This link, supplied elsewhere by Harmonious Discord, has prompted some thoughts concerning edible murder weapons.
Please note that nobody gets killed in the above story, but a sausage does feature prominently therein.
Let us assume that a guy breaks into someone’s house. He tiptoes into the kitchen, looks in the refrigerator and, after careful consideration, removes from it an 8" sausage. He ascends the staircase and enters a room where he espies someone asleep in bed. The housebreaker, for reasons best known to himself, beats the recumbent sleeper to death with the aforementioned sausage. Blood and other messy substances are drawn from the victim in the process of this heinous crime.
Our killer, who has brought his dog along for this adventure, then feeds the sausage to the hungry animal, thus removing all visible traces of the murder weapon from prying eyes e.g. the police.
However, if the police suspect the dog of eating the instrument of death, and a forensic scientist operates on the beast in order to examine the contents of its stomach, would any traces of the victim’s DNA remain detectable either on the sausage itself or in the dog’s gastric juices?
If a sausage doesn’t work for you, try substituting something more substantial that is (a) capable of killing someone and (b) palatable to a dog, such as a leg of lamb or a particularly large meatball.
Many thanks.
