Securing evidence: body

OK, Natsumi, James and Nanda have now moved the body onto its back so we can have a better look at exactly what we’ve got. OK. They’ve conducted a search of all the pockets of the clothing to look for any identification of personal possessions. They found a mobile phone, which may hold crucial evidence of communication between our deceased and the suspect. So, that’s being fast tracked off to our digital crime team. OK. After they’ve taken a full photographic record of exactly what we’ve got here, we can have a look more closely at out our deceased. You’ll notice here distinctly a puncture wound on his abdomen. Right.

Now, there’s lots of trace evidence that we can get from that to link the weapon - if it was our metal bar - to this victim. There are metal fibres from traces that we can recover after the post-mortem. We can also conduct a damage assessment on his clothing and the actual puncture wound, which will be photographed at the post-mortem. Now this whole area of the body, his whole body will be used to examine for trace evidence through contact with our suspect, predominantly the hands, which we can see, this one - his right one - has plenty of blood staining on there, which could be his. It could be the suspect’s. I see.

By forensically preserving them with plastic bags, we’ll be able to better sample them in a more controlled environment at the post-mortem. OK. His clothing will be seized and again, looked for, for the contact trace evidence, such as fibres, cellular material of our suspect. Because of the rising tide, we’re going to get this body preserved and taken off to post-mortem. So James, would you mind by starting to bag the hands? So Natsumi, maybe you can help me with this. Sure. Well, what we’ll have to do– if you just crouch down here, I’m going to give you this bag. I’m just going to lift up the arm, because it’s a dead weight, and I need you to slip that inside like so.

Very good. And then just wrap the bag around the hand. Like this? That’s right, and we need to place this down. OK. Great. So now, Nanda is going to finish wrapping the rest of the feet and the head as well before we place this in a body bag. So what we’re going to do to zip it up - I’m going to place a secure tie between the zippers, and there we go. That’s nice and secure. OK. Yes. So that’s great - now we can move that body to the mortuary. The reason we put the seal on there, Natsumi, is to ensure that there’s continuity.

So when we when finally come to the post-mortem and forensic sampling of the body, we know there’s been no disturbance or no interference with that body. So, James, can you call the undertakers?