Death Scenes Quotes

“More likely it was boxed in a closet after his death, an enduring embarrassment like a dead minister’s porn stash or an old soldier’s necklace of dried ears or collection of Nazi paraphernalia.”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

“What the do-gooders label “de-sensitization” has a value as well as a price. Some of us can’t afford to be shocked by catastrophe. The surgeon, the burn ward nurse, emergency room attendants, paramedics, firefighters and cops, all those who scrape the still-screaming remains out of car wrecks, must cultivate their off-switch. Those who can’t learn to crack wise and discuss baseball over a corpse must find a gentler line of work. The rumor is that city cops get strange from what they see, their eyes flattening or sinking into sockets as deep and hollow as rat holes.”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

“Workers new to the job, rookie cops and ambulance drivers, struggle with the mess. Their eyes reel at ripped distortions that blur a formerly human identity. Experienced death workers throw a professional switch in their brains and see the face more clearly. Their eyes methodically link dismembered limbs, realign a rictus grin, and separate identity from wreckage. Cooly. As connoisseurs. For the investigators a dead body is not so much victim as evidence, the ultimate clue to the workings of the perpetrator. Banked”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

“Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.

The images we seldom see are the aftermath of violent deaths. Your family newspaper will not print photos of the puddled suicide who jumped from the fourteenth floor. No car wrecks with the body parts unevenly distributed, no murder victim sprawled in his own juices. Despite the endless preaching against violent crime, despite the enormous and avid audience for mayhem, these images are taboo.”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

“Fear is neither a disease nor a perversion. Fear is our most essential survival mechanism. It has many forms and functions. The mouse staring into the snake’s face doesn’t apologize for its interest.”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook