The Case of the Drowning Men (5 page)

D
amaged or not,
though,
if a body has been in the water for at least one to 48 hours, wrinkling of the skin will be present
already
, particularly on the palms of the hands and fingertips and on the soles and toes of the feet. Noticeable blanching and bloating of the epidermis may also be underway
too,
with pronounced blotches and discolorations ranging in hue from
pink
to
dark
red distributed unevenly across the body.

In excess of the above time period, the victim’s epidermis
may look a greenish bronze and
will have begun pimpling and
even
pre-peeling as fat deposits just beneath it
slowly
transform
into a soapy material and loosen the sk
in. This is especially true of the flesh on the hands and feet which
will
slip off on their own―or when tugged on―just like gloves, a process of decay aptly named “degloving”. If signs of degloving are already evident on such a corpse, special care must be
taken in recovering the body from the water, as additional harm can easily be inflicted when physically grappling with it or maneuvering it about with hooks and mechanical devices.

Once it has been successfully recovered, a waterlogged body will rapidly deteriorate when fully exposed to air, therefore an autopsy must be performed immediately in order to help determine the exact cause of death and the manner. This may seem superfluous, but the fact is death by drowning is not wholly assumed by medical experts and law enforcement, especially where there ha
ve
been no witnesses to unequivocally substantiate it.

In forensic terms, there is nothing whatsoever deemed “classic” about a
ny
drowning, no one particular physical characteristic manifesting in a corpse that would aid in expediting such a ruling. Because of this, the methodology for reaching a determination that it was a water death and accidental is one that is chiefly focused on excluding foul play. This places a great deal of importance on the initial investigative role of police personnel who could inform or misinform a medical examiner with their onsite reports and early conclusions.

Even the autopsy is insufficient on its own for definitively pinpointing the victim’s cause of death as an accidental drowning, but the line of inquiry a medical examiner follows during this phase of the
inquest
is to review the circumstances of how the deceased person reportedly first entered the water and to try to judge if the body they’re viewing matches up to that version of events. If so, and the death indeed appears benign, the medical examiner will then proceed to determine whether the drowning was a result of the individual’s own failure to stay afloat or the byproduct of some underlying ailment. For this reason, there are educated assumptions which may safely be arrived at when the victim in question is young and healthy, whereas it’s not  impossible in older people that they may have died in the water as a result of a heart attack or emphysema, or some other serious medical problem.

That makes
prompt
identification
of the body
vital
to
a postmortem medical exam,
but, of course, a
corpse
will always be more deeply probed in those cases where the victim’s identity is still not known or
the fatality somehow looks and
sounds suspicious.

Lying on the examiner’s slab and before taking a scalpel to flesh, there are visual clues that can provide
a few
preliminary answers about the death. For instance, drowning produces a thi
n
foam in and around the victim’s mouth which usually lingers
there
for several days before washing away. The presence or absence of this transient substance, on the other hand, is not conclusive because drug overdoses, electrocutions and strangulations also have the same foaming effect, and because up to 20% of drownings are actually “dry drownings” where the victim took no water into their airways but died instantly, or else suffocated very quickly from a sudden throat
-
closing reflex.

To see if this telltale foam did once exist, though, placing a hand firmly on the victim’s chest and gently compressing it should bring the substance back up
once more,
perhaps even
with
pebbles and sand
in it
. A
lternately,
when
a corpse has begun to decay
a darkish
, foul-smelling
fluid
might
fill the mouth
instead
,
but
this is standard
to
all types of deaths where putrefaction has set in and
is
therefore of little
diagnostic value
.
It is
the existence of
a
pair of o
versaturated lungs
, ideally
with debris in them
,
that
will most
strongly point to death by drowning
.
B
ut, again, this by itself is not proof positive either, since a dead body can slowly draw water into
its
air passages even if only placed in
the water
after having died elsewhere.

Also, the victim’s hands can, and often do, reveal important evidence to a medical examiner. A drowning person grasps at everything within arm’s reach to prevent themselves from going under, so they may still be clutching a variety of foreign objects in them. These can be anything they managed to grab hold of before losing consciousness, such as nearby plants, twigs and other artifacts. In fact, this phenomenon is so common, that in some cases it can be considered suspicious if the hands are empty. For example, if the victim’s body was entangled in a densely weeded aquatic environment it is reasonable to expect to find them clutching fistfuls of such weeds. Similarly, victims holding things that aren’t natural to the settings they drowned in will also be indicative of foul play. And, finally, in very rocky locations, a victim’s hands might even be slightly mangled with a missing fingernail or two from scraping against stone to stay afloat.

