As with most of these hypos, the real problem isn’t the evidence surrounding the body.
If you’re motivated enough to kill somebody sneakily, then you’re almost certainly close enough to the victim to be on the standard suspect list they teach in Detective 101. And unless you’re a psychopathic-level liar you’re going to have a very hard time keeping your cool when questioned.
If 100% of the cops on the case are rookies who’ve never done a murder case before you *juuust miiiight *slip past. But any experienced cops will have a pretty good idea of how a grieving loved one or surprised friend/neighbor reacts versus how a guilty party or knowing accessory reacts. Meantime you have exactly zero experience at this unless you’re already a veteran murderer.
Once they get a whiff of a hint of an off kilter scent from you, they can keep digging essentially indefinitely.
Which is the genius of Hitchcock’s “Stranger on a Train” scenario. By far the best way for a murderer to survive an investigation is to never be noticed as a potential suspect and hence never be contacted, much less interrogated.
I feel fairly strongly that I know somebody who had serious short term memory issues and regularly took a lot of very strong medications who may have been murdered by the “did you take your medicine?” … “did you take your medicine?” … “did you take your medicine?” method.
Don’t count on it. Scalia was pronounced dead of “natural causes” over the phone by a Justice of the Peace from many miles away without seeing the body. The body apparently then went straight to a funeral home and was embalmed. Good luck with any toxicology testing.
I work in the death investigation field as a forensic pathologist. Death investigation systems and practices are extremely (and I use that word very deliberately) variable from place to place. Where you die can make a huge difference.
For what it’s worth, where I work we spend much more than two minutes investigating the death of a “meth head”. They get exactly the same treatment Scalia would have gotten: Thorough scene investigation, complete post mortem exam with toxicology, ancillary studies if indicated.
Which does raise the question of how the JP in the Scalia case thought he was making a smart decision, even if what he did was 100% routine for ordinary citizens dying in that county. Big difference between a cow-county JP and a big city ME/coroner I assume. Still, not very foresightful on his part.
On a different note, is my contention that a regular subQ or IV drug user would probably show enough punctures that an extra murderous one *probably *wouldn’t stand out if carefully done by the murderer?
I know a lady who married one of my best frieds who I believe has been trying to killl him through his diet for the past 15 years. She is 20 years younger and feeds him the worst possible food you could feed a heart patient. He was supposided to die within the first year they met. She finaly gave up and is divorcing him as we speak. She has to pay him alimony. LOL.
She bought a condo with his bedroom on the third floor. I felt this was a dead giveaway to her intentions.
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, the skull injury that looked like a baseball bat made it was the giveaway. The killer just HAD to be sure. It was his ultimate downfall.
One of the best L&O episodes. Lenny Briscoe’s final episode. They couldn’t figure it out for the longest time, but when they found that one loose thread, the whole plan unraveled.
Staging a He-Was-Breaking-Into-My-House-And-A-Man’s-Home-Is-His-Castle scene has come up on television and in the movies a number of times; sure, there’s evidence you killed the guy, but is there evidence that it was murder?
Could work, but works a lot better if the dead guy is somebody who is plausibly a burglar. As opposed to a random school teacher or IT maven who’s not estranged from (or in a love triangle with) the supposed burglee.
Well, what brought it to mind was a COLUMBO episode where she swipes the guy’s housekey – to his own home, you understand – when he leaves that morning, and switches out the light bulb over the front door for a burnt-out one, and otherwise arranges it so that he’ll come around and bang on the glass for her to let him in, expecting to say I’ve switched off the alarm, and that door’s unlocked.
So he’ll open the door, and ‘in her sleeping-pill-induced stupor’ she’ll kill him after the alarm goes off – and, honestly, the writers must’ve realized there was no way Columbo was going to crack that one, so they had things not go according to plan, because, otherwise, how was he going to solve it?
Ruth Rendell (good friend of PD James BTW) has a short story about an undetected murder. A wife kills her drunk husband by stabbing him at the base of his skull with a thin knitting needle. What little blood there is is covered by his thick curly hair. He’s assumed to have died of a heart attack.
Robertson Davies in *The Rebel Angels * has another knitting needle murder. The killer has the victim tied up as part of a bondage game and then stabs him with a knitting needle through a nostril. Before finding a confession from the murderer it was assumed to be a natural death.
In the background to an answer, it’s worth mentioning there’s two approaches to a case like this, ie, high profile: (1) As I already alluded to, there’s the notion that all deaths, regardless of the wealth, status, notoriety, etc, of the particular decedent, should be investigated in the same way that any other similar death would be investigated; (2) there’s the consideration that it might be prudent to handle a high profile case a little differently because (a) the “whole world” may be watching, judging, criticizing, prying, conspiracy-theorizing and so forth, and there’s a public interest in attempting to minimize that kind of thing, and (b) a high profile person may actually be more likely to have people out there who would want to rub them out. In my opinion it is safer to lean hard towards (1), recognizing you may have to consider (2) sometimes. The key is to have solid conscientious policies in place and stick to them.
That said, a case like Scalia’s - 79 year old, some “chronic health problems” (the JP did look into it enough to find that out), dead in bed, no signs at the scene of anything other than a natural death (more about that later) - it would not be at all uncommon to sign the DC presumptively as “natural causes” or some variant, with or without viewing the body. I do that. Better yet is to contact the decedent’s regular doctor and see if he/she is willing to sign. Many will, as they see it, as I do, as one of the final acts in the duty of care they assumed when they came on board with their patient. Some won’t. Sometimes they have legit reasons, other times they are just…well, drop a nickel in me sometime and I could go on. The key however is you have to have confidence that you are getting a good description of the scene. In our office that means having one of our experienced investigators go out there, or at the very least field a call from a responding LE officer and ask all the right questions. I don’t have any inside knowledge about Scalia’s case, just what’s been in the news, but it sounded like the JP knew the sheriff at the scene and had confidence in his assessment.
Long answer like I gave usually means there’s no clear right or wrong, best or worst. I’d say what the JP did was not crazy. If it was me, I’d probably bring in the body, do an external exam, draw some samples for tox, and, provided nothing hinkey came up sign out without an autopsy. A little more goes in that direction given the family was opposed to an autopsy (so I read). That of course does not prevent us from doing one. But when you go against family wishes it makes it all the more important for you to be able to articulate clear reasons for what you’re doing and demonstrate that you are acting consistently with your customary policies.
Having JP’s, and other nonmedical people (yes, including coroners) certify deaths AT ALL is another question. Suffice to say, you’d get more than a nickel’s worth if I started singing about that.
Thank you for your time and evident skill & quality.
I’m all for your approach #1; treat everybody equally & well. But that assumes the agency is doing a good job on the ordinary or less-than-ordinary folks. I know beans about that particular county in TX.
I do know from personal & professional experience and contacts that there are a lot of rural counties with very cash-strapped and therefore slapdash government processes. The obvious daily items get done barely adequately and everything else gets a lick and a promise.
You’ve answered the question that it seems this county was adequate (or at least typical) in its procedures, net of using non-medical people in what ought to be a medical expert role. Which is also a common if undesirable shortcut.
The CIA probably knows of many ways to do this. They had a heart attack gun back in the 1970s (possibly earlier). Who knows what they have now.
There are poisons that will not show up on an autopsy. There are likely books on the subject, Paladin press or a similar publisher probably makes them.
ISTM the critical knowledge we duffers lack is just what sort of tox screens are routinely done.
There are vast arrays of poisonous things. It’d cost a fortune to run a test for each of them on each dead body. Knowing what’s the standard procedure in your jurisdiction for cases with no unusual suspicion would be key knowledge.
As our resident expert the esteemed **eightysix ** has just said, different jurisdictions do different things.
The problem with believing in the CIA’s heart attack gun is that if it worked, it would have been used multiple times over the years. Yet it’s never been seen or mentioned or revealed as a scandal in the past 40 years. We’ve heard of ten zillion other horrible things the CIA has done and is doing. You want me to believe that this one best weapon of all has been completely and successfully hidden since it was publicly revealed? That the CIA has the ability to conduct perfect undetectable murders and nobody outside of the looniest of CT sites* ever thinks to mention it? Nah.
Check out the article “9 Scientific Facts Prove the “Theory of Evolution” is False” from the link of that page. It will you despair for humanity.
There was a Quincy, M.E. episode where an “accidental” death was a a premeditated murder (no, really!).
It turns out the lawyer knew that the penalties for drunken vehicular manslaughter were so lax, he staged the murder as a drunk driving accident. He was fairly sober before the accident but driving erratically for show, and then started chugging booze afterwards to get his BAC up way over the DUI limit before the cops arrived.
And he would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for that meddling Quincy.
IMDB review: [spoiler]“DUI” is a strange episode. While it has a wonderful twist, it also presents a very strange and confusing message about drunk driving. The show begins with a guy in a Rolls Royce driving about town erratically. He then plows into a man on the sidewalk–killing him. Here is where it’s odd–AFTER he runs over the man, instead of hiding the booze, he begins drinking more! Then, he freely admits he was drinking but fights hard against receiving any sort of substantial penalty for the crime.
Soon the story becomes a preachy social commentary show about the evils of drunk driving and the weakness of the laws punishing these folks. While all this was very true back in 1981 and it makes a great case for strengthening the laws, SUDDENLY midway through the show Quincy realizes that this is NOT a case of vehicular manslaughter as a result of drunk driving but premeditated murder. As a result, all the grandstanding and preaching about the ills of drinking and driving are forgotten. And, in an uncomfortable ending at Danny’s, Quincy and his friends (including the anti-drunk driving advocate in her wheelchair) are all toasting their victory. What victory? The drunk driving laws and precedent were unchanged. Odd.
It’s all a shame, as without the preachy bits, the idea of a man pretending to be drunk to hide a murder is great. But, instead it’s like two episodes–and the one where Quincy was on a crusade to increase penalties for drunk drivers ended up instantly vanishing late in the episode! Weird but still watchable.
[/spoiler]