by Sue Black
For some reason the pathologist had told the police that the cut across the lumbar vertebrae had been effected by a Japanese wood saw, and that set them off on a wild-goose chase, first of all to establish what one of these actually was, and then to figure out why the accused would have such a specialized tool and where it might be found. As he was a scrap-metal dealer, it was more likely that he would have access to a power saw than to a Japanese wood saw. Lucina did share this thought with the police, but if the pathologist says it is so, then it must be so . . . And yet they never found a Japanese wood saw.
How, then, was the accused linked to the death of his friend? Well, to start with, some blood was found in his flat, but there was another fascinating strand of evidence that broke new ground for forensic science. Cat hairs recovered from the shower curtain in which the torso was wrapped were sent to the US for analysis of the feline mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the maternal line. The results prompted further testing in the UK at Leicester University’s department of genetics, which established that there was only a 1 in 100 chance that the hairs did not belong to Tinker, the defendant’s cat.
This was the first time cat DNA had been used in a criminal trial in the UK. Due to domestication, cats have fewer genetic variants than humans, so it was fortunate that Tinker’s genetic make-up was relatively uncommon, but as work continues to make the tests more specific, analysis of animal hair could become a very useful source of evidence in the future.
The jury acquitted the defendant of murder, but the cat hair, supported by further fibre analysis of the shower curtain, which was from his home, helped to convict him of manslaughter. He was given a life sentence and ordered to serve a minimum of twelve years in prison.
As for the part we played, our evidence on the manner of dismemberment was accepted by the court, and we were therefore not required to attend to testify, which is always a blessing. But Lucina and I have lost count of the number of police officers who have said to us, “Oh, was that the Japanese wood saw case?’ Every time that blooming Japanese wood saw is mentioned we roll our eyes.
Each of the vertebrae can tell us something of the age, sex or height of an individual and shine a light on pathology, disease and injury. But perhaps their greatest value to forensic anthropology lies in the information they convey about the trauma and damage inflicted on those who become the victims of violence, before, during or after their death.
4
The Chest
Thorax
“Cut open my sternum and pull my little ribs around you”
Purity Ring
Pop Band
The bony walls of the thorax have several functions but their primary purpose is to protect the delicate lungs and heart and to provide a structure for muscle attachment, particularly to help with breathing but also with movement of the upper limbs. The job requires thirty-nine separate bones: twelve pairs of ribs, anchored at the front to the sternum (which consists of three bony parts) and at the back to the twelve thoracic vertebrae.
Given that the organs they protect are essential to life, it is perhaps to be expected that, along with the skull, the thorax is the area of the skeleton that is the most common focus for violent assaults. If you want to kill someone swiftly, aiming for the head enables you to attack the brain, but its surface area is relatively small and as the skull is thick in parts, it can resist damage more readily than the comparatively fragile bones of the chest. With its much larger surface area, the chest offers a bigger target and access to the heart, as well as to some very large and unforgiving blood vessels. So the thorax tends to be the most frequent choice for inflicting injury using a variety of weapons and methods: sharp-force trauma (for example, by stabbing), blunt-force trauma (such as kicking), and ballistic trauma (shooting).
As well as being easier to fracture, the bones of the thoracic region provide convenient gaps through which sharp implements can easily be inserted. This was apparently the fate of Richard Huckle, the UK’s most prolific paedophile.
A vile predator who posed as a devout Christian, twenty-eight-year-old Huckle was alleged to have abused over twenty-three children, in an age range of six months to twelve years, between 2006 and his arrest in 2014. Most of his victims were Malaysian children who lived in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, but it is possible that he may have committed further crimes in the UK and elsewhere.
The depth of his depravity knew no limits. He had been compiling what was essentially a “how to” manual for paedophiles, which he was about to publish on the dark web, the internet underworld beyond the reach of normal search engines. Entitled “Paedophiles and poverty: child lover guide,” his treatise spelled out in detail how to groom and gain the trust of young children from impoverished backgrounds. These children frequently had nobody to care for them and their loyalty and dependency could be bought by kindness, small amounts of money and cheap gifts. In such environments, it doesn’t take much to persuade a child to acquiesce to the wishes of a deviant. UK police, alerted by a specialist Australian child abuse unit that Huckle was due to return to England to spend Christmas with his family, arrested him as he stepped off the plane at Heathrow airport.
This abhorrent case landed on my desk in 2015, after Huckle was charged with ninety-one counts of indecent acts against children. We were given the task of looking at nineteen still images and nearly eight minutes’ worth of video to determine whether the same offender was shown in them all and whether Huckle could be excluded as that offender.
Still images are relatively straightforward to scrutinize as they encapsulate a static moment. Videos are more difficult because you are exposed to the changing gestures, movements and facial expressions of both victims and perpetrator. Eight minutes of video might not sound like very much, but for the purposes of examination it has to be broken down into single frames, and as there may be multiple frames to every second of film, you can very quickly find yourself dealing with over 50,000 separate images. And when these show abuse of a child, eight minutes is interminable.
