In the early hours of the summer of 2018, forensic doctor Ah Yi and colleagues received instructions that there was a death scene in the jurisdiction that needed to be investigated, and the police at the police station reported that a girl died in the hotel, and there was a large amount of blood at the scene.
We hurried to the scene of the crime, which was in a room on the second floor of the hotel, and the girl was lying on the bed, and the doctor had just confirmed the girl's death.
After examination, we found that the girl was dressed intact, there were no obvious wounds on her body, but there was blood flowing from her nasal cavity and external ear canal, there were bruised spots in the soft tissues around her right orbit, some dust on her hands, some stains on the back of her clothes, and the time of death was less than an hour.
In the Water Margin, the bleeding section of Wu Da after being fed poison by Pan Jinlian is even more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but in fact, poisoning basically does not lead to direct mouth and nose bleeding.
Mouth and nose bleeding, in addition to the mouth and nose itself injury, blood often comes from the mouth and nose connected organs, nasal cavity and lungs connected, so more common, such as coughing up blood is mostly a manifestation of lung bleeding, and hematemesis is often due to gastrointestinal bleeding such as esophagus and stomach bleeding.
Image source: Stand Cool Helo
In addition to the bleeding from her mouth and nose, the woman still had bruising spots around her right orbit, but there were no bruises around her right orbit that were directly violent. For such signs of cadaver bleeding, the most important cause of bleeding in forensic autopsies is skull base fracture.
In terms of anatomy, because the skull is a spherical structure with certain elasticity, the base of the skull is composed of multiple bones with bone connections, and many important nerves and blood vessels enter and exit the cranial cavity through the hole (fissure) at the base of the skull.
When hit hard, the force is transmitted from the place of the blow along some of the routes with the least disturbing force, and since the skull base bone is more fragile relative to the skull cap, fractures occur at the base of the skull that is not where the blow occurred. [1]
In addition, when a fall from a height or a high-speed fall causes the hip to land on the ground, a huge indirect violence is transmitted along the spine to the base of the skull and can also cause a fracture of the base of the skull.
Anterior fossa at the base of the skull, adjacent to the orbit, nasal cavity, and external auditory canal, often leads to signs of bleeding in these areas when a skull base fracture occurs, and blood oozing out of the orbit will form a periorbital soft tissue congestion similar to a panda eye [2].
At the time of the inquest, we have found that there is no wound on the girl's head, and no similar murder weapon has been found at the scene, so the possibility of direct violent blows causing fractures of the base of the skull is very small, and it is more likely that indirect violence, such as the violence of spinal conduction in a high fall or car accident, has led to a fracture of the base of the skull.
From the autopsy, the injuries on the girl's body are also in line with the characteristics of this type of injury, such as mild body surface injuries, but may cause serious internal organ damage, the damage is widely distributed, but concentrated on the same side of the body, and these injuries can also be formed by one-time violence.
But how can there be damage caused by a similar car accident or a high fall in the room?
After detailed questioning and investigation, it turned out that an hour before the crime, When Xiao Li, who was working the night shift at a nearby supermarket, left work, he found a young girl lying on the side of the road on the side of the road returning home, still carrying alcohol. Deeply influenced by the Internet, he instantly came up with the three words "picking up corpses" in his mind, and he did not expect that he who rarely visited bars could also encounter such a "good thing".
The so-called "picking up the body" usually refers to the time when the woman is drunk due to excessive drinking, and the man "picks up" the drunk girl and then takes her away for sexual intercourse.
There was a small hotel in the alley not far from the roadside, and Xiao Li lifted the girl up, put it on her shoulder, and half pulled and half hugged the girl into the room. The owner of the hostel asked Xiao Li what was going on, and Xiao Li told the other party that his girlfriend was drunk and stayed here for one night, first send someone up and then register.
The hotel owner took Xiao Li to put the girl on the bed in the room, and when he turned on the room light, he found that the girl's nose and ears were bleeding out, and the boss quickly pulled Xiao Li who wanted to slip away and called the police.
According to Xiao Li's identification, we found the location where the girl first fell, but there was nothing special at the scene, there was no blood stains, no brake marks, just such an ordinary road surface, we could not determine the traffic accident or the high fall.
In order to further verify the investigation and clarify the situation, we mobilized a large number of videos from the surrounding area, and finally found that the girl was carrying a plastic bag alone for more than an hour before the crime, entered a nearby building, and did not come out.
So we repeated the investigation of the scene for the second time, and on the roof of the building where the girl entered, we found the stampede and climbing marks left by the girl on the guardrail.
On the roof of the building, there were some snacks that the girl had eaten and half-drunk liquor bottles, and a message similar to a suicide note was found on the mobile phone she left on the roof, and the case was eventually characterized as suicide by falling high.
Liu Wenfang,Wang Fei,Wang Debin,Chen Xuejun,Wang Yan. Stress analysis of indirect violence on the base of the skull[J].Medical Theory and Practice,2013,26(13):1683-1684+1686.
[2] HAN Limei,LIU Xingben. Forensic analysis of clinical manifestations of skull base fracture in 38 cases[J].Chinese Journal of Forensic Science,2013,28(01):69-70.
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