In death as in life, a person’s eyes can tell a story, too. If the victim
still has eyeballs in their sockets and these
are wide open and glistening, as is usual for bodies found face down in the water, then there is a high probability that they drowned, although this alone won’t yet prove whether it was on purpose or by accident. If, instead, a horizontal demarcation “line” is perceptible on each of the eyes (showing
distinct
cloudy and un-cloudy zones created by postmortem exposure to the air) then they expired, or were killed, someplace on dry land.

Opening the corpse comes next. If the victim truly died in the water then, regardless if it was a dry or wet drowning event, there will always be a considerable volume of watery fluid in the stomach with yet more debris in this mixture, because a person cannot help but to drink water in the final act of drowning. A thorough analysis of the stomach contents is required then and these fluids must be found consistent with a sample of the water the victim allegedly succumbed in. If they are not, this will be determined
to be
just as suspicious as not finding any such fluid present.

The rapid ingestion and aspiration of large quantities of
fresh
water and its swift circulation throughout the body will, as well as diluting the victim’s blood
by as much as 50%
, dilute whatever fluids they might have consumed antemortem (prior to the agonal
eve
nt). Thus, a postmortem
toxicology test
to determine if any of those might have been intoxicants, and alcohol thereby a culprit in the death, will obviously be thwarted—a blood/alcohol reading from a drowning victim can be drastically lower than what it would have been if measured when the person presumed to be drunk was still alive.

Additionally, taking an accurate BAC from a drown victim is further rendered futile in cases where decomposition has already begun, since alcohol is naturally manufactured in the body through the process of decaying. Consequently, a BAC level in these type of deaths
, which on the average
requires
another month
for a lab
to process,
is not very informative to an experienced and astute medical examiner, especially one who isn’t
totally
convinced that drinking was what caused the individual’s drowning.

Signs of trauma to the body, if any, can be equally as perplexing at a glance. While bloody wounds the victim may have received when still living will leach from prolonged
soaking
and no longer be as noticeable to the naked eye, postmortem injuries a corpse derived from impacts as it traveled along may be much more prominent and deceptively appear as intentional. That’s because those latter injuries tend to occur on the more vulnerable parts of the deceased, like the face where a lot of excess blood has collected, and a puncture or tear
to these sensitive areas
can cause
them
to
ooze
profusely.

So too, the whole head of a rotting corpse might totally blacken from all the blood that’s shifted to it and congealed, and to the unfamiliar observer this shocking appearance
can be mistaken for evidence of having been burnt.

Because all of the foregoing demonstrate that a drowning is never medically clear cut and, often enough,
can be simulated
to disguise a murder, and because a drowned person may even
falsely
resemble a murder victim on
some
occasions, it does demand 100% certainty to officially rule it as the cause of death and an accident. This means any lingering doubts a medical examiner still has should and must be disposed of in a more comprehensive autopsy.

There are any number of additional tests which, when performed, can begin to reduce overarching concerns, but a Diatom Test has proved the most decisive in an inquest where the truth of a drowning death still remains shrouded in
some
mystery.

A diatom, that bountiful microscopic organism found in every single environment on Earth, creates a hard, crusty exterior
casing
which is virtually indestructible even to decay. Identifying the specific diatoms native to the waters the victim allegedly drowned in and then finding the presence of those diatom breeds in the tissue samples of the victim’s organs and in their blood makes it all the more certain that this is the place where the person ultimately died. It also proves the
individual
did in fact drown and w
as
not placed in that locale after death, since, even if a pre-dead body did take water into the stomach and lungs, there is no way for the dead to circulate water (and that water’s microorganisms) throughout all the rest of their systems. Only a living person—or rather
a
person who is
dying—could achieve this
,
as they’re drowning.

After that comparative analysis and matchup is made, if drowning is judged to be the actual cause of death, but the manner itself
still
cannot confidently
be
listed as accidental, the death certificate issued will
reflect
this finding, citing the manner as unknown or undetermined, and the case will then be turned over to the police once again
,
pending
further investigation.

Home to
five of
the world’s
largest lakes and many of its
mightiest
rivers, the
territory
that stretches from
Massachusetts
to the Dakotas and which is
traversed via the Interstate 9
0
and
9
4
thoroughfares
,
has got to be the most beautiful land on the planet. W
ith its rolling hills and fertile flats and valleys,
with its hardwood forests and expansive nature preserves,
the freshwater brooks, the
mountain
streams, the
c
r
ystal
clear
lakes
and
spring-fed
ponds
, the sunshine
…
i
f a place
called
Valhalla
really exist
s
,
surely this
is
it
.