All That Remains

by Sue Black

  Secondly, the head had been treated differently from the rest of the body. It had been found in a different county, for a start. It had not been wrapped up and it was the only body part where there had been a loss of soft tissue. We were not convinced by the pathologist’s theory that this was due to animal activity as there was no sign of the normal scavenging pattern of tooth marks caused by the predations of either domestic or wild animals.

  Tool-mark analysis is, in principle at least, very straightforward. If two objects come into contact, the harder of the two may leave a mark on the softer surface. If, for example, you cut a block of cheese with a serrated bread knife, then the knife, the harder object, will leave little ridges on the softer object, the cheese. The same thing happens with bone. If a bone comes into contact with a sharp object, such as a knife, a saw or the tooth of an animal, telltale marks are left on the bone and the pattern they form may be sufficient to identify the type of implement that made them. So if the loss of tissue on the head of the deceased man was the result of the scavenging activities of an animal, which we seriously doubted, we would expect to see characteristic marks made by its teeth.

  The head had no skin and no muscle still attached. The eyes were missing, as were the tongue, the floor of the mouth and the ears. That would be an incredible feat for an animal to achieve without leaving tooth marks. What we believed we would find were cut marks, made by a sharpened blade, in the areas where the different muscles attached to the bone. If that proved to be the case, unless a common or garden badger had suddenly experienced an overnight evolutionary miracle and become dextrous with a knife, the tissue had to have been removed on purpose by a fellow human – and that would require some explaining. The head had been severed cleanly from the neck between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae, and there was something very unusual about that dismemberment site, too.

  We kept our thoughts to ourselves until we could examine the head. At the briefing, we listened politely to the explanation of suspected animal activity. In such circumstances, both Lucina and I are aware of our eyebrows. We have very expressive eyebrows, we are told, and when we don’t agree with something we are hearing, apparently they go up and down like uncoordinated hairy roller binds. We once found ourselves appearing as experts for the defence in an English court, where we were so incredulous at the evidence we were hearing from the Crown, and so conscious that we were at all times in full view of the jury, that our foreheads ached with the effort of constantly trying to countermand the involuntary movements of our eyebrows. We would both make lousy poker players.

  We said nothing during the briefing, and did our level best to keep our eyebrows under control until we were in the mortuary, where we were able to look at the remains more closely. The head was remarkable for the skill with which all the tissues had been removed. We found knife marks exactly where we had anticipated we would find them, at the back and on the side of the head and under the jaw. All of the soft tissue was absent. In essence, the face had been completely stripped away.

  The remarkable features did not stop there. Examining the other body parts, we saw that the dismemberment at the wrists had been accomplished by perfectly executed single cuts through the joint spaces between the carpal bones and the lower ends of the long bones of the forearm, the radius and the ulna. The hips were disarticulated, the femur having been removed from the acetabulum (hip socket), and the level of expertise demonstrated by the disarticulation around the humero-ulnar joint at the left elbow screamed at us that whoever had undertaken this task knew their anatomy well. What is more, they knew their human anatomy. And they had done this before.

  It is extremely rare for a dismemberment to be performed without the assistance of a saw or cleaver of some kind but every part of this body showed clearly that no heavy or serrated implement had been used at any stage, just a sharp knife. Now, that takes real skill. There was no evidence of hacking or sawing even in the removal of the head. Indeed, it had been done in exactly the way anatomists, mortuary technicians or surgeons would do it to ensure minimum mess, fuss and effort. Forgive me if I don’t share this secret.

  Lucina and I went into a conspiratorial little huddle involving a lot of pointing and eyebrow animation. The police knew something was up and, sensing their agitation, once we were both utterly convinced, we called a meeting and broke the news. As always, initially they objected (‘But the pathologist said …’). However, when faced with the irrefutable evidence, they took off, talking nineteen to the dozen into their mobile phones.

  We speculated about possible occupations for the dismemberer. Vet? Butcher? Surgeon? Gamekeeper? Forensic pathologist? Anatomist? Surely not a fellow forensic anthropologist? Whoever this was, their tremendous skill at dismembering was not matched by an aptitude for disposing of the remains: everything bar the hands (which have never been found) had come to light pretty quickly.

  The cause of death was straightforward: the victim had been stabbed twice in the back with a four-inch blade. One of the wounds punctured his lung and he may have survived for some time after the assault. The pathologist had estimated that the dismemberment could have taken up to twelve hours to complete but we disagreed. The level of skill suggested to us that the whole process could easily have been achieved in less than an hour, with maybe another hour or so required to pack up the body parts and clean up the premises.

  Once our analysis is over, our photographs taken and our report written, we may never learn the outcome of an investigation unless we keep an eye on the newspapers. Because we work around the country, we don’t always have the close relationship with the police that people expect from watching TV crime dramas and sometimes, as happened in this case, you hear nothing until you are served with a court citation several months later. We don’t know what the police have found, we don’t know the outcome of their investigations and so we go into court with only our evidence and often no context within which to place it.