We were able to confirm that it was highly likely to be the same man in all of the images and that, on the basis of various anatomical features visible in his hands, genitals and lower limbs, the man was most likely Richard Huckle. This was supported by the superficial vein patterns on the backs of his hands and on his penis, the areas of punctate pigmentation (moles) on his hands, forearms, thighs and knees and the pattern of skin creases on the knuckles of his thumbs, fingers and palms. It was clear that Huckle had a condition called phimosis, which occurs in about 1 per cent of non-circumcised males, where the foreskin is too tight and cannot be retracted around the tip of the penis. Most adults with this condition opt for surgical intervention to release the sphincter. Huckle had not, which further reduced the likelihood that the perpetrator might be someone else.
The police advised him that our evidence was a strong reason to change his plea. He eventually agreed and pleaded guilty to seventy-one of the charges. He was given twenty-two life sentences and a minimum prison term of twenty-five years before he would be considered for parole. Huckle was into his third year at HMP Full Sutton when it was reported that a fellow inmate strangled him with a bandage-like ligature and then stabbed him to death with what was described in the media as “a makeshift weapon, most likely fashioned from a sharpened toothbrush.”
In the hands of those who know where to place it, almost any innocent household object can be turned into a lethal weapon. Something as simple as a filed-down toothbrush, forcibly rammed into the space between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left-hand side, just below the nipple, will enter the heart, which lies directly behind the sternum and the front ends of those ribs. The punctured heart will pump its blood into the body cavity and life is extinguished. So just one stab can kill and, when the implement is made of plastic, it will probably leave no visible evidence of the event on the bones.
My reaction to Huckle’s murder was complicated. I had been reassured that his change
of plea was perhaps a sign that he had accepted responsibility for his crimes (although he may simply have realized that he was cornered and had nowhere else to go) and I felt the length of his sentence was appropriate. It took him off the streets and he would have been fifty-three years old before he was even considered for parole, which would have been plenty of time for efforts to be made to rehabilitate him.
I am an optimist. I want to regret that a young man of thirty-three met a violent end, but I find it hard to summon the necessary compassion for a person who did so much damage to so many vulnerable children. While I am disappointed in myself for my inability to be more forgiving, I suspect I would not even be countenancing the option of forgiveness if his victims had been my children or grandchildren. Do I believe in the death penalty? No, not really, but the case of someone like Huckle probably comes as close as anything could to persuading me to change my mind.
Huckle’s killer knew where to strike. It is much more difficult to stab into the chest, even with a more effective weapon, if you aim for the vertical strip in the middle. The sternum, the hard, bony breast-plate at the front of the chest, is made up of three parts. The old anatomists decided rather fancifully that it looked a bit like a sword, with a broad handle, or pommel, at the top, a long, thin blade in the middle and a sharp pointy bit at the bottom. So the top section of the sternum, the “handle,” is known as the manubrium (from the Latin manus, meaning hand). The middle area, the body, or mesosternum, is sometimes referred to as the gladiolus, like the flower, which takes its name from the Latin for sword, as does the word “gladiator.” The terminal point is the xiphoid process (in this instance from the Greek, meaning sword-like).
If you picture a chicken, a creature whose anatomy is familiar to most of us, the equivalent of the sternum in its skeleton is the keel we see in the midline between the two breasts. Our sternum lies directly under the skin of the chest and has no covering of fat or muscle.
No matter how obese we may become, it remains palpable, which means that being struck in the sternum is really painful. Fractures are common. After the use of seatbelts in cars was made compulsory in 1989, the number of sternal fractures caused by drivers bouncing off the steering wheel reduced markedly, but such fractures are still seen in sports-related injuries.
Its closeness to the surface of our bodies makes the sternum a useful landmark for first-aiders or point of access for doctors. It is a handy target for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) as it offers a solid base on which to pump when trying to kick-start a dicky ticker. Pressure on the xiphoid process, however, should be avoided as it can fracture, and when this happens it has been known to perforate the liver and cause a fatal haemorrhage.
The sternum is also a convenient site for biopsy when doctors wish to aspirate bone marrow. Evidence of surgical excision through the bone to gain access to the chest, for example, during open-heart surgery, can be a rather obvious clue to the medical history of an individual. Anatomists frequently see the handiwork of the cardiothoracic surgeon in the dissecting room in the remains of elderly donors who have bequeathed their bodies to further our knowledge of the human form and to train our students. Many chests bear witness to the cutting and mending that takes place in emergency surgery when there is no time for careful planning or non-invasive approaches.
Neither the xiphoid nor the mesosternum tend to survive long after burial, as the layer of covering compact bone is thin. But the manubrium usually endures well, particularly the upper part, where it is reinforced to take the strain of the joints with the clavicles, or collar bones, on either side.
