Peanut Butter Can Kill You

 

Peanut butter can be deadly. If you’re allergic to peanuts.

Our immune system protects us from all sorts of bad things – – bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Our bodies recognize these foreign invaders and the immune system immediately goes to work manufacturing antibodies against the intruders. These antibody signal for help and pretty soon white blood cells show up along with their buddies known as mast cells. These cells release an array of chemicals that help damage the invaders, which are then consumed by the white blood cells. And life goes on.

But sometimes the immune system overreacts. It produces a massive amount of chemicals that can cause a drop in blood pressure, a tightening of the bronchial tubes, a leaking of fluids within the tissues and, most deadly, the lungs. We call this overwhelming reaction anaphylaxis. It is typically immediate and severe.

Such a reaction happened to Miriam Ducre-Lemay. She was allergic to peanuts. Her boyfriend had apparently eaten a peanut butter sandwich and had given her a good night kiss. Then everything went off the rails. She suffered an acute anaphylactic reaction and by the time paramedics arrived it was too late. This illustrates that it only takes a very small amount of an antigen (in this case the peanut oils in the peanut butter) to initiate a severe anaphylactic reaction.

 

Webinar: What Were They Thinking? The Planning of the Perfect Murder

Join me for a fun Webinar hosted by Sister in Crime-Atlanta on Tuesday, June 13, 2017 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time. You must be a member of that chapter to join is but if you’re already a SinC National member it’s only $20.

Here is the info on the event:

When your character plans and executes “The Perfect Murder,” he always, ALWAYS makes a mistake or two. These errors ultimately lead your sleuth to the solution. In this session, Dr. D.P. Lyle deconstructs the planning, execution, and post-crime behavior of two headline-grabbing murderers–O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson—to help mystery writers and fans better understand fictional killers from social, psychological, forensics, investigative, and motivational points of view. Q & A follows a 1-hour presentation. Forensic questions welcome!

Webinar: https://www.meetup.com/Sisters-in-Crime-Atlanta-Chapter/events/239240813/

SinC-Atlanta: https://www.sincatlanta.com

 

 

The World’s First Homicide?

No one knows for sure when the world’s first homicide took place – – other than Cain and Abel, that is. But it just might have happened 43,000 years ago in northern Spain. A skull retrieved from the Sima de los Huesos (Pit of Bones) in the Atapuerca Mountains showed two circular puncture wounds in the forehead of the skull. The skull had been found shattered into 52 fragments but miraculously was nearly complete. Once it had been reassembled the two wounds were easily identified. Researchers believe they were made by the same instrument and that they were not consistent with a simple fall into the cave shaft.

When you examine the skull it definitely looks as though some pointed instrument, most likely a stone tool or weapon, had delivered the blows. Of course, the assailant could claim self-defense, but this looks like a homicide.

 

Can Your Pacemaker Snitch On You?

Don’t you just hate it when your pacemaker snitches on you? I mean, apparently all you wanted to do was burn down your house and collect the insurance money but then your pacemaker spoke up. Your plans went up in smoke – – no pun intended.

Pacemakers surely have changed since I was in medical school. Back then, they had to be inserted in the abdomen and the pacemaker leads shoved up through the diaphragm where they were screwed into the heart muscle. It was a major procedure, done under general anesthesia. The device weighed around a pound and only lasted 12 to 18 months. Then you had the pleasure of doing it all over again.

Also, back then, pacemakers were mostly a safety net. They were used for people who had very slow heart rates, even episodically, to prevent dramatic drops in the heart rate that could lead to dizziness, falls, and loss of consciousness. Pacemakers were often set at 60 to 70 beats per minute which meant that your heart rate could never fall below that. The pacemaker would sit and watch the rhythm and any time the rate dropped below these parameters, the pacemaker would kick in and supply the electrical impulse the heart needed.

Things are much different now. Today’s pacemakers are small, about the size of a wristwatch in many cases, last a decade or more, and will do much more than simply provide a safety net. They can help regularize abnormal rhythms, increase heart rate in response to exercise, and do a myriad other things to make them more efficient and helpful.

They also store data. This means that the pacemaker can periodically be interrogated and everything that has gone on in the individual’s rhythm over the past few months is available for analysis. And some of the newer models actually send the data to a central monitoring station in real time. My how things have changed.

