forensic pathology

Although controversial, true crime is more popular than ever. Experts believe this is because people enjoy the opportunity to face their deepest fears without actually putting themselves in danger. This compelling volume features more than a dozen true crime stories involving dead bodies, skeletons, and innovative crime-solving techniques. Readers will feel like they are part of the action of solving each crime with elaborate illustrations and a layout inspired by graphic novels. Each story also features realistic dialogue. Explanatory text describing key ideas about forensics, including crime scene investigation (CSI), make this engaging title one that will inspire a lasting appreciation for this important role of science in criminal and civil law.

Fractured skulls. Gas masks. Brain buckets. Vats of acid. Pickled body parts. Not the usual tools of trade, but for Chief Forensic Medical Scientist Derek and Forensic Secretary Pauline they were just part of a normal day in the office inside the world-famous Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London. Derek has played a pivotal role in investigating some of the UK's most high-profile mass disasters and murder cases. Derek's . . . work on murder cases, in particular, has seen him credited as a pioneer of forensic medical science, after developing . . . techniques that make it easier to secure a conviction and also identify a serial killer. . . . These . . . revelations will open your eyes to the dark world inhabited by those who investigate death and murder (typically most horrid), and unveil the secrets of how each case is solved.

Sheri Fink, a physician and reporter, provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. She reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. She unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, of a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In this book, she exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters, and how we can do better.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida. The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now.

Forensic pathologists are experts in determining a person's cause of death. This book is part narrative and part science text, explaining how pathologists use their knowledge of the human body to help solve mysteries.

Explains how body farms are used to help forensic anthropologists and scientists better understand how the human body decomposes in various conditions. Includes photographs of bodies in different stages of decomposition.

Discusses five forensic investigations performed by Cyril H. Wecht, and features information on the deaths of Anna Nicole Smith, her son Daniel, and Stephanie Crowe; as well as the murder trial of David Westerfield, and the actions of doctors at the Memorial Medical Center in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Uses the story of unexplained deaths to demonstrate how medical and police investigators make use of science and technology to discover how the people died, whether criminal acts are involved, and if so who is responsible.