The manubrium can be very useful in age determination in young people, thanks to the small, thin flakes of bone that fuse to the joint surfaces in the early teenage years to complete the growth of the joints. It is an area that is overlooked by almost every other profession concerned with forensic science, but one that an experienced anthropologist will always check.
There are quite a few developmental anomalies that manifest themselves in the sternum which can prove helpful for identification purposes. During its formation, the sternum may remain perforated in the midline, leaving a hole reminiscent of a bullet wound, which can be misleading for the rookie. It causes no clinical symptoms—it is simply a result of defective fusion when the bone was growing. Anatomists love to use such specimens in student exams. They bring forth some extravagantly imaginative descriptions of violent homicide and ballistic trauma but in fact, if less thrillingly, they are just a normal variant.
Sometimes the xiphoid can become quite long, and even bifurcated, so that strange lumps and bumps become noticeable on the upper midline abdomen with age, which can cause unnecessary alarm to its owner, who may fear they have a tumour. It can be quite tricky to identify a bony xiphoid process in isolation and sometimes this is only achieved by accounting for everything else. If all the other bones are present and we are left with an odd, pointy strip of bone, we can be pretty sure it is the xiphoid of a middle-aged or elderly individual, usually male.
Pectus carinatum, or pigeon chest, occurs when the cartilages associated with the ribs overgrow, producing a “keel-like’ protrusion of the chest wall. This can be caused by a number of conditions, including rickets (a result of vitamin D deficiency). Pectus excavatum, or sunken chest (known by the ever-jocular medics as “pirate’s treasure”), is its anatomical opposite. This can impact on the normal functioning of the heart and the lungs. Its cause is uncertain. It may be simply a congenital defect in the formation of the sternum. Sometimes when the sternum does not develop normally, the heart can grow outside the fetal chest. This requires some tricky intrauterine surgery to open the sternum of the fetus and pop the heart back where it belongs so that it can continue to grow as it should.
All in all, the tri-osseous strip of the sternum is very useful to the medical profession, but it does not tend to excite too many forensic experts—except for anthropologists, who are always on the alert for unusual-looking chest bones as these may indicate a particular developmental condition that might provide an important clue to the identity of an individual.
It was the sternum that enabled us to significantly narrow down the age of Jin Hyo Jung, the South Korean woman found in a suitcase in the investigation recounted in Chapter 2. The key was the very specific age changes that occur in this bone. In a child, the sternum is often in six separate pieces which start to fuse together in the mid-line as the child grows until they ultimately form the typical adult three-piece structure by the late teenage years. Further changes continue throughout puberty and into the early twenties at the sides of the bone, at the sites where the cartilages of the ribs articulate with the sternum: here, delicate slivers of bone appear in the region of the cup-shaped joints, fusing first in the upper and finally in the lower borders of the sternum.
We could see on X-rays that our as yet unidentified young Asian woman had these shards of bone nestled in the little cups of the joints, from which we calculated that she had to be under twenty-five but older than twenty when she died. She was in fact in her twenty-second year.
The sternum is a pretty good indicator of sex, too. It tends to be longer in males than in females and is generally larger and more robust. If you have better-developed muscles (particularly the pectoralis major, or pecs) on the front of the chest, then it follows that they are going to need to be attached to bigger, stronger bones. Of course, having a bigger, stronger sternum does not always mean you are male—think female weightlifter, shot-putter or javelin-thrower.
The bars of cartilage that join the bony ribs to the sternum are called costal cartilages (“costa” as in rib, and nothing to do with coffee). The cartilages are the remnants of the precursors of the ribs which haven’t yet got round to turning into bone but retain the ability to do so with advancing age—a process known as ossification. The first signs of this can be visible as early as the late teens or early twenties, and it becomes progressively more developed as we get older, to the point where almost the
whole strip of cartilage may eventually be replaced by bony bits.
Sometimes the edges of the sternum send tongues of bone out into the upper and lower borders of the costal cartilages, resulting in a structure that looks like a spider, with the sternum at the centre and the bony cartilages extending out on both sides like legs. This sternum–cartilage–rib combo is for this reason sometimes referred to by older anatomists as an arachnid. Its official designation is a plastron, a word for breastplate which has various other definitions, ranging from a fencer’s chest-protector and a nineteenth-century ornamental woman’s bodice to the name for the underside of a turtle.
We always suggest an X-ray of the plastron if at all possible, because you just never know what it might tell you. And one thing is certain: if you don’t look, you won’t find anything.
The costal cartilages were strikingly informative in a case where skeletonized and partially scattered human remains were discovered in woodland on the outskirts of a small Scottish city. The deceased was wearing one high-heeled shoe, size 8, and had possibly been naked from the waist down as there was no evidence of any remnants of clothing that may have been on the lower half of the body, although there was a bra and a blouse associated with the upper part. Other items of female paraphernalia were retrieved during a search of the area, including a plastic handbag containing make-up and a handkerchief, but no money or credit cards.