24 Forensic Scientists Share Their Most Shocking Cases

A friend of mine isA forensic scientist.Her department handled burglary cases. Usually, these cases produced boring stories.

Her best story involves gloves. She found a pair at the scene. Examining them, she felt something hard inside. Pulling them up revealed a thumb, ripped off at the first joint.

Apparently, the burglar held up a safe. His partner went under it, dropped the safe on his hands, tore his hands off, and ran.

"Anchorage, Alaska, 2008.. A 27-year-old woman missed four months of rent. The landlord offered a delay because he knew she was poor in low-income housing. After four months of no contact, he called the police. He wanted to either talk to her or change the locks and move her things to a storage shed so the apartment could be rented again.

"The police found the front door bolted. They used the landlord's key to enter. Inside, they found the woman dead in her shower. She was slumped against the wall, as if she fell. Water was off. Since this is Alaska in winter, the city never shuts off hot water; pipes freeze and burst if the water stops moving. Her shower being off meant she never turned it on, or someone turned it off."

"The body went to the morgue for an autopsy, requested by the family. No clear cause of death showed. The examination concluded she died from an adrenal surge that stopped her heart. This is commonly called 'frightened to death,' which can happen in rare cases."

"The body was old. No test found drugs in her system. The apartment had no drugs. No one entered or left before the police arrived. The young woman seemed healthy. She got into her shower, then her heart stopped from terror."

"This is a story from my fake uncle,"A forensic officer.He led junior officers in a suicide case. The victim filled a water pressure fire extinguisher with explosive material (details omitted). He hugged it like a teddy bear. When he blew, he went over the roof, walls, and floor. My uncle found a foot with all tendons hanging out and showed it to the juniors. He pulled the tendons, making the toes wiggle. His only regret was not finding a hand.

"I"He worked in a morgue.One case stuck with me. A man died in a food truck. He looked normal outside. After removing his clothes, things looked strange. He wore women's underwear with holes cut for his penis. He probably used about twenty pairs. He also had a penis pump on him with some condoms. I do not recall the death cause. I wonder what his family thought. It was not the worst, but it was definitely one of the weirdest things I saw.

"The father-in-law is a cop.Years ago, he was called to a suicide by hanging. The body had been there for some time. The deceased managed to damage his neck vertebrae severely. His spine snapped, stretching his neck down several feet from the noose.

"Cops at the scene took pictures of 'giraffe neck' and passed them around the department. My wife saw the pictures at age 12, which messed her up..."

"A A friend is a psychologist.She went to a garage suicide scene. This man had a project car he worked on his whole life. He wanted to leave with the car, so he shut the garage, started the engine, and waited. He took pain and sleeping pills. My friend arrived after the death. EMTs and specialists looked for details. The man was the VP of a large local business chain, so an insurance settlement existed. My friend photographed the scene. The man lay there, dead for hours, and suddenly shook hard. She thought it was a death rattle and kept taking pictures. Eventually, the man sat up and nodded. EMTs returned to stabilize him and eventually save him. The car ran out of gas right as he left, and he was pronounced dead there. He could not talk or move much, but he actually survived.

"Forensic chemist here., who occasionally consults on evidence collection at crime scenes. On my first case, a father shot his adult son and placed the body in a deep freeze in his bedroom. Many cops and lab people were there. When the coroner asked for help moving the body from the freezer, I volunteered fast. I had never been near a dead body before (except at funerals) and felt curious. As I helped the coroner lift the body out of the freezer (which still had food in it), a pack of frozen biscuits stuck to him. I had to pry them off; it was both strange and funny.

"Not me,"but my professorA young teen played with a loaded gun and shot himself in the face. He then tried to write 'help me' on the wall with his blood. We saw the scene photos for class.

EMT arrived. We had a guy who was...He was naked, bloodied, and tortured.He left outside in -10 degree weather until he froze. We found him frozen maybe a day later.

My question is: How do you move a 230lb popsicle without breaking it?

I interned at the office of thechief medical examiner.I saw much interesting stuff when I was eighteen. I learned many things. One case stuck with me more than the others.

I arrived one morning. I went to the basement where bodies were laid out daily. On tables rested the usual: a couple of people who died in a hospital needing a partial autopsy for a death certificate, a drug overdose, a drug murder.

On one table, there was a blue Tupperware bin. It was big, about 3'x3'x2'. Concrete filled the bin. Plastic wrap lined the edges between the concrete and the bin. A couple of toes poked out of the top of the concrete.

The story reached the county. A family saw a small fire in the woods near their house. They called the fire department. After putting out the flames, they found this bin.

We cracked the bin open. We found half a man, from the belly button down. Someone thought cutting the body in half, wrapping it in plastic, putting it in a Tupperware bin, filling it with concrete, and setting it on fire was the best way to dispose of it.

They essentially cooked the body in an oven. The plastic wrap acted as a roasting bag. Skin sloughed off the legs and feet. The skin turned a nice green.

This happened about ten years ago. I still remember seeing saw marks on the top edge of this half.

Notes were taken. No signs of death were found on the legs. No signs of the person's identity appeared either.

My internship ended weeks before they found the top half. I never learned more about the case, but the image stays with me now.

Officer I knew was...telling me about this kid's suicide.The parents left for the day. The kid decided enough was enough. He grabbed his dad's shotgun and sat on the sofa.

With the shotgun in his mouth, he pulled the trigger. Blood, brains, and teeth covered the whole room and ceiling. The blast made a huge hole in the back of his head. Since the gun was in his mouth, he slid down the barrel.

The parents came home. They saw their son sitting on the couch, shotgun in his mouth with the barrel sticking out of the back of his skull.

I worked at an ME for a time. I had a couple pass away.The autopsy started after a two-person plane crash. The smell was burnt BBQ. The bodies were not lying flat; they were stuck in a fetal position. Opening the bag revealed strange bumps on each head. I asked the medical examiner about the bumps. High temperatures cause the brain to expand, needing space. Sometimes the brain pops out of the skull.

We examine the body. It looks like a cheap movie prop. I see a wedding band on the female passenger. I try to remove it. The whole finger comes off. It felt bad. I spent ten minutes cleaning human grease and burnt flesh off the ring. We package it. We return it to the family. Plane crashes are crazy.

Crime scene techhere.

"This case stands out. It was suicide by gunshot. The man went to an indoor range and rented a monster revolver, a Judge, I think. This gun could fire 410 shot shells. The force blew the top off his head."

Skin remained from the top of his head flapped into the skull cavity. His eyes looked like they were bulging out. Blood and brains reached ten feet away. We found his safety goggles about ten yards down range.

"The scariest part was he watched others shoot beforehand. I wonder if he planned to take others with him."

Retired undertaker hereA duck hunter in gear died on the front porch. It looked like a shotgun hit him, close range in the chest. We took him to the funeral home for autopsy (small town). He had about thirty stab wounds.

"My ME unit"investigated 'overflow' cases; the main unit did not waste resources on these cases. We handled accidents and suicides. They were simple."

"Sometimes we got intense cases. This one stuck. They warned me before opening the bag. The death was reported as an accident; he fell from the twelfth-floor balcony into the tree beside the building, hitting every branch. His mother pushed him. The result was a gruesome mess."

"I was at a"regional medical centerin rural Guatemala when we got a case from a road traffic accident involving a pedestrian and a chicken bus. Some people do not know, but a popular, dangerous public transport form uses retired American school buses painted bright colors. The mechanics underneath are shot to hell.

A pedestrian hit by a fully loaded, 80 mph rolling death trap was wrapped under the front right wheel arch, mangled beyond recognition. Investigators found body parts spread 2 km down the road; the initial impact split the torso and turned the victim inside out. The body bag height measured about 2 inches, showing the remains' condition. Passersby helped collect road debris, but dogs and cats took smaller pieces. Guatemala is a cool place.

Forensic Engineer/Accident ReconstructionI am the expert here. We handle litigation cases, such as personal injury or wrongful death cases.

A motorcycle hit a freeway median, throwing the rider over and striking an oncoming vehicle returning from Disneyland. The motorcyclist's femurs, tibia, and fibula were all exposed and pointed in different directions; the scene was gruesome.

Another motorcycle incident killed a rider struck by a vehicle running a red light. The fuel tank artwork showed a well-done, intricate Grim Reaper staring up at the rider; I found that creepy.

A construction accident happened when a worker exited a porter potty and was struck by a backing cement truck. His brain matter covered the ground.

A construction incident saw a worker run over by an asphalt roller. His remains looked exactly like lasagna.

We handle many store front crash and inadvertent acceleration cases. One case involved a pickup truck blasting through bollards into a mall electronics store, hitting a mother and child. The mother died, but the child lived. That case settled for a significant amount.

