episode_0154

Episode 154. Headless Corpse (4)

****

There are not many forensic scientists in the country.

As far as I remember, there were only about 50 people in Korea, and only about one person gets a job as a forensic scientist each year. Usually, they are from Seoul National University.

In other words, the country usually selects one forensic scientist per year, usually from Seoul National University.

That’s the field I lost interest in after hearing that. It’s difficult for a doctor to not know how to examine a corpse. At the very least, they have to write a death certificate.

Anyway, that was the class I had in mind.

– Let’s say you’ve been asked to assist with a police investigation. There have been cases where a headless skeleton was found in the mountains, but the head was found a few hundred meters away.

-Is this a murder case?

I was taking the class at the time and I naturally answered that it should be investigated as a murder case.

The most realistic guess is that someone killed this man and cut off his head.

To conclude, it wasn’t.

The police eventually found a suicide note. The man had committed suicide by hanging himself in the woods, and his head and neck had fallen off during the decomposition process. The head had been carried off by wild dogs.

Forensic scientists working on the case proved that by hanging a pig from a tree in the mountains, the head could fall off due to decomposition.

To sum it up,

“We need to think a little about what common sense is. Don’t we judge most of what we experience by the standards of common sense?”

I looked at Amy.

“That’s right.”

“But. Is our common sense about rotting corpses really realistic? Most people have no knowledge or experience with the process of corpse decomposition, so trying to apply common sense to that is a bit problematic, you say.”

Amy nodded.

****

The security guards led us to the place where the body was laid. The entire basement was cold. It would have been cold if I hadn’t been wearing a gown.

The body was frozen and placed in the basement of the security office. The body was headless. It was just as I had been saying.

Scipio still looked skeptical.

“The body was frozen with ice magic. When we recovered the body, it was only skin and bones.”

“I see.”

The police, perhaps because they didn’t want to see the decomposing body again, or because of the smell, stood very far away. Next to the door of the morgue.

“Can you really figure something out? The body is almost liquefied, right now. Especially the neck area, there’s no flesh left.”

“Because you’re going to see the bones.”

“What… … . Okay. I’ll stand here, so if you find anything, just let me know.”

Amy frowned. Behind her plague doctor mask, a wrinkled expression appeared.

“It’s a little creepy.”

“It’s because it’s cold.”

It was a rather gruesome sight.

Even though I see sick people often, I don’t see a mutilated corpse every day. It’s also distasteful to see the maggots still remaining.

It was horrible, but fortunately the plague doctor’s mask reduced the smell of rotting corpses.

“So. What should I look for?”

“Let’s just go out and see if your cervical vertebrae are broken.”

The smell of a rotting corpse.

It smells like a sewer, rotten eggs, or grilled squid. But the most unpleasant thing is that it smells pathologically sweet.

It could be due to the aromatic hydrocarbons produced during the breakdown of amino acids, or it could be the smell of hydrogen sulfide. Either way, it’s unpleasant.

I walked towards the body’s neck.

“But, Professor. Is the broken cervical vertebra attached to the head or to the torso?”

“Uh… … . I don’t know.”

First, let’s look at the torso.

I stood as far away from the body as possible and began to cut along the line of the corpse’s spine.

The skin underneath, which had already turned to leather, was liquefied and difficult to penetrate with a knife, so I had no choice but to hold onto the neck and use the protruding bone as support to cut the skin.

“Amy. How many cervical vertebrae do you have?”

“Oh, seven outlines.”

“How many cervical vertebrae are left here?”

“Five Summary.”

I felt each of the cervical vertebrae. None of them looked broken. The ones attached to the head seem to be broken.

“Go and get me some hair.”

Amy brought the head of the corpse. The head had multiple holes, so it had decomposed much faster. There wasn’t much left.

I began to remove the skin from the back of the head and cut back to the cervical vertebrae. The tissue surrounding the vertebrae had been liquefied, but the ligaments that held the bones together were still there.

