A retrospective comparative study to evaluate the reliability of post-mortem interval sources in UK and US medico-legal death investigations.

Post-mortem interval (PMI) information sources may be subject to varying degrees of reliability that could impact the level of confidence associated with PMI estimations in forensic taphonomy research and in the practice of medico-legal death investigation. This study aimed to assess the reliability of PMI information sources in a retrospective comparative analysis of 1813 cases of decomposition from the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner in Pittsburgh, US (n = 1714), and the Crime Scene Investigation department at Southwest Forensics in the UK (n = 99). PMI information sources were subjected to a two-stage evaluation using an adapted version of the 3x5 aspects of the UK police National Intelligence Model (NIM) to determine the confidence level associated with each source.

Decomposition variability between the scene and autopsy examination and implications for post-mortem interval estimations.

Forensic experts rely on scene and/or autopsy photographs to estimate the post-mortem interval (PMI) when an in-situ assessment of decomposition is unfeasible. The degree of decomposition may vary between the scene and autopsy, which importantly could affect estimations of the unknown PMI in forensic casework. This study aimed to investigate decomposition variability between the scene and autopsy and assess the subsequent effect on the accuracy of PMI estimations.

Assessing the quality of footwear marks recovered from simulated graves.

Footwear marks are one of the most frequently encountered evidence types recovered from a crime scene and can provide valuable scene intelligence regarding potential suspects. It has been acknowledged that impressions of footwear and tools can be recovered from graves, but previous studies have only focused on tool mark recovery. This has led to a lack of published information regarding footwear mark recovery from graves.

The effect of seasonality on the application of accumulated degree-days to estimate the early post-mortem interval.

This study investigated the effect of seasonal variables on decomposition in the early post-mortem period using 26 donated human cadavers at the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility (ARF), USA. The rate and pattern of decomposition in human cadavers (as measured by TBS and the revised TBSsurf methods) did not vary significantly between all seasons. Summer and autumn cadavers had comparable rates of accelerated decomposition despite significant differences in both ADD and temperature (p<0.