Our firm handled the Elisa Lam case, involving the girl found in the water tank on the Cecil Hotel roof. Defense dismissed the case on summary judgment, stating it was not reasonably foreseeable someone would climb into the water tank.

A case involved paintiff falling from a balcony and sustaining serious injuries (two broken legs). The odd part was news stations appearing before first responders, making it look staged. The plaintiff apparently called the news stations too.

A vehicle hit an electrical box on the sidewalk, causing a fire. The driver and all three passengers were completely charred. The driver and front passenger rested with their feet in the air, trying to kick out the front windshield, and stayed in that position.

We handled a window fall case. A hotel guest sat on an eighth-floor window sill in a Las Vegas hotel, recording his talk of the prior night. While recording, he lost balance and fell out. The unsettling part: the camera kept recording, and he looked at it one last time before hitting the ground.

I did not work as a forensic scientist. I majored in anthropology.The focus is forensic anthropology.I read the Forensic Science Quarterly fairly often.Forensic Science Quarterly.Here are a couple I recall:

A kid was found on top of an elevator in a six-story dorm. He was 'elevator surfing,' which sounds foolish. He somehow caught his head in the cables, twisting it a couple of times. This did not kill him. He died from suffocation. This means he had about 30 seconds to a couple of minutes to think about what happened before losing consciousness.

Another case was a mystery. Authorities found a headless corpse in a truck in a national park; no head was near the truck. The truck was running but out of gas. The wound looked very clean, like a guillotine cut, not sawed. Investigators were confused. They found a receipt in his pocket for 50 yards of nylon rope. They linked the rope to a tree with a noose. Searching that area later found the head. A unique suicide method; the mystery solved.

This story comes from an officer, not the magazine. A call reported a woman around 50 years old dead in a garage. The investigation revealed the victim was actually a 35-year-old white male. He wore a dress, rigged a noose to his garage door opener, and watched pornography while choking himself with the opener. The remote battery died, and then he died.

Another case sticks with me: a man killed himself with a .30-06 and a .308. These calibers are powerful; they are overkill. The man got two rifles under his chin and fired them at once while lying in bed. This destroyed his head, leaving only a stump. The case sticks because local forensic departments reconstructed the head as an exercise. They collected every piece, except the orbital sockets, which vanished. They put everything back together. The result looked like the victim, though slightly bug-eyed. That before-and-after stays with me.

This story is not from a crime scene expert; I used to be one.I used to be a first responder.Guy sat at a table, slumped over. Every knife from a nice set stuck out of his back, arranged in the knife block. His wife stood there, still yelling about him dying too soon.

Self-inflicted GSW (gunshot wound).Pistol in each hand. One entrance wound, one exit wound. Two spent shell casings. Neighbors report two shots fired.

"No bullet holes in ceiling, walls, furniture, windows, nothing. I sat at the scene for an hour with medical examiners and two officers searching everything, but the bullets never appeared. I still scratch my head."

"I'm a"specialty forensics investigator that focuses on fire and explosions.This focuses on fire and explosions. A lady used a coffee can of gas, her husband's asphalt-covered work clothes, and a front-load dryer to turn the dryer into a rocket ship. The rocket launched through a plate glass window and ten feet into the road.

"We have no known models showing how the available materials launched the dryer."

"Man, about 40 years old,"kills wife and children.He used an army rifle (old model, about 3000 Joules muzzle energy). He put the muzzle under the chin and fired. The bullet took half the face off. Blood ran to the bathroom, then the mirror, then the ammo box, and finally to the spot of the second and last shot to the head.

"A case involved someone found dead from a gunshot wound to the heart on a bridge. No weapon, bullet, or cartridge case were present. Circumstantial evidence pointed to suicide, but we did not know how he got the weapon to float away. We searched the river bottom, finding nothing except bridge builders' tools."

"A man"tried to rape his wife.When she fought back, he grabbed her ears and smashed her head repeatedly on a table corner until her head became concave. Police questioned him. He claimed he found her lying down coming home and gently shook her to check if she was awake.

"Attended a lectureA pathologist once asked us what household item someone killed themselves with—a toothbrush, a rubber band, or a matchstick?

"He told us a man killed himself by accident. He tried to clean his ear with a matchstick. It punctured a blood vessel, he painted a wall with his own blood, passed out, and bled out on the sofa."