Still, since most of the tissue had been liquefied, it was not difficult to separate the two cervical vertebrae. Two bones smaller than the palm of your hand.

“Water.”

Amy brought a pitcher over and poured water over the bones. As the rotten water washed away, two yellow bones were revealed.

“Look closely.”

“It’s true. I’m tired of being amazed.”

The second cervical vertebra was also broken. The back of the vertebra was broken, destroying the loop through which the spinal cord would have passed in life. A classic hangman’s fracture.

“So. There are no marks of decapitation or sawing on the cervical vertebrae, and there are marks of the bones being broken when hanging. It seems that the second intervertebral disc rotted away and fell out.”

“Suicide, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How exactly does it break?”

“If you fall while the noose is wrapped around your neck, your neck will snap to the side or back, breaking the second cervical vertebra.”

I wonder if they found the will.

I placed the broken cervical vertebrae on the workbench and showed them to the police officer who was far away. Scipio looked at the bone fragments with a serious expression.

“Ah. I guess this is the hanging fracture that the professor was talking about. A broken cervical vertebra… … .”

“The first cervical vertebra supports the skull, and the second cervical vertebra is a round bone that forms the head-neck joint with the first cervical vertebra. When a person hangs, the load is concentrated on the second cervical vertebra, which supports the cervical vertebra that supports the skull.”

“That’s amazing. How did you come up with such a thought… … . I’ll record it as suicide.”

The policeman busily wrote something in his notebook and left the morgue shivering in the cold. I covered the body again, hung up the gown I had borrowed, and followed the policeman.

I need to change my clothes.

It might have smelled like a corpse.

****

We returned to the ward of the temple. We left a note in the morgue, informing them that the autopsy results showed that the body had died of suicide.

Father, Mr. Alaric tried to greet me, but he couldn’t speak because of his cough. He just nodded in greeting.

“Hello, Mr. Alaric. I have some good news and some bad news for you today.”

“Let me start with the bad news.”

“It will take time to treat the patient’s pneumonia. This is a fungal pneumonia, so it is a bit more difficult to treat.”

“Is this a fatal disease?”

“No.”

The patient breathed a sigh of relief.

“What’s the good news?”

“I re-examined the headless body. I have proven with certainty that the cause of death was suicide by beheading, not murder.”

“What can I do with the corpse that has completely rotted away-”

“There are many ways.”

To be honest, I didn’t want to bother explaining it again.

“Thank you so much, Professor. I don’t know how to repay this favor… … .”

“Hmm. I already received quite a bit. For medical expenses, for autopsy requests. And I also received money similar to a bribe from the security guard.”

I decided to just answer dryly.

I see patients every day, and it was hard to always adjust to their tensions as they were on the brink of life and death. Both negative and positive emotions.

“Oh my. Even so, can you put a price on life and honor? I feel like no matter how much I give, it won’t be enough.”

What about money?

It was a matter of settling the accounts after the illness was cured.

“By the way, there must be a reason why only the patient in the family got pneumonia. Was the patient the one who found the body?”

“Well, I have a study on the second floor, and it smells like mold. No matter how much I clean the study, the smell doesn’t go away-”

“Ah.”

“On the way to the hospital, I had one of the maids clean the study again. I think the body was probably right above the study, now that I think about it.”

This patient inhaled the most Aspergillus spores… … It’s not surprising that he alone got pneumonia.

“Then. From now on, I will administer antifungal medication to the patient. It is a strong drug, so there will be side effects, and the already damaged parts of the lungs or bronchial tubes may not recover.”

“I guess so.”

“But I won’t die.”

The old man nodded.

“Is your family okay?”

The family was fine. This patient was the only one who inhaled a lot of spores. They only treated the symptoms for a few days.

“Almost better. Most of the time, it’s solved by removing the antigen. Instead, you should clean the house thoroughly. I recommend burning all the stuff in the attic… ”

We need to tear it down to the ground and burn it.