Dismemberment and Body Encasement—Case Report and an Empiric Study

SIMPLE SUMMARY: We report a rare case of dismemberment and encasement from our catchment area. Various body parts were encased in concrete and thrown into a small stream behind the perpetrators’ farm and visualized with postmortem computed tomography (pmCT) and mobile X-ray device. For reconstruction purposes the head and paw of a pig were encased in concrete in a comparable manner to an actual victim and regularly examined with imaging techniques, to figure out the value of such efforts in cases where concrete is used and to understand changes in the animal’s body over time. ABSTRACT: The mutilation and encasement of corpses are rare in daily forensic work, but when they occur, close cooperation between different disciplines, such as legal medicine and forensic anthropology, is necessary to obtain the most valuable results. One forensic examination method is the radiological evaluation of victims or body parts by postmortem CT (pmCT) and X-ray images. In relation to a case described in this paper, an empirical study was conducted to figure out the value of radiological imaging and the ability to visualize and temporally classify changes in a corpse encased in concrete. For this purpose, the head and paw of a pig were encased in concrete and scanned regularly over a period of one year. Body parts such as the head and paw are clearly visible on X-ray images. Although decay-related changes are shown, a specific minimum time interval cannot yet be found, as these changes occur continuously in lesser amounts.