by Sue Black
Deliberate separation of the head from the body tends to take place in the same area of the neck whether the head is being removed from the front or the back. From the front, it is below the level of the mandible, which can get in the way of chopping or sawing. From the back, it will generally be about halfway down the long stretch of the neck. Any marks seen higher or lower than this would be viewed as out of the ordinary (not, of course, that any form of decapitation is ever ordinary). For example, in the infamous “jigsaw murder” detailed in All That Remains, in which the victim’s body was dismembered and scattered across two counties, the cut made to sever the head was clean and very low down on the neck. But this turned out to have been a professional job: it emerged during the trial of the perpetrator that he was a skilled underworld “cutter” who specialized in dismembering bodies.
In one case of alleged murder and dismemberment, my team was asked by the defence to consider the forensic reports offered by the Crown scientists. Much of the time, forensic anthropologists are engaged by the Crown, but of course, we do also appear for the defence. Whichever side has retained your services, it is important that the evidence you give is the same, because ultimately, you are a witness for the court and not for one side or the other.
The crime came to light after a family walking through woodland with their dog came across an apparently abandoned trainer with a sock inside it. On taking a closer look, they saw, to their consternation, that the sock contained foot bones. The police were called, it was established that the bones were human, and further remains were finally located hidden among the roots of a fallen tree. It was clear that over some time the body had been predated by foxes and their cubs and the bones had been scattered around the area. Hands and feet tend to be taken first by animals as they are both accessible and portable. Predators will then chew on bigger bones in situ. It is quite common for the skull, being such a heavy and unwieldy object, to be left where it is, as it was with these remains.
What other body parts could be found were brought together, and DNA confirmed that they were those of Jamal, a middle-aged man who had been reported missing some three years earlier. There was no longer enough evidence to provide an obvious cause of death, but a forensic anthropologist was asked to examine the remains for the Crown and concluded, from marks found on the vertebrae, that the victim had been decapitated.
Jamal had inherited some money from his late mother’s estate and because he had learning difficulties, he trusted his daughter’s partner to look after his bank account. Unbeknown to him, while he was constantly kept short of cash, his money was being splashed out at antiques fairs and on expensive cruises. Within two months there was only 78p left. It seems likely that he eventually realized what was going on and confronted his daughter’s partner. The police believed that this was probably what escalated an altercation into Jamal’s death.
His daughter’s partner was charged with aggravated murder. The “aggravated” element related to the concealment of, and disruption to, the body, an offence viewed by the judicial system as an additional degradation. The question of whether the body had been dismembered by the murderer was important because, if found guilty of the aggravated charge, the accused could find himself sentenced to a whole life tariff without possibility of parole.
Professor Lucina Hackman and I examined photographs from the scene and the postmortem, and those taken by our Crown colleagues during the course of their inquiry. It is a requirement of our profession that we also keep detailed notes that will permit any other scientist to replicate our investigation and come to their own opinion.
Lucina and I were called to appear at the trial as expert witnesses for the defence. It all started well. However, once the Crown expert began to give evidence, it became clear that there was going to be some dispute with regards to the allegation of decapitation. We already had serious reservations about opinions our counterparts had reached on this matter.
Sometimes we are in total agreement with the experts called for the other side. On other occasions, we may believe a scientist has strayed beyond their area of expertise or has given undue weight to evidence that could be interpreted very differently. When appearing for the defence, you are asking yourself every step of the way whether there could be another sound explanation for the conclusion arrived at by the Crown. It is about reasonable doubt, and that is relevant for both the Crown and the defence.
One of the interesting things you can do in an English court, which you cannot do in a Scottish court, is sit in the courtroom, listen to the live testimony of the experts for the opposing counsel and transfer information to your legal team as evidence is given and questions arise. This enables you to indicate where you are in agreement and which aspects you believe need to be challenged. The detail might not be in the written report but may emerge when the reasoning becomes clearer under legal interrogation.
For us, in this case the evidence did not stack up. First of all, the head was found with the body, which was odd. Why would someone go to the trouble of cutting off the head if they were just going to hide it with the rest of the body? There was no evidence of deliberate removal of any other body parts, and in a criminal dismemberment, for which by far the most common motive is easier disposal and concealment of the corpse, or to prevent identification, it is upper and lower limbs that tend to be removed in preference to a head.
Secondly, the “cut” marks referred to by the Crown’s expert were on the second cervical vertebra, which would be unusually high for a successful decapitation, or even an attempt at it. If the cut were made from the front of the neck it would have been extremely difficult to accomplish. The mandible would be in the way of whatever tool was being used and it would necessitate deep dissection down through the soft tissues, which would be very messy. There was no evidence of this. Thirdly, the cut marks themselves didn’t look like those that would be made by any saw, knife or cleaver that we had ever seen, and no murder weapon or dismemberment implement had been found.
