EGU23-4457, updated on 22 Feb 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-4457
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

No chance for doubts: a multidisciplinary approach for solving a criminal case.

Gennaro Baldino1, Elvira Ventura Spagnolo1, Stefano Vanin2, Roberta Somma3, Filippo Cucinotta4, Cristina Mondello1, Patrizia Gualniera1, Michele Gaeta1, Alessio Asmundo1, and Daniela Sapienza1
Gennaro Baldino et al.
  • 1Legal Medicine, Dep. BIOMORF, University of Messina, Messina, Italy (daniela.sapienza@unime.it)
  • 2Dep. DISTAV, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
  • 3Dep. of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Physical Sciences and Earth Sciences, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
  • 4Dep. of Engineering, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

In a forensic context, the criminal case evaluation is often challenging, and the only autopsy may not be exhaustive to determine the cause and the time of death, mainly when the corpse is dismembered, charred, or putrefied. Moreover, the conditions of an altered corpse and the recovered places of the cadaver (countryside, forests, rivers, beaches, etc.), outdoors, or in burnt buildings and ruins, can raise challenges not only in terms of victim identification but also in terms of acquisition of additional information aimed at elucidating the dynamics of death, like the detection of the corpse transfer after the death, especially in cases of suspected homicides. In such complex cases, it is, therefore, of paramount importance to provide a multidisciplinary approach involving the collaboration of ultra-specialized forensic experts. In this context, experts in criminalistic disciplines, such as forensic geology, botany, and entomology, may provide their contribution, as well as the engineers applying to medicine new technologies for the 2D and 3D reconstructions of crime scenes and evidence. We consider helpful to report a court case that came to our attention, involving forensic pathology experts together with forensic biologists, geologists, botanists, naturalists, entomologists, veterinarians, physicists, computer scientists, and engineers whose collaboration based on a multidisciplinary approach contributed to the management and the solving of a suspect crime.

How to cite: Baldino, G., Ventura Spagnolo, E., Vanin, S., Somma, R., Cucinotta, F., Mondello, C., Gualniera, P., Gaeta, M., Asmundo, A., and Sapienza, D.: No chance for doubts: a multidisciplinary approach for solving a criminal case., EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-4457, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-4457, 2023.

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Supplementary material file