For Ross Compton, his pacemaker, which was of course equipped with all this new technology, just might have snitched on him. According to investigators, Compton allegedly torched his house, likely in an insurance scam. He said that once he saw the fire he began unloading his most important belongings out a window and ferried them to his car. It was a real fire drill of sorts.

However, when his pacemaker was interrogated it showed no changes that would be consistent with such frenetic activity. No arrhythmias, no high heart rates, nothing to suggest extreme physical activity during the time in question. Had he actually been lugging stuff out the window and racing to his car one would expect that his heart rate would be greatly elevated from the exertion. Apparently, that’s not what was found.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this case turns out.

 

King Henry the VIII’s Brain Injury and Behavioral Changes

King Henry VIII was often a bad boy. I mean, he had two of his many wives executed, for starters. But he was an historical giant—-he took on the Pope and established the Church of England—no small feat in the 1500’s.

But he also developed erratic behavior later in his life. Many date his significant personality change to a head injury following a fall beneath a horse in a 1536 jousting match. He apparently remained unconscious for two hours.

But could a blow to the head cause a dramatic personality change? Absolutely.

There are many types of brain injuries that could lead to such an outcome: Concussions (usually multiple such injuries are needed before personality changes would occur—if at all); Cerebral contusions (brain bruises); intracerebral bleeds (bleeding into the brain tissue; and subdural hematomas (bleeding in the space between the brain and the skull). In Henry’s case, I suspect the later might be the case.

Subdural Hematoma

Subdural hematomas follow blows to the head and here blood collects in the dural space—between the brain and the skull. It can be small and inconsequential or larger and compress the brain. It can occur immediately or be delayed by hours, days, weeks, and even months. The increased pressure on the brain can lead coma and death. Less dramatically, it can cause headaches, visual impairment, weakness, poor balance, sleepiness, confusion, and, yes, personality changes.

 

The Black Dahlia: The Cold Case That Even 70 Years Later Won’t Go Away

Elizabeth Short

The shocking and graphic murder of Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia) has never been solved and likely never will be. Seventy years ago yesterday, on January 15, 1947, the nude body of a young woman was found in a vacant lot on Norton Avenue in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. She had been bisected (cut in half) and her two body parts displayed in a spread eagle fashion.

The victim was identified as Elizabeth Short and she soon became known by the moniker The Black Dahlia. Her death has remained one of the truly iconic American crimes. It’s hard to believe that after 70 years little progress has been made in solving her murder.

During the initial investigation, the police were at a loss as to who could have and would have killed Elizabeth, and since then many theories about the killer’s identity have been postulated. But none have ever been proven. Still many are intriguing.

An excellent article from Crime Magazine by Stephen Karadjis was published in 2014. It summarizes the case, its investigation, and the various theories that have circulated about this murder.

 

 

First Successful Insanity Plea in the US

Philip Barton Key

“Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—you must die!”

This words were shouted by US Congressman Daniel Sickles just before he shot Philip Barton Key, a US Attorney and the son of the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” And true to his words Sickles shot Key with three different pistols in broad daylight in direct view of the White House. It seems that Sickles had discovered, or at least believed, that Key was carrying on a affair with Sickles’ wife Teresa.

Daniel Sickles

At the trial, his attorneys employed the insanity defense. In his two-day opening statement, attorney John Graham put it this way:

It may be tragical to shed human blood; but I will always maintain that there is no tragedy about slaying the adulterer; his crime takes away the catcher of the occurrence….the fact is now proved in this case that Philip Barton Key seduced the wife of Daniel E. Sickles, and that for that, in a transport of frenzy, Daniel E. Sickles sent him to his long account.

“Transport of frenzy”? I guess that’s sort of like “going postal.” Temporary insanity as it were.

And of course in that state the only logical action would be to send the scoundrel “to his long account.”

Regardless, Graham’s ploy worked and Sickles was acquitted, served out the rest of his term in the House of Representatives, became a Major General in the Civil War, and was later an ambassador to Spain under US Grant—where he supposedly was the lover of Spain’s deposed Queen.

 

Sonny Liston: Cause and Manner of Death

Former Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston is best remembered from his two losses—first to Cassius Clay, then Muhammad Ali. Ali changed his name between the two fights. But Sonny was a tough guy. He ruled the heavyweight division with an iron hand. Until Ali burst of the scene anyway.

