Homicide by Smothering Covered as a Plastic-Bag Suicide

Asphyxial death and their lethal circumstances can sometimes be a complicated subject and physical evidence in many cases play a critical role in forensic decisions to set in the early investigative phases the case as a homicide or suicide. In the morning of 26th December 2006 a woman aged 45, was found lying death by her ten y.o. son in bed under the blanket with her head enclosed in a red plastic bag loosely tightened round her neck by two yellow rubber elastic bands. At the crime scene examination numerous hematomas at the upper limbs and some thin fresh bruising on the face and around the mouth area and of the upper lips mucosa were found. Under the matrimonial bed at the woman’s bed half-side three small sheets of different plastic bags were found. The husband reported a violent discussion with his wife the night before, therefore he slept alone upstairs on a coach in the mansard, being wakened by the shouting of the son in the morning. At the end of all investigations, autopsy and laboratory examinations, findings were characterized only by some aspecific necroscopic elements - pleural petechial hemorrhages, pulmonary and cerebral edema - and negative toxicological findings. At the end of the trial all elements brought to consider the case as a premeditated murder, covered on purpose by a suicide (plastic bag suffocation) in a depressed woman worn out from the recent discovering of her husband's infidelity. In the case the autopsy inner pathological features were subtle, but the signs at external examinations were clearly not compatible with a classic suicidal plastic bag suffocations.Forensic examination of the crime scene, not only on medical perspective, has played an important role in bringing criminal investigations to successful conclusions.