Investigation of a death caused by rectal insertion of cocaine

A 29-year-old homosexual man died as a result of cocaine inserted into his rectum by his sexual partner. The apparent purpose of this form of drug abuse is to relax the anal sphincter muscles. However, as in this case, cocaine administered in this fashion has a high potential for toxicity. The possible legal and medical ramifications of death resulting from this practice are discussed.     

论同性伴侣婚姻家庭权利的保护

传统观念认为婚姻是一男一女的结合，而同性恋者的性活动或性吸引力则指向同性的人群，所以同性伴侣就被排除在了婚姻法的保护范围之外。虽然就社会整体而言，同性恋群体是一个相对隐蔽的少数群体，但是同性伴侣的权益保护问题还是应当引起社会的重视，引起法律的关注。即使在我国当前从婚姻法上确认同性伴侣合法配偶身份的时机还不成熟，但我们还是应当鼓励和引导同性伴侣通过订立合同等其他方式保护自己的婚姻家庭权利。     

Symmetrical hypopigmentation of the nipples secondary to trauma

Deviant sexual behavior may lead to unusual skin lesions. The following is a case report of unusual trauma-related, symmetrical lesions of the nipples in a male homosexual from repeated application of bondage apparatus to his areolae and nipples.     

Wrapped to death. Unusual autoerotic death

Despite the large population of New Orleans, including many homosexual and transsexuals, there have been relatively few cases of autoerotic deaths. The case reported here is an interesting one as it includes a bizarre form of autoerotic behavior from the standpoint of the method used. There have been no deaths reported in the literature in which the victim died as a result of jeopardizing himself by enclosing his body into plastic with an airway out of his "cocoon" in the form of a snorkel tube. He was engaged in masturbation when he apparently lost his mouth piece or airway. He attempted to use a knife to cut himself out.     

Vehicle-assisted suicide resulting in complete decapitation

A rare case of vehicle-assisted suicide in a 43-year-old man is presented. The man had tied a rope between a fence and his neck and, while seated on the driver's seat, accelerated the vehicle, which resulted in complete decapitation. Earlier that day, the man had tried to bleed himself to death by bottling his own blood in his flat, thus defining the case as secondary complex suicide.     

Extensive Petechiae in Attempted Self-Strangulation

Abstract:  A 29-year-old Korean man reported to have been robbed, bound, and gagged by a stranger in his apartment. Clinical findings included extensive petechiae to his face and tramline patterned abrasions and ligature furrows to his neck and face as well as his wrists. Initially, no other leads in the investigation existed and a robbery was assumed to have taken place. The man eventually confessed to fabricating the story and to having self-induced the ligature marks by subluxating his jaw at the temporomandibular joint and hooking the rope closest to the back of his neck on the corner of table. The man demonstrated this unsuspected ability to law enforcement officers. As a motive for his unconventional behavior, he confessed to engaging in autoaggressive behavior as punishment for "losing face" after his ex-girlfriend terminated her pregnancy. This case demonstrates that petechiae due to neck compression also may occur in the living and are due to vascular compression and not lethal hypoxia.     

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos: criminal and legal aspects of serial homicide with over 200 victims

This is the first scientific report on the crimes of the homosexual paedophile sadist Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos, based on a research stay of the authors in Columbia, and including discussions with the investigators, and the offender. Between 1992 and 1999, Garavito killed more than 200 children in the core age span between 8 and 13 years (as an exception, 6 to 16 years). His modus operandi remained stable. During daytime, he lured children of a lower social status out of crowded parts of the city into hidden areas that were overgrown with high plants. Garavito promised either payment for easy work, or drugs, or made other socially believable offers. The children were tied up, tortured, raped, and killed by at least one cut in the lateral part of the neck, or by decapitation. During the killings, Garavito was drunk. Even after his arrest (for attempted sexual abuse under a wrong identity) it was not immediately possible to track his crimes since Garavito had frequently changed his places of stay and his jobs. He also grew different hairdos and used wrong names. During his still ongoing confessions, he directs the investigators correctly to all scenes of crime spread over large parts of Columbia. In our report, we give an overview over the course of investigations, hint to similarities in the cases of the German serial killer Denke (1920's) and homosexual paedophile serial killer Jürgen Bartsch (1960's), and give preliminary impressions on the offender's personality. Furthermore, the violent environment and juridical peculiarities in Columbia are discussed. In spite of a total penalty of 2600 years in prison, it is formally well possible that Garavito will be released out of prison within the next 10 to 20 years, i.e. even before the maximum sentence of 40 years will be over.     

