Criminal case history
In rural New South Wales, in the early 1980s, a man and a woman were shot dead in their home. The time of death was first arrived at by determining, with the help of the local telephone exchange, the time of the most recent phone call made from the house (a Saturday night). The fact that the victims had last been alive on the Saturday was corroborated by a witness who claimed to have seen the woman and her two children that morning.
A suspect was interviewed about the double murder, but he had a strong alibi for the Saturday night. At this point the police turned to maggot evidence that had been collected from the dead bodies.
The forensic entomologist estimated the minimum possible age of the oldest maggots among those presented to him to be four days. This placed the time of death at least one day earlier than that arrived at using the information from the telephone exchange and the witness. As a result, both lots of evidence were checked and found to be in error.
The suspect lacked a valid alibi for Friday night, the revised time of death. Confronted with this and other evidence against him, he confessed and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
A curious aspect to this case was that the body of the woman, which was found in bed, was much more decomposed and contained much better-developed maggots than the corpse of the man, which was found on the kitchen floor. Initially this perplexed the investigators, until they realised that the woman had gone to bed with the electric blanket on!
Story supplied by forensic entomologist, Dr James Wallman, Wollongong University
http://www.uow.edu.au/science/biol/staff/jwallman/jamesw.html
Further information
- Determining time of death
- Fly life cycle
- Case histories
http://folk.uio.no/mostarke/forens_ent/casehistories.shtml
Forensic Entomology Pages, International - Case histories of the use of insects in investigations
http://www.missouri.edu/~agwww/entomology/casestudies.html
by Wayne D. Lord, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC
Copyright © Australian Museum 2003
