Cooling experiments using dummies covered by leaves.

Abstract

One main method to estimate the time of death is the measurement of the body temperature. The cooling of a corpse depends on a number of conditions including the surroundings. In cases where the cooling conditions differ from the defined standard, a corrective factor is used to characterise the influence of clothing, air movement, the properties of the supporting base and the humidity. Nothing is known about the significance of other circumstances, for example of a tegument by leaves or wet leaves. Therefore, the cooling of dummies which were placed on a 2-cm-thick layer of wet/dry leaves and covered by a 10-cm-thick layer of leaves was investigated. Corrective factors of 1.0 for wet leaves on the ground and of 1.3 and 1.5 for drier leaves were found. If the dummies were additionally covered, corrective factors ranged between 1.8 and 2.7.