Frequency of bone/cartilage lesions in stab and incised wounds fatalities

Differentiation of serrated and non-serrated blades from stab marks in bone

“…Successful analysis and interpretation can provide important contextual information regarding the instant of trauma, such as the position of the victim in relation to the attacker, the handedness of the attacker, whether the wound was caused by suicide or homicide etc. [for example 2,4,5,6,7]. Furthermore, the motion of the sharp object can be ascertained depending on whether a cut (the incision is wider than it is deep) or stab (the incision is deeper than it is wide) mark is left [see 8 for trauma definitions].…”

“…Previous work has focussed on interpreting sharp-force trauma from bone in order to make statements about the context of death in both forensic and archaeological contexts. Such work includes the definition of kerf dimensions and properties [9,10], the differentiation of cutmark origin [9,10,11,12,13,14], the impact of other taphonomic processes on cutmark preservation [15,16], patterns of butchery and dismemberment [10,17,18,19] and describing the details of the trauma incident itself [1,2,4,5,6,7,20,21]. Although research has demonstrated that it is possible to distinguish the class of sharp object used from the mark left behind, it is difficult to be any more precise than that.…”

Sharp force injuries in clinical forensic medicine—Findings in victims and perpetrators

“…Inter alia, the differentiation between the accidental, homicidal and suicidal infliction of injuries helps to distinguish between victims and offenders [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. This is of special importance whenever a suspected person shows sharp force injuries, claiming that he or she was hurt while trying to ward off an attack or to settle a fight as an onlooker.…”

Cuts to the offender?s own hand?unintentional self-infliction in the course of knife attacks

“…With this common method of attack [26] the victim's most exposed sites are the head, the shoulders and the thorax [5]. Accordingly, bone injuries are frequently observed in victims of knife attacks [4]. The six victims of our study all showed at least one bone hit.…”