14 DAY TRIAL // Discovering dead bodies at accident scenes, disaster sites, and in graves hastily dug up by murderers is, at this point, a painstaking process, revolving mostly around a trial-and-error methodology. Some people who survive an earthquake, for instance, die under the rubble, but they cannot be found even after their deaths. With this in mind, researchers set out to create a method of detecting the chemical fingerprint that death leaves behind, a tool that could benefit emergency rescue personnel and forensics experts equally. A device such as this one could tell the time of death accurately, rapidly and error-free.
Speaking in Washington DC at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), experts said that such a tool would rely on detecting chemicals that were produced when a person died in order to assess the time elapsed between the moment when the body was found and the hour of death. The new devices could replace cadaver dogs in a few years, which are now the most widely used method of detecting victims of all sorts. Employing them is, however, very expensive, and it also takes a lot of time.
“These dogs are highly effective, but it takes lots of time, expense and manpower to train them. If there was a device that was as effective for a fraction of the cost, that would be something worth pursuing,” Dan Sykes, PhD, the leader of the investigative effort, together with graduate student Sarah Jones, explain. The main goal of the research is to determine exactly what chemicals are formed after death, in what order and proportion, as well as the amount of time between them.
While this may seem gruesome, it may help forensics experts find and identify bodies faster, and reunite them with their loved ones. “What we're looking for is the profile of what gases are released when we die, as well as how the environment and the manner in which we die affects this profile,” Jones says. “Pigs are good models for this research. They go through the same phases of decomposition as humans, as well as the same number of stages. And those stages last about as long in pigs as they do in humans before complete decomposition occurs and only the bones remain.”
In the experiments, dead pigs were placed in odor-detecting chambers under various, simulated decomposition conditions, and then all of the chemicals that were formed were carefully analyzed. Solid phase micro extraction (SPME) fibers, specialized sensors, were used to trap all the gases that were generated. Science data were collected every six to 12 hours for more than a week. “In days one through three, we found precursors to indole, which is a really good sign. On day three, we found indole and putrescine, the main compounds that we were trying to detect,” Jones concludes.