All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes

by Sue Black

As a living person, you remain separate from death, but the mesmerising beauty of human anatomy has created a bridge into the world of the dead, one that few will cross and none who do will ever forget. The sensation of traversing that bridge for the first time is an experience you can never repeat.

‘Humans belong to the group of conscious beings that are carbon-based, solar system-dependent, limited in knowledge, prone to error and mortal.’

The four permanent cell types are the neurons in our nervous system, a tiny little area of bone at the base of our skull called the otic capsule, the enamel in our teeth and the lenses in our eyes.

It is possible that the pattern of communication between them could be mapped to show how we think and how the higher functions of reasoning and memory come about. Recent research has demonstrated that with the help of a fluorescent protein we can now see a memory being formed at the single synapse level. Practical application may yet be a little too much science fiction for us to embrace fully, although I am tempted to predict that an understanding of the key role neurons may play in establishing identity might not be so very far away.

The nutrient building blocks required to construct our otic capsule were supplied by Mum from what she was eating around sixteen weeks into her pregnancy. So within our head, in that minute piece of bone just big enough to hold four raindrops, we will perhaps carry for the rest of our lives the elemental signature of what our mother had for lunch when she was four months pregnant. Proof, if any were needed, that our mums never leave us, and a whole new perspective on the mystery of how they manage to get inside our heads.

As water percolates through various geological formations, it will take up isotope ratios of elements specific to that location and when we ingest it, its signature will be transferred into the chemical make-up of all our tissues.

The ratio of carbon- and nitrogen-stable isotopes in our tissues may tell us something about diet: whether a person was a carnivore, a pescatarian or a vegetarian.

The oxygen isotope ratios may reveal more about the source of water in the diet, and from the stable isotope signature associated with water, we may be able to deduce where they have been living.

So we could, in theory, look at the remains of an individual and, from the isotopic signatures in the otic capsule and first molar, discover where in the world their mother was living when she was pregnant with them and the nature of her diet. We could then analyse the remainder of the adult teeth to establish where the deceased person had grown up, and then the rest of their bones to determine where they had lived for the past fifteen years or so. Finally, we could use their hair and nails to locate where they spent the last years or months of their life.

Researchers sampling the bacteria from the ears and nasal openings of cadavers have found that, using next-generation metagenomic DNA sequencing, they may be able to predict TDI very accurately, perhaps to within a couple of hours, even where death has occurred days or weeks before.

‘You ought to have some papers to show who you are,’ the police officer advised me. ‘I do not need any paper. I know who I am,’ I said. ‘Maybe so. Other people are also interested in knowing who you are.’

‘If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death’

I realised that day that when the animation of the person we were is stripped out of the vessel we have used to pilot our way through life, it leaves little more than an echo or a shadow in the physical world.

There is a void in them which serves somehow to weaken the certainty of the bonds of recognition.

After my initial hesitation had passed, I became aware that there was a sense of peace in the room. The silence around the dead has a different quality from the silence that is just an absence or cessation of noise.

I was equipped to perform and did not doubt for a moment my ability to do it. And I am glad that I did.

My reward from Father was a curt nod of the head that told me he accepted my word. From that moment on, I have experienced no fear of death.

‘It is the accompaniments of death that are frightful rather than death itself.’ Yet the control that we like to think we have over our lives is often an illusion. Our greatest conflicts and barriers exist in our minds and in the way we deal with our fears. It is pointless even to try to control that which cannot be controlled. What we can manage is how we approach and respond to our uncertainties.

Science has alternative explanations. All of the phenomena reported can occur normally if the right biochemical conditions or neurological stimuli exist to impact on brain activity. Stimulation of the temporo-parietal junction on the right side of the brain will generate a sense of floating and out-of-body levitation. Vivid imagery, false memories and the replaying of real scenes from the past can be induced by fluctuating levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which interacts with the hypothalamus, amygdala and hippocampus. Depletion of oxygen and increased levels of carbon dioxide can cause the visual hallucination of bright light and tunnel vision, as well as a feeling of euphoria and peace. Stimulation of the fronto-temporo-parietal circuitry of the brain can convince us that we are dead – even that we are drained of blood, devoid of internal organs and decomposing, in the case of sufferers of the rare psychiatric disorder Cotard’s syndrome.

‘Life is pleasant, death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.’

Even if the capriciousness and frivolity of death are rarely funny at the time, they can provide those left behind with a much-needed coping mechanism. Cold irony can be more cruel: the proud, independent man who always feared incapacity spending his last years locked inside his body in an impersonal care home; the liver pathologist killed by hepatic cancer; the solitary death in a hospital bed of a woman scared of dying alone …

There was no opportunity for her to be at home, no comfort and quiet. As children, we were not encouraged to visit her in hospital and so I never saw her again. It is a deep regret that has stayed with me all my life. I wish I had been able to talk to her even one last time, to hear what she had to tell me about her dying and death and to learn from her wisdom.

