On December 29, 1999, high school friends Lauria Jaylene Bible and Ashley Renae Freeman spent the evening together celebrating Freeman’s sixteenth birthday. Bible received permission from her parents to spend the night at Freeman’s home. Earlier that day, the girls had spent time at a local pizza restaurant with Kathy Freeman. At approximately 5:30 am on December 30, 1999, a passerby…

Coroner and Medical Examiner Offices play an important role in the organ and tissue donation process. Since all unexpected deaths require Coroner or Medical Examiner review, their cooperation and support is vital for ensuring successful organ and tissue donations, benefiting thousands of transplant recipients each year. What is an OPO? In the United States, an organ…

A prevalent concern, but under-recognized, a public health problem of distressing and harmful resident-to-resident interactions in dementia in long-term care homes (LTC) (such as nursing homes and assisted living residences), is a major issue facing many countries today.  This increase can, in part, be attributed to the growing population of older adults from the Baby…

The act of killing one’s child is unthinkable for any parent, but owing to long-standing cultural, emotional and biological factors, a mother who kills her offspring has the power to inspire special shock and revulsion. Such a mother is seen as someone who is not only guilty of a crime but has violated a law of…

Filicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing their own child. The word filicide derives from the Latin words filius meaning “son” or filia meaning daughter, and the suffix -cide meaning to kill, murder, or cause death. “Filicide” may refer both to the parent who killed his or her child, as well as to the criminal act that the parent committed. Episode   In this…

Medicolegal / Death Investigation can provide a contextual view of the empirical evidence in both death and non-death cases. We have found that the use of a full medicolegal / death investigation is underutilized – from the investigator to the forensic pathologist. Associates in Forensic Investigations specialize in the expert medicolegal consultation and legal investigation…

No matter what anyone else says, no matter what we tell ourselves, trying to leave our personal problems at the door just doesn’t work. They follow us inside. Every. Single. Time. Whether we want to leave work problems at the job site, or problems at home inside our four walls, we can’t escape the things…

The term “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS) was developed to explain those instances in which severe intracranial trauma occurred in the absence of signs of external head trauma. SBS is the severe intentional application of violent force (shaking) in one or more episodes, resulting in intracranial injuries to the child. Physical abuse of children by shaking…

Not every suicide will have notes, it is estimated that only  25–30% of suicides are accompanied by a note.But it is important an investigator look for writings in journals; both in written pages and electronic applications in cell phones and computers. Many times a final note will not be left but past writing which indicates suicidal…

Subsequent to the original murder case Cain vs. Abel, there has always been a small percentage of murders that were unsolved for a variety of case-specific reasons. There have also always been detectives who’d occasionally look back at “the one that got away,” but the idea of dedicating a group of professionals to work solely…