I was wonder just how exactly they can determain a time of death.
I was watching an old TV show, and in it, the husband attacks the wife and her daughter stabs the husband (and her father) in self defense. Now the mother and daughter panic and try to make it look like a robbery.
The police come and believe them at first and then come back later and say “The autopsy shows, you waited an hour before you called to police.” Of course they used that hour to make it look like someone broke into the house and such.
Could they really tell the time of death to an HOUR?
Another example from the same show, at a prison riot they women hang a fellow prisoner, then after they kill her. They move the body to her cell and hang her up again, and claim it was a suicide. Since the woman hung was in a riot everyone had bruises so that wouldn’t be an indication, but supposedly they could tell from the autospy that it wasn’t suicide.
Could that be true as well.
I know TV exaggerates to tell a good story, so could the above examples be true and if not, how accurately can they tell the time of death.
I remember writing a program in an intro engineering class that determined time of death based on ambient temperature modeled as a sine wave, compared to how much heat the body was expected to lose. It was very similar to the applet crowmanyclouds posted. However, the temperature would have to be taken within 48 hours or so, and it would be done at the scene of death, not during an autopsy.
I’ve never understood how shows like Law and Order consistently show the ME giving a time of death within an hour or two. The ME’s I’ve known were much more conservative, especially given all the possible variables involved.
This is the program that shows an entire murder investigation, indictment, trial and occasional ancillary constitutional arguments and their outcomes, in 44 minutes.
Another of the indicators is the presence or absence or rigor mortis, which comes on and leaves within broadly accepted parameters. However, like all other methods, it is subject to the presence of substantial confounding variables, including such matters as (if I recall correctly) the presence of some toxins. In the case of body temperature, it too is subject to obvious variables which no amount of research will ever realistically resolve - initial body weight, leanness, clothing (and distribution thereof) ambient temperature in the microclimate in which the body was found, etc.
Forensic entomologists have done substantial research on time of death involving the deposition and development of insect larvae for post-mortem intervals of days rather than hours, but similar obvious variables impact. And it is an enormously fiddly process, requiring (if it is to be done properly) the setting up of micro weather stations, etc. I am not a pathologist (I prosecute murderers) but my experience of using estimates of time of death is that windows of some hours width have to be conceded in the best of cases (where the body is found within hours of death) and within about 48 hours using maggots where the body is found within about a week of death.
All assumptions made about law and investigation derived from police shows should be treated with extreme circumspection. Matters such as time of death and other forensic miracles are simply made up to drive the plot rather than having the plot driven by some semblance of reality. But I’m sure you knew that.