Mayat Tergantung Dan Membusuk

Berlaku pada tahun 2003. Mayat seorang pemuzik ditemui oleh isterinya sendiri dalam keadaan tergantung dan membusuk. Beliau dipercayai membunuh diri akibat tekanan hidup. Penerangan TL;DR boleh dibaca di bawah.

A dead body of a middle aged man was referred to the department from one of the nearby district’s hospital in the summer season of 2003. This referral was on account of an ‘advanced stage of putrefaction’, the body itself found hanging from a door hook in the deceased’s home. It is not unusual for a forensic pathologist to encounter a victim of suicidal hanging, no lesser if the body is putrefied, but on dissection of the heart & big vessels, greyish pasty matter instead of remnants of blood were encountered. This closely resembled in respect of colour and consistency with that of the state of a putrified brain of 3-5 days post-mortem duration.

The dead body of a middle aged unemployed musician was brought to our department for post-mortem examination, being referred here by doctors from a district hospital. There was history that the man was found by labourers 2 days after he allegedly hung himself from a door hook in a room with the fan running in his house, when his wife was away to a nearby town. The body was found to be suspended fully from the door hook with both feet above the ground. Relations between husband & wife were not cordial and this was his second marriage. The photographs from the scene of death showed a typical hanging scenario accompanied by an opened and tested/tasted bottle of alcohol. He had been without a job for over a year and was naturally depressed.

The internal findings in the neck were of ante-mortem hanging. While exposing deep neck structures, an artery was nicked and a gush of greyish semi-liquid material exuded. Similar material was discovered in the heart too. Surprised at not finding blood in the blood vessels in the neck, any connection between the neck vessels and the brain was checked for, as the content in the vessels resembled decomposed greyish brain matter. No such communication was found. The brain was greyish and paste like, a common finding of decomposition except that it was looking similar to the material found in the big vessels and heart, whereas the blood in the upper and lower limbs was reddish in colour and fluid in consistency. This material was collected for histo-pathological analysis. The blood in the lower body portion was reddish in colour.

The composition of blood, post-mortem degradation of its various constituents, microbial activity, effect of the gases of decomposition, autolysis and external factors like hot and humid currents in a hanged body where most of the blood gravitated downwards in the limbs, the remaining part of the blood in the upper part may be transformed into such a greyish pasty material. However, the exact mechanism for this transformation of intravascular blood into pasty greyish material is not mentioned in the available literature- this is the uniqueness of this artifact of blood which needs further exploration. The authors have not seen this phenomenon in any autopsy, hanging or otherwise before.