Straight away the Crown witness introduced an opinion that had not been recorded in her report. This is not permissible and so the defence instantly objected. The judge decided to give her some leeway and asked us if we would be prepared to meet her outside the courtroom to establish whether we agreed with this new evidence.
This we did, and we did not agree. In court the following morning, the Crown expert changed her mind again and the judge lost his patience. Lucina and I sat there not knowing where to look as he gave her a dressing-down and then adjourned the court. We tried to put on our best poker faces but it was a challenge. The defence barrister then told us that our evidence was no longer required and we could go. It seemed that the part of the charge relating to decapitation was going to be dropped as a result of the problems with the Crown’s expert and her testimony, rather than anything to do with the evidence per se.
We had spent two days in court and had not offered a word from the witness box. The Crown’s case for dismemberment had collapsed purely through the inexperience of their scientific witness. This is a story we have since used to hammer home to our students and trainees the importance of interpretation of evidence and understanding the processes of legal trial. If you fall foul of these, you may never get as far as giving your expert opinion.
In the end, we were to learn from press reports of the trial that the defendant had been found guilty of murder and sentenced to at least nineteen years in prison before being considered for parole. He was not, as we had been informed, charged with aggravated murder.
But what about the “cut” marks on the cervical vertebra? If they were not made by a tool, what could have caused them? To address questions like these, and in the analysis of human remains in general, a forensic anthropologist must not only think anatomically before they think forensically, they need expertise and experience beyond bone anatomy.
When a body decomposes, the first cervical vertebra normally remains associated with the skull because of the strong liga
ments that bind them together. If the skull eventually rolls away or is removed by animals, this often leaves the C2 vertebra as the most exposed part of the column. We believed that this is what could have happened in this case, and that the marks were in fact the drag marks of canine teeth across the surface of the bone.
A knife makes a clean cut, with straight sides that mirror the width of the blade and a floor that may take on the shape of the knife or saw that caused it. It was clear from the photographs that these marks were more scores than cuts, with no depth to them. This did not rule out the use of a tool—they were consistent with tentative cuts, perhaps made by someone uncertain about how to remove a head, and with the “chatter” marks we see when a blade has skittered across the surface of a bone without “biting.” However, we could also see paired triangular punctures into the bone that were not consistent with a blade of any kind. What they did match with perfectly, as did the line of “chatter marks,” was the average distance between the upper canines of an adult fox.
So there was no decapitation or dismemberment, just an over-enthusiastic Crown anthropologist who had unwittingly led the investigation down a blind alley. It is of course essential that justice is done—a man was cruelly murdered, and his murderer is being punished for that—but the defendant is entitled to be judged on the evidence, and to a penalty that is fair and appropriate to the crime. They should not be found guilty of something they did not do.
The victim in that case was at least eventually found so that his remains could be named and laid to rest. What leaves forensic anthropologists with an enduring uneasiness are those disappearances and deaths that are not solved, either because all efforts to find a body prove fruitless, or because we have a body we cannot name, which in some ways feels even worse. The knowledge that we have done everything we possibly can does not alleviate the sense of a job unfinished and justice unfulfilled.
In such cases there is usually little doubt that some kind of crime has occurred, but the answers to precisely what, who is responsible, and sometimes who the victim might be, prove elusive. It could be argued that these should be classified as perfect crimes, since both perpetrator and victim remain unknown. Or almost perfect crimes: I suppose the truly perfect crime is one that nobody realizes has ever happened in the first place.
There is some irony in the fact that, once a name has been assigned to a body, our natural inclination is to anonymize the victim out of respect for them and their family. But while a body remains unidentified we do the opposite: we publicly spread all the information we have in the hope that a name might one day be forthcoming.
The challenge is often tougher when a victim either originates from, or has chosen to live within, a transient or chaotic community. The “Angel of the Meadow” was one such victim. Here, the vertebrae were able to tell us something about her, and about what had happened to her, but not to lead us either to her identity or that of her killer.
The murder came to light when skeletal remains were found during redevelopment of a building while a mechanical digger was shifting soil. The skull was spotted first and then the rest of the bones were discovered under some sections of carpet. It was believed, from the clothing, that the body had probably been there for thirty or forty years, since the 1970s or 1980s. The anthropologically trained SOCO had identified that this was a female, between eighteen and thirty years of age when she died, of average height and most probably Caucasian (which would not rule out someone from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East or north of Saharan Africa). It is likely that she was naked from the waist down when her body was concealed here, as a pair of tights, an empty handbag and a single shoe were found nearby.
At Dundee we were asked to examine the remains for clues that might help to identify her, and also to try to make some sense of how the fracturing of her vertebral column might have occurred. In a violent death, we are used to seeing fractures of the face, mostly the nose, cheek, jaw or teeth, or in the neurocranium, caused by blunt-force trauma, but the level of specific fracturing found in this woman’s neck was unusual.