Choking death on a live fish (Dicologoglossa cuneata)

A choking death of a healthy fisherman, who put a type of live sole between his jaws to free up his hands so that he could collect more fish to put into his basket, is described. The fish squirmed into the larynx and upper trachea and the attempts to rescue the man by his colleagues who used pliers did not succeed, and the man died. Other published cases are reviewed, and risk factors and rescue possibilities discussed.     

Detection of "uncommon" tranquillizers-sedatives during screening toxicological analysis

A 56-year-old man is discovered unconscious in a pool of blood in the kitchen of his house. According to findings, the man used a 22 long Rifle to fire 14 shots at his thorax with trajectories going from front to back, from right to left and on a nearly horizontal level. All the projectiles got into the left front side of his thorax and came out just under the back of his left armpit. One of them then got through his left arm and fractured his left humerus. According to the findings made on the premises and the position of the bloodstains, we think that man put his rifle against the wall, resting on a pipe. He fired, unloading two clips into his thorax. He had to handle the bolt of the rifle before each shot. To reload, he took the bullets which were on the nearby table on which blood marks can be seen. When reloading at a certain moment, he sat down in his armchair and when he wanted to stand up, he leaned on the armrests, on which blood marks can be seen. The last bullet was probably the one which went through his left arm, preventing him from keeping on shooting. His death, caused by a hypovolemical shock, was obviously very slow.     

Planned complex suicide: report of three cases

Three cases of planned complex suicide in a 3-year period are reported. A 40-year-old man was found dead, in his garage, hanging by his neck, with a gunshot in the head from a pen gun. A 50-year-old man was found dead in the sea with a gunshot to his head. A third man was found in a field hanging by a tree and burned. The investigation of the scenes and the methods used pointed toward a suicidal etiology. The main difference between planned complex suicide and those cases defined in medicolegal literature as combined suicides lies in the complex mechanism used by the victim as a protection against the failure of one of the mechanisms.     

The impact of parental homosexuality in child custody cases: a review of the literature

As a result of the relatively high rate of divorce in this country and the increasing awareness that many parents (an estimated 1.5 million) are homosexual, the courts, as well as divorce mediators, have become actively involved in child custody placement decisions involving homosexual parents. While custody decisions have tended to reflect stereotyped beliefs or fears concerning the detrimental effects of homosexual parenting practices on child development, a review of the research consistently fails to document any evidence substantiating these fears. A number of specific custody issues are discussed as well as social factors relevant to lesbian motherhood. In conclusion, several authors call for increased awareness of the facts of homosexual parenting by lawyers, judges, and other professionals involved in homosexual parent-child custody cases.     

The assassination of the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs

On September 10, 2003, Anna Lindh, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, was assassinated. The offender, a 24-year-old man, was a socially isolated, culturally and familially dislocated, yet academically quite competent young man who became enthralled with the habitual criminality of some of his relatives and their associates, and then psychiatrically decompensated in his early twenties. He had a history of serious violence before the crime, including the gross assault with a knife of his alcoholic and abusive father when he was 17, stalking, and extortion. At least a year prior to the assassination, he confided to a friend his desire to attack someone famous in front of many people. A definitive motive for the crime was not possible to establish. This was an act of intended, yet opportunistic violence toward a national political figure. The dynamics of the case are placed in the context of other attacks on Western European and U.S. politicians.     

