Winter Alley 30s Female Corpse... Autopsy Results [Forensic Life]

On a cold winter day, something faintly covered with white snow was seen in the middle of a quiet alley. A female college student passing by almost tripped. A person with black hair not fully covered by the snow and a red bra was clearly lying face down. She screamed without even thinking of touching it. The police immediately judged it as a violent crime upon seeing the scene. The victim was a 36-year-old unmarried woman. Some local residents who gathered quickly recognized her. She was an office worker living near the place of death. The news of a young woman found dead with her clothes stripped off in the alley right in front of her house was enough to plunge the small neighborhood into fear.

The police investigated the victim’s movements before death. The day before the body was found, the victim had been drinking late into the night with her coworkers and was quite intoxicated, but they testified that she was taken by taxi up to just before the narrow alley in front of her house. Since the body was found dead in the alley only about 10 meters from where she got off the taxi, it was presumed that the perpetrator was hiding in the alley.

An autopsy was performed to determine the exact cause of death. When a person, especially a woman, is found naked, the examination is conducted even more rigorously. Although the entire body was frozen, making evidence collection difficult, the genital and anal areas were examined and genetic testing was conducted. There were no signs of sexual assault, and although there were new subcutaneous hemorrhages on the knees and forehead, these were considered injuries from falling and not fatal external wounds. The livor mortis showed a more vivid red color than usual, and the skin’s arrector pili muscles contracted or stiffened, making the skin appear goosebump-like (cutis anserina). Internally, the blood in the left ventricle of the heart was a brighter red, and red hemorrhages (Wischnewsky Spots) were confirmed on the stomach mucosa. The blood alcohol concentration was 0.21%, indicating a state of severe intoxication. Considering all these findings, the cause of death was hypothermia, that is, death by freezing.

Hypothermia occurs due to decreased heat production, increased heat loss, or both. A healthy person wearing proper cold-weather clothing can endure for a long time even at minus 60 degrees Celsius without freezing to death. However, in a cold environment, if heat loss exceeds the body’s ability to regulate temperature, hypothermia can occur.

Many people think that drinking alcohol warms the body and prevents freezing to death, but this is not true. Our body tries to retain heat, and the reason people look paler in the cold is that blood flow is redirected away from the skin to reduce heat loss. However, alcohol dilates the blood vessels in the skin. This increases blood flow and thus increases heat loss. People can easily notice this when their face flushes after drinking alcohol. In a cold environment, this becomes the worst condition for the body. In other words, alcohol promotes heat loss and accelerates freezing to death. It is believed that the victim mentioned earlier lost consciousness due to alcohol and died suddenly while sleeping.

Another common cause of freezing to death is diabetes. If diabetes is not properly treated, a substance called ketone bodies rapidly increases as a complication. This substance is produced when fat is broken down because sugar in the body is not properly utilized. In a diabetic complication state, heat escapes more easily than in normal people, causing death by freezing even at temperatures above freezing.

When the cold winter wind blows, forensic pathologists worry about deaths from hypothermia. They worry whether people intoxicated at late-year or early-year drinking parties fall asleep on the streets, and whether economically disadvantaged and sick people can survive this cold winter. Many people should not think of death by freezing or hypothermia only as accidents in mountainous areas like the Himalayas or wandering in snowfields. In this cold weather, it is time to look around and see if there are people outside who need protection due to hardships and illnesses that cannot be overcome by individual effort alone.

Yoo Seong-ho, Forensic Pathologist