Using microbiomes from 16 death scenes in the City and County of Honolulu, this study tested whether objects at the scenes could be linked to individual decedents.
Microbes can be used effectively as trace evidence, at least in research settings; however, it is unknown whether skin microbiomes change prior to autopsy and, if so, whether these changes interfere with linking objects to decedents. In the current study, postmortem skin microbiomes were stable during repeated sampling up to 60 hours postmortem and were similar to microbiomes of an antemortem population. Objects could be traced to decedents approximately 75 percent of the time, with smoking pipes and medical devices being especially accurate (100-percent match); house and car keys being poor (0 percent), and other objects, such as phones, being intermediate (~80 percent). These results show that microbes from objects at death scenes can be matched to individual decedents, indicating a new method of establishing associations and identifications. (publisher abstract modified)
Downloads
Similar Publications
- Differential Sampling of Contact Surfaces of Footwear to Separate Fractions of Loosely, Moderately and Tightly Held Particles
- Evaluation of Digital Evidence Processing Efficiencies in Publicly Funded Crime Laboratories: A Formative Study on how Crime Laboratories and Law Enforcement Ag
- Detection of misaligned cropping and recompression with the same quantization matrix and relevant forgery