  I hate appearing in court. Operating in this alien arena is a stressful part of the job for scientists. Here we do not make the rules and we are rarely informed about strategy. In our adversarial legal system, one side wants to prove you are the world’s leading expert and the other side wants to prove you are a blithering idiot. I have been cast as both and a lot in between.

  In what had become known in the press as the ‘jigsaw murder’, once all the body parts had been examined, the police had been able to match the victim to a missing man from north London and dental records had confirmed the identification. His blood had been found in the bedroom and bathroom of his own flat and in the boot of his car, but there were only tiny spots. The killer and his accomplice – a man and a woman were facing trial – had cleaned up well.

  The couple had been charged with the murder and other related theft and fraud charges. Two defendants meant three sets of lawyers’ questions to deal with, plus a potential re-address from the prosecution. So four sets of questions to prepare for – deep joy! Testifying in an unfamiliar court in an unfamiliar city, on a case you worked on nearly a year before, has nothing to recommend it and every reason to make you nervous. If you have been called to give evidence, you assume there is a belief that you must have something of value to add to the proceedings but you have no idea what it is and in which direction the questions will be designed to lead you.

  You are always questioned first by the counsel who has secured your services, in this instance the Crown. This is usually the gentlest of the interrogations but I always seem to stumble over the bit where they ask your age. It is not that I am in denial, but my age is just so unimportant to me that I often have to stop and think about it, which never fails to raise a titter around the room. My hesitancy lasts only a split second but it is enough to disarm me. Every time it happens I scold myself for forgetting to remind myself of my age beforehand but I never remember. In the circumstances, it is hardly uppermost in my mind.

  The Crown took me through my qualifications and then my evidence, which
was all quite plain sailing, but it lasted most of the morning and then the judge halted for lunch, which means you have to go away and kick your heels for an hour knowing that when you come back, you will be cross-examined by both sets of defence lawyers. This is where the adversarial element comes into play and where the challenges generally arise. It is perfectly possible for my stint in the witness box to run into a second day, which is even more nerve-wracking, especially as you can’t talk to anyone about the case in between.

  The first defence lawyer was charming, which is always a worrying start. Having accepted my qualifications, he wanted to talk about our assertion that the dismemberer had a detailed knowledge of anatomy. He informed me that his client was a personal trainer and a former nightclub bouncer. He had no anatomical training and had never worked in a butcher’s shop, never lived in the country or pursued countryside activities. He certainly wasn’t a surgeon or a vet, or indeed an anatomist or forensic anthropologist. How, then, could he possibly know how to make the incisions I said he had made or possess the skills that I alleged he must possess?

  At times like these a cold sweat starts somewhere at the nape of your neck and begins to trickle down your spine. Could I really have got it so wrong? You question yourself again and again but you can’t come to any other reasonable conclusion. The lawyer then turned to the matter of the implements. Surely, he reasoned, dismemberment would require specialist tools, to which I replied that a simple sharp kitchen knife would suffice for the method used in this instance, provided the perpetrator knew what they were doing.

  ‘But surely the type of sharpness required would not be found in a domestic kitchen knife?’

  I knew as the words fell out of my mouth that my response was likely to get me in trouble. ‘With the greatest of respect, sir, the knives in my kitchen are sufficiently sharp to effect this.’

  Quick as a flash he countered: ‘Remind me not to come round to yours for dinner.’ Laughter rang around the court and I was stunned. I had never experienced humour in a courtroom once a trial was underway, certainly not during a trial dealing with the desecration of a body as well as a murder. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, death and humour have always been close companions and perhaps having endured such a gruelling few days, the court was grateful for a little levity to dispel some of the tension. I so wanted to retaliate with a witty oneliner but I did not dare. Trying to be smart is the quickest way to fall foul of a sharp-talking lawyer. So, very wisely, I thought, I buttoned it.

  And then, suddenly, it was over. No cross from the second legal team and no redirection from the Crown. What I had anticipated would be the worst part of the process was over in the blink of an eye. It just goes to show that you can never predict what will happen in court, especially when you are not party to the legal tactics being followed.

  Prior to, and throughout the duration of the trial, the accused and his accomplice had maintained their innocence, and then, without warning, towards the end they dramatically changed their plea to guilty. The man admitted to the murder and his girlfriend admitted to aiding, abetting and perverting the course of justice. The life sentence given to the killer was enhanced due to the aggravation of dismemberment, with very little reduction for the change of plea because it did not come until the case was all but concluded and because the crime was so severe. He received a minimum of thirty-six years.

  Shortly before being sentenced, he confessed, through his somewhat shell-shocked lawyer, to being responsible for the dismemberment of at least four other men. This came as a total surprise to the police but he refused to elaborate on either the identities of his victims or the location of their bodies.

