Medico-Legal Forensic Entomology “Use of Insects in Death Investigations”- A Review

Forensic Dentistry as a Morphological Exercise in the Medico-legal Investigation of Death

In one of the first scenes of the American thriller film “The Silence of the Lambs”, young FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned to investigate the body of Buffalo Bill’s recently discovered victim. When Starling helps perform the autopsy, she manages to identify and extract the chrysalis of a death’s-head Hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos) from the victim’s mouth. Eventually, this finding was an i...

Use of human lice in forensic entomology.

Hematophagus arthropod bloodmeals may be useful in identifying individual hosts. To examine the application of human lice as a forensic tool, that is, as evidence of physical contact between individuals, body lice from a laboratory colony and head lice, collected from the head of infested children, were studied. The DNA profile of an individual was detectable in the pooled bloodmeals of two bod...

Archaeology and forensic death investigations.

Historically, the role of the archaeology in forensic death investigation has focused on excavation techniques and documentation of context. Additional skills of the archaeologist relate to familiarity with stratigraphy and soils, collection and conservation of artifacts, and special areas of interest, such as taphonomy. The following discussion surveys the processes by which the methods and pe...

Forensic entomology in Germany.

Forensic entomology (FE) is increasingly gaining international recognition. In Germany, however, the development of FE has been stagnating, mainly because of the lack of cooperation between police, forensic medicine and entomology. In 1997 a co-operative research project 'Forensic Entomology' was started in Frankfurt/Main at the Center of Legal Medicine and the Research Institute Senckenberg. T...

Two Rare Cases of Sudden Death in Medico-Legal Practice