So as part of my mid-life crisis I am writing a murder mystery. I want the victim to die from a beating that is exacerbated by having a small amount of snake venom in his system. My thought is that this would promote internal bleeding.
Does this make any sense?
What would a corpse of someone dead from internal bleeding look like?
What would the autopsy reveal?
Would std blood tests done in an autopsy show snake venom if one did not test for it specifically?
Makes sense to me, though I’d be sure to pick the right kind of venom, a hemotoxin instead of a neurotoxin.
It might reveal damage to organs that are not near places of trauma and damage to the site of injection. I don’t believe ingesting hemotoxins is dangerous, unless you have a cut or ulcer that will allow it to enter the blood stream, injection is the way to make the venom work.
Disclaimer: IANA forensic geek. Just somebody who grew up with Perry Mason and Agatha Christie.
When you say “snake venom”, as a reader my first thought would be, “Neurotoxin”, because in my lay person’s understanding the majority of snake venoms are neurotoxins and kill very quickly, relatively speaking, so if you the Author tried to tell me the Reader that snake venom had exacerbated the victim’s bleeding from the beating, and that he died very slowly of, basically, the bleeding and not the snake venom, I’d have a bit of trouble (“…ermmm…”) willingly suspending my disbelief quite that far.
But, if you had established ahead of time for Dear Reader that the victim was participating in an experimental study of this anti-stroke drug, which does reduce blood clotting, at least in early tests, then I’d go for it.
But it isn’t something you can just pull out of your pocket like a left-handed frannistan at the denouement–ya gotta play fair with the reader and set it up beforehand.
I have no idea if there’s a lab test for Viprinex. If you had your Forensics Geek suddenly discover the presence of Viprinex in the victim’s bloodstream, I’d be kinda skeptical. But s/he could plausibly discover the presence of some kind of anti-clotting agent, and then good detective work by the Hero(ine) could establish that the victim had been participating in a trial, etc.
I imagine that the corpse of someone who had died from being beaten up would look like someone who had been beaten up, no matter how much internal bleeding had taken place.