  The convicted man had indeed been legally employed as a doorkeeper at a nightclub, but he was also a trained ‘cutter’ for a notorious London gang. If they killed an informant or someone else who was causing them some trouble, they would take the body round to the back door of the nightclub in the middle of the night. Here the cutter would dismember the body and pass on the pieces to the ‘dumper’, whose responsibility it was to get rid of them, often by burying them in Epping Forest, which was where our murderer said he had disposed of the deceased’s hands.

  He had been apprenticed to a senior cutter and learned on the job how to dismember a human in the most efficient manner possible. The fact that disposal of the body parts was handled by colleagues of a different grisly specialism explains why, while he was a truly skilled ‘cutter’, he was an absolutely rubbish ‘dumper’. Who would have thought such activities could be someone’s actual job? Imagine having those on your CV.

  I had never been so relieved to find out that Lucina and I had been right. The reason for the removal of the victim’s facial soft tissues was to conceal forensic evidence. Initially, the two codefendants had each claimed the other had committed the murder, and by different means. Only examination of the face and the soft tissue of the head and neck could have confirmed which of them was telling the truth, so removing that was a form of insurance policy in the event that they were caught. They believed that if we couldn’t prove who was lying, the court would be unable to come to a decision. So why they decided to change their pleas, we will never know.

  Their motive seems to have been nothing more than financial gain. They stole their victim’s identity in order to sell his possessions and clear out his bank account. He was an innocent man who gave two people a roof over their head when they were in need, and they repaid him by taking his life and desecrating his body.

  ◊

  In court I never allow myself to be distracted by the actors in the room. The only people with whom I make eye contact are the barristers and the judge. I never, ever look at the accused. If I should happen to meet them in the street, I don’t want to recognise them. I rarely look directly at the faces of the jurors, either, unless I am specifically asked to explain something to them, because I don’t want to be diverted from the question being asked of me by their facial expressions. So I tend to focus on the shoulder of a juror sitting in the middle of the jury box. I don’t let my eyes stray to the public gallery, where the anguish of families would unquestionably rattle my concentration. I marvel at their stoicism, though, especially in harrowing murder cases. What they have to hear is sometimes so personal and so brutal I can’t help but wonder how they can bear listening to it being discussed in open court, with journalists writing down every distressing detail for publication immediately online and in the newspapers the next day. The family are victims, too, and their agony is often palpable.

  The media have a remit to report death but the relish with which they do so, and the often disrespectful headlines they use, can be distasteful. The more deviant the death, the more papers the story will sell. I am certain that such a predatory and exploitative mentality would not sit so comfortably with them if it were their own family that was being exposed to it, but as long as there are people who want to read about gruesome deaths there will always be insensitive journalism.

  I am not sure I would be strong enough to deal with it if I were personally affected – certainly not if it were my daughter who had been murdered and my own son who was the perpetrator. This happened in one case in 2012 in which the glare of the spotlight was all the more fierce because the victim was an actress who had appeared in a television soap opera.

  Gemma McCluskie was reported missing by her brother Tony the day after she was last seen alive. He made an appeal for her safe return and joined the search party out looking for her. All the time he was the very person who knew exactly where she was.

  Gemma had been picked up on CCTV cameras as she returned to the house she shared with her brother in east London, which was also where the last call from her mobile phone had been made. Five days later, a suitcase was found in the Regent’s Canal less than a mile away. It contained the dismembered torso of a young woman. Identification of a tattoo and subsequent DNA analysis confirmed that it was Gemma. A week later her legs and arms were found, w
rapped in plastic bags, in the same stretch of water. It would be six months before her head was discovered, further upstream and also in a black plastic bag. It was only then that a cause of death could be assigned.

  Gemma’s brother, who was addicted to skunk cannabis, was quickly arrested for her murder. He was known to be unpredictable, sometimes violent, and she was reported to have been losing patience with his irresponsibility and escalating drug use. He confessed that they’d argued after he left a tap running and flooded the bathroom. He admitted to losing his temper but said he did not remember hitting her, killing her or dismembering her.

  The cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the skull. All the elements of the killing and its dehumanising sequel were textbook examples of defensive dismemberment: a furious argument fuelled by drugs; assailant and victim known to each other; death occurring in the home of the victim; dismemberment undertaken by the assailant, unresearched and unplanned; the body being separated into the typical six pieces, wrapped in plastic, transported in holdalls and suitcases, disposed of in water close to the murder site and easily accessible. Early attempts at dismemberment failed and success was finally achieved with an alternative tool; both were implements that might be found in any domestic kitchen, a knife and a cleaver. As these characteristics pointed to an offender with no prior experience of committing such crimes, the strongest suspicion fell on Tony McCluskie.