Cut or burnt? – Categorizing morphological characteristics of heat-induced fractures and sharp force trauma

Measuring dimensional and morphological heat alterations of dismemberment-related toolmarks with an optical roughness metre

“…Our experiment aimed to gain a further understanding of the post-burning behaviour of toolmarks made with different serrated and non-serrated implements. After burning, all lesions remained visible and identifiable and exhibited morphological features consistent with sharp force trauma [31], although both femurs suffered intense thermal-induced damage across the main shaft of the bone, breaking in half more than 80% of the toolmarks. This result is consistent with previous findings [8][9][10][11] that showed the susceptibility of peri-mortem trauma in being destroyed by heat damage (Fig.…”

“…A bread knife, a serrated knife, a butcher machete and a saw were chosen for the sharp force trauma experiment due to them being affordable and domestic items used in previous dismemberment cases in Europe, as a sole weapon or in combination with a saw [45][46][47][48][49]. The bread knife and machete were employed in a pilot study in which three donated embalmed cadavers were used to simulate a case in which an attempted dismemberment and burning had occurred, and it was proven that the macroscopic features of the toolmarks were observable and recognisable after the cremation [10,31]. The characteristics of the weapons can be found in Fig.…”

“…Likewise, the analysis of the survival and identification of sharp force trauma after burning is well represented in the literature. It has been previously demonstrated that toolmarks are recognisable at macroscopic [5,9,10,[27][28][29][30][31] and microscopic [32][33][34][35][36][37][38] scales after the burning process. These experiments performed on whole cadavers and disarticulated bones proved that sharp force lesions survive the burning process with a high degree of conservation.…”

“…These experiments performed on whole cadavers and disarticulated bones proved that sharp force lesions survive the burning process with a high degree of conservation. Although some heat-induced fractures may be mistaken with pre-burning trauma [31], the latter is recognisable and identifiable [27,33]. Cut and saw marks remain visible and the kerf walls are sharp and detectable [29,33].…”

Medico-Legal Issues in Cremation: Comparative Analysis of International Legislation

“…Cremation, instead, dramatically reduces the opportunity to find any macroscopical external and parenchymatous lesions or fractures [ 54 , 55 ], limiting the forensic studies to the immediacy of death, even though Franceschetti et al [ 56 ] have highlighted the ever-present importance of an accurate analysis of burnt human remains for peri-mortem trauma identification, particularly concerning head trauma.…”