She was such a staunch believer in a life after death that I almost wished she would come back and tell me what it was like. Sadly, she never has.

Sometimes, with the best of intentions, we try to shield our children from harsh realities when perhaps we could be preparing them to face the events they will need to deal with in the future.

when his own dementia came calling, I never once assumed that he wasn’t there, locked inside his own head, afraid and alone.

My father was not his body, he was something very much more than that.

I had, though, felt throughout his illness that Alzheimer’s was a cruel route to death. The long, drawn-out period he spent dying was hugely distressing for us all and, I suspect, for him, in those moments of clarity that probably visited him in the night when he was on his own.

‘Young lady, this is just too darn good to burn.’

We see this all the time in mortuaries, where there is an unwritten rule that when a stranger enters, you adjust your conduct and demeanour until you have a good idea of who they are and what they are doing there.

Each of the lymph vessels within the dermis will eventually connect into a terminal swelling. We have many of these lymph nodes scattered throughout our bodies, but there is a high concentration of them at the top of our limbs, in the groin and armpit in particular. At these sites they act a bit like a sink trap in a shower that collects hair: as the ink molecules are too big to pass through the nodes, the dye accumulates there. Which is why, in people with tattoos, the nodes eventually take on all the colours of the inks.

Today, with tattoos becoming a must-have fashion accessory (in the US, nearly 40 per cent of young people between the ages of twenty and thirty have at least one), we see this far more often and, reflecting the rainbow of colours used by tattooists, the current population’s lymph nodes are truly spectacular in their kaleidoscopic variation.

If it is still sufficiently fleshed, we can look for the lymph nodes in the armpits, analyse any dyes found there and they will tell us whether tattoos have been present on one upper limb or two, and what colour the tattoos were on those missing limbs.

‘More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes’ Baron Samuel von Pufendorf political philosopher (1632–94)

‘Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals’ Attributed to William E. Gladstone prime minister of the UK (1809–98)

As the days wore on, the corpses continued to bloat and the turgidity caused by captured gas and fluids resulted in the pitiful sight of elevated limbs. When you looked down a long row of the dead, it seemed as if the raised arms or legs were trying to attract your attention.

‘I was helping to dig the children out when I heard a photographer tell a child to cry for her dead friends, so that he could get a good picture – that taught me silence.’

With the best will in the world, that is unrealistic and so we must train and prepare for all eventualities, while constantly praying that we will never need to put them into action. But when we do, our response should demonstrate that our humanity transcends the worst malevolence of which our species and nature are capable.

I have never been spooked by the dead. It is the living who terrify me. The dead are much more predictable and co-operative.

Isn’t it just part of life, though, that one man’s meat is another man’s poison?

Only I know the access code to the door; only I know all of the experiences that reside within the box, and all of the potential demons that might be lurking there, trying to look over my shoulder while I work. I can live alongside those experiences comfortably when I inhabit their forensic world, but when I leave it, they must remain locked inside.

I hold myself responsible for safeguarding the vulnerability of others, living or dead, and not betraying their secrets.

Mr Dunlop had worked hard all his life and to him it seemed only fitting that he should carry on working after his death.

thanatology – the scientific study of death

I think we should devise a new risk measure: the micromirth. How much more wonderful would our lives be, whether long or short, if we measured them in joy, laughter and utter nonsense? Microlives accumulate, micromorts are fatal but micromirths are priceless. I think Norman Cousins would agree. ◊

I have no desire to live to too great an age if that means being a drain on resources needed by younger people, especially if I have nothing of any value left to give and have become a burden to those I love.

Let me go out with a bang, not a whimper.

I view death as my final adventure and I am reluctant to be cheated out of a moment of it. I am only ever going to experience it once, after all. I want to be able to recognise death, to hear her coming, to see her, to touch her, smell her and taste her; to undergo the assault on all of my senses and, in my last moments, to understand her as completely as is humanly possible. This is the one event that my life has always been leading up to, and I don’t want to miss anything by not having a front-row seat.

Whether or not there are others present, death will be with me, and she has more experience than anybody, so I am certain that she will show me what to do.

I’d be able to repose for a couple of months in the dark, cool waters of my submersion tank, enjoying a nice rest after all that dying nonsense. I wonder what aberrations in my anatomy will have some student somewhere cursing me one day, and whether I will be as good a teacher as Henry was to me.

My heaven is peace, silence, memories and warmth. And my hell? Lawyers, blue wires and rats.