The lower part of the first cervical vertebra showed a self-explanatory “starburst” fracture of the joint surface, between C1 and C2 on the right-hand side. This was a localized crushing injury which had not substantially affected the second cervical vertebra. However, further significant crushing injuries were also detected on the left side of C3. In summary, we had a crush or compression fracture on one side of C1, no evidence of injury on C2, but more crush fracturing on the opposite side of C3. The question was, how could these odd injuries be translated into a plausible cause and effect?
It was possible that the cause may have been one of those hideous methods of “dispatch” seen in violent spy movies, where the head and jaw are grasped between two hands and rotated violently. In this instance, the head could have been turned hard to the right, with hyperflexion of the neck (the neck being bent a long way forwards) resulting in dislocation between C1 and C2, perhaps severing or crushing the spinal cord. The damage to C3 might have been inflicted by the force of the severe rotation. What was certain was that her death was brutal, if perhaps mercifully swift.
But who was she? She’d had several fillings and other dental work, so records must have existed for her at a dental surgery somewhere. Three women had been reported missing in the area around that time but their dental records did not match the teeth or dental work of our unidentified skeleton. DNA analysis did not help, either. We were able to produce a reconstruction of her face, which generated several leads that resulted in investigations in a number of places around the world, from Tanzania and the USA to Ireland and the Netherlands. Yet to this day the Angel of the Meadow remains unidentified and is buried in an unmarked grave.
Is there anyone still around who thinks about her and wonders what happened to her and where she is now? Is the person who did this to her still alive? Do they live with daily guilt and a burdened conscience? We can only hope so.
Such an injury is not something that frequently comes the way of a forensic anthropologist, but when all that is left is bones, sometimes an anthropologist is the best place to go for answers.
When the upper part of a human torso was washed up on a beach at Southsea in Hampshire, the local police force called me for help with trying to establish what had happened to the victim. The body had not been in the water for very long and was still relatively fresh, which must have been a shock for the students who found it. Then the pelvis was discovered, and shortly afterwards the legs washed up on a different part of the beach. Two days later, a man called the police in a neighbouring county, concerned that he felt he had done something wrong, but said he couldn’t remember what it was. He was met at the station by a police constable who noted that he was dirty and dishevelled and seemed confused. He was known locally to be a drinker and perhaps abused other substances too.
The police went with him to his flat and found nothing immediately suspicious. But once the remains were identified as those of a friend of his, he was arrested for murder and dismemberment, which he denied. The deceased was a man of low IQ who lived in a camper van and the accused allowed him to wash at his flat in return for feeding his cat, Tinker, from time to time. Nobody knows what happened, whether there was an argument, or perhaps a scuffle broke out after too much alcohol was consumed. The accused was reported to have been abusive towards his friend on occasion. Perhaps there was a knife involved. Whatever the case, the alleged killer was left with a body and the problem of disposing of it.
Most dismemberments result in a body being divided into five or six body parts with the torso generally remaining intact. Attempting to cut up a torso makes a terrible mess unless you remove all the internal organs first. In this case, the viscera had been removed, the torso split across the lumbar vertebrae and the pieces wrapped in bin liners and a pink shower curtain. The external genitalia had been cut off and the head, arms and viscera have never been found. The accused owned a bicycle with a butch
er’s box on the front and the police believed that this was what he used to transport the body parts to the seashore, where he threw them into the water.
My team was asked to examine the sites of dismemberment and to look for additional cut marks on bones that might explain how the body had been taken apart. The police brought some of the remains up to us in Dundee as we had the facilities to process them in a way that would preserve the cut marks better than the usual method, which involves simmering in warm water with a biological detergent. While the body had been relatively fresh at its first postmortem, by the time these pieces reached us they were starting to become a little more antisocial.
At Dundee we had a colony of dermestid (flesh-eating) beetles. These occur naturally in the soil and are one of the first waves of insects whose activities assist decomposition, slowly rendering a body down to a skeleton. Most of the time we fed them on their favourite delicacies, mice and rabbits (they did not like marine animals, so no fish or seal for these little creatures). We used to get a few complaints from our university colleagues about their somewhat distinctive aroma but they were an incredibly useful resource for safe and gentle defleshing. We placed the material we had in with the beetles and returned frequently over the next few days to remove each section when it had been completely cleaned.
Once we were able to see the bones clearly, it was evident that the shoulders had been disjointed with a sharp blade and that a similar blade had been used to remove the head and to separate the lower limbs from the pelvis. However, the sternum and the lumbar vertebrae had been dealt with very differently. They showed the regular striations that are left behind by a power saw. This saw had been used to unzip the sternum and gain access to the chest to remove the internal organs, including the heart and lungs. The upper torso had been separated from the pelvis by the same power tool, which had cut across the fourth lumbar vertebra, presumably after the evisceration had been performed. We were also able to find small cut marks on the sides of the lumbar vertebrae that could have been evidence of the removal of the internal organs with a knife.