not really, but Jay thought he may have heard something about some “goombah” walking around like some sort of big shot, even though he couldn’t speak much English. They promised to check around for us and see if they can come up with anything. They asked that we forward any photo we may get of him, so they can show it around.”
Peter, wh
o had been drumming a pencil on his desk, sat forward in his chair. “It sounds like the best way to find this guy is to locate the ‘local’ that he was arguing with, before he ventilated the bar. It’s either that or walk around the village canvassing the owners and their employees. After all, an older guy, dressed in a suit rather than casual summer wear, who seems to speak Italian, rather than French like our Canadian visitors, has got to stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Uhh, Peter?” This was a voice from across the room.
“Hey, Scott. What’s up?” replied Peter to the deputy standing at the coffee station, in mid-pour. It was Deputy Scott Dawson, who had been on duty protecting the scene where “Wally” had been found.
“I walked in on your conversation and only heard the last part, and maybe it’s nothing, but the guy you just described, I think I met him.”
Peter and Tanner turned in their seats to face the deputy. “Do tell. Why don’t you finish fixing your coffee and set yourself down right ch’ere” drawled Peter, patting his hand on the seat of the chair next to him.
Wiseguys in the Woods Page 7