Establishing the Manner of Death: A 3D Reconstruction of a Case of Hanging

Abstract

Establishing the manner of death is one of the most challenging tasks for forensic pathologists. We present the case of a 24-year-old woman found dead in the early morning on a flyover. The body was sitting on the ground with the back leaning against a wall. The neck was encircled by a white phone charger cable knotted to the staircase’s handrail. The victim had argued with her boyfriend and tried to jump out of his car while coming home from a wedding party the night before. After that, she left home alone with her phone charger in her hand. Due to self-harm behaviors, the first hypothesis was suicide by hanging. However, the ligature crossed immediately beneath the thyroid cartilage and encircled the neck twice horizontally; the two ends of the cable overlapped, forming a cross-over point in the front-right of the neck. Then, the ligature passed obliquely through the nape, gradually disappearing, forming a gap in the mark. The mark was sharply defined, stiff, yellow, and parchment-like. The investigators performed a three-dimensional scene reconstruction using the Trimble X7 Laser Scanner and the PC-Crash Multibody System. Even though the geometry of the ligature mark in the present case raised doubts about the manner of death, the three-dimensional reconstruction confirmed that the hanging was feasible without any external intervention.