Family Group Conferencing Comes to the U.S.: A Comparison with Victim-Offender Mediation

A boy hesitantly appears in the doorway to a meeting room. A large man wearing a name tag greets him thoughtfully and points out where he should sit in the horseshoe of chairs in the room. The boy crosses the room, picks his name tag up off the chair, puts it on crookedly, and sits down. On his face apprehension alternates with bravado. As his mother and sister, done with hanging their coats, enter the room the boy begins to fidget quietly. The large man greets them and points out their places in the horseshoe of chairs; they find their name tags on their chairs and sit down on either side of the boy. Other people that the boy and his family are close to appear in the doorway, are greeted, and move to their seats farther down the arch of the horseshoe: his grandfather and cousin, his basketball coach, his school social worker, an elderly neighbor, and a member of his mother's church. Their faces, and those of his mother and sister, betray various emotions; grim calm, hopefulness, solemnity, foreboding, sadness, and quiet interest. When they are seated, the chairs on one side of the horseshoe arch are full. The investigating officer enters, and sits at the apex of the arch. When they are all seated, the large man leaves the room and comes back with a group of people who have been waiting in a nearby room. The boy's victim enters the room first; she is a small, white-haired woman who shakes a little as she crosses the room and sits in a chair directly across the horseshoe from the boy. The boy glances quickly at her and then looks down and away to avoid her eyes. On her face, anxiety is swiftly replaced by surprise, relief, and then anger as she openly studies the boy across from her. Her daughter, a middleaged woman, sits down on one side of her, and her teenaged grandson takes his place on the other side of the victim. The older woman's minister, two elderly women neighbors, and a middle-aged male friend find their name tags on chairs further down the horseshoe's arch. When they sit down they fill the last vacancies in the horseshoe of chairs. The large man who greeted them all takes his place on a chair at the open end of the horseshoe. He is the conference coordinator and the only one with whom every person present has spoken about this meeting. He smiles quietly, looks around the circle of faces, clears his throat, and begins the family group conference.     

Multiple suicidal gunshots to the head

We report two cases of suicide by multiple gunshots to the head. The first victim (of two shots) fired the first shot, which was observed, into his mouth, leading to damage to the left optic nerve and frontal lobe. The man still was able to drive his car home, where he shot himself in his right temple. He died 2 days later. The second victim (of three shots) was a 58-year-old man who was found dead on his bed. Reconstruction of the case disclosed that the first shot had passed through his tongue and slightly damaged the second cervical vertebral body. He then shot himself in his right temple, leading to damage of the temporal lobe. Finally, he shot himself in his left temple, resulting in destruction of the pons. In the first case, an amateurishly modified 8-mm blank revolver firing 6.35-mm- (.25)-caliber ammunition was used; in the second case, a rifle firing 5.6-mm (.22)-caliber ammunition with a reduced charge was used. In both cases, low-energy transfer to brain tissue by the initial bullets was due to low bullet energy or due to the bullets' missing the brain or vital centers.     

UK court denies prisoner with HIV early release

On 19 August 2003, the England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) denied an application by a man with HIV and hepatitis C to suspend his sentence of imprisonment due to his poor health.     

US: court refuses to order disclosure of HIV status to police

In February 2001, Massachusetts' highest court ruled that a man whose blood was splattered on police officers during his arrest is protected under that state's law from having to reveal his HIV status.     

Suicide by self-inflicted stab wound of the chest

A case is presented in which a 44-year-old man stabbed himself in the heart with a kitchen knife, then changed his bloody clothes, and ate lunch with his aunt, who did not notice the event. After 2 h he died of cardiac tamponade.     

Homicide of a supervisor simulating an occupational accident]

An unusual case of homicide is reported. A driver of an excavator killed his foreman by using the scoops of his machine and tried to feign an industrial accident. The man was convicted by the autopsy findings because his testimony could not explain the severe injuries.     

Homicidal hanging in a dyadic death

Homicide by hanging is rare. In this case report, a young man stabbed his wife, hanged his son, and then hanged himself. He was assumed to be mentally ill, consistent with some other studies of family murder-suicide.