But Sonny was no match for the needle. The cause of his death is easy—-a heroin OD. But, the manner of death isn’t so apparent. A situation not uncommon in drug OD deaths.

The cause of death is what actually killed the person while then manner of death is the by whom and why. It basically comes down to—-by whose hand and for what purpose did the death occur?

The four (plus one) manners of death are: Natural, Accidental, Suicidal, Homicidal, and Undertermined—-the latter a fancy way of saying “I don’t have a clue.”

A heroin OD is not natural but can it be accidental, or suicidal, or homicidal? You bet. And it’s not always possible to determine the manner in heroin-related deaths.

FROM FORENSICS FOR DUMMIES:

Uncovering the four manners of death

The manner of death is the root cause of the sequence of events that leads to death. In other words, it answers these questions:

# How and why did these events take place?

# Who or what initiated the events and with what intention?

# Was the death caused by the victim, another person, an unfortunate occurrence, or Mother Nature?

The four manners of death are

Natural: Natural deaths are the workings of Mother Nature in that death results from a natural disease process. Heart attacks, cancers, pneumonias, and strokes are common natural causes of death. Natural death is by far the largest category of death that the ME sees, making up over half of the cases investigated.

Accidental: Accidental deaths result from an unplanned and unforeseeable sequence of events. Falls, automobile accidents, and in‐home electrocutions are examples of accidental deaths.

Suicidal: Suicides are deaths caused by the dead person’s own hand. Intentional, self‐inflicted gunshot wounds, drug overdoses, and self‐ hangings are suicidal deaths.

Homicidal: Homicides are deaths that occur by the hand of someone other than the dead person.

Undetermined or unclassified: These are deaths in which the ME can’t accurately determine the appropriate category.

Just as causes of death can lead to many different mechanisms of death, any cause of death can have several different manners of death. A gunshot wound to the head can’t be a natural death, but it can be deemed homicidal, suicidal, or accidental.

Though the ME can usually determine the manner of death, it’s not always easy, or even possible. For example, the manner of death of a drug abuser who overdoses is most likely to be either accidental or suicidal (it also could be homicidal, but it’s never natural). When the cause of death is a drug overdose, autopsy and laboratory findings are the same regardless of the victim’s or another’s intent. That is, the ME’s findings are the same whether the victim miscalculated the dose (accidental), intentionally took too much (suicidal), or was given a lethal dose (homicidal). For example, perhaps the victim’s dealer, thinking the user had snitched to the police, gave the victim a purer form of heroin than he was accustomed to receiving, so that his “usual” injection contained four or five times more drug than the unfortunate soul expected. Simply put, no certain way exists for determining whether the person overdosed accidentally, purposefully, or as the result of another’s actions. For these reasons, such deaths are often listed as Undetermined.

So was Sonny’s death an accident? A suicide? Or did the hand of another intervene and murder Sonny? We may never know.

Was Sonny Liston Murdered?: http://theundefeated.com/features/was-sonny-liston-murdered/

 

Crime and Science Radio: The BTK Killer and Other Serial Murderers: An Interview with Psychologist and Author Dr. Katherine Ramsland

This Saturday at 10 a.m. Pacific Jan Burke and I welcome Dr. Katherine Ramsland to the show to discuss her years of research into one of America’s most notorious serial killers Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer and her wonderful book that has resulted form this work.

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland

 

BIO: Dr. Katherine Ramsland, director of the Master of Arts in Criminal Justice program at DeSales University, also teaches the forensic psychology track. She has published over 1,000 articles, stories, and reviews, and 59 books, including The Mind of a Murderer, The Forensic Science of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Ivy League Killer, and The Murder Game. Her book, Psychopath, was a #1 bestseller on the Wall Street Journal’s list. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored a book on his cases, The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Dr. Henry C. Lee, The Real Life of a Forensic Scientist, and with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead. She presents workshops to law enforcement, psychologists, coroners, judges, and attorneys, and has consulted for several television series, including CSI and Bones.  She also writes a regular blog for Psychology Today called “Shadow-boxing” and consults for numerous crime documentary production companies. Her most recent book (August 2016) is with serial killer, Dennis Rader, called Confessions of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. She will also publish The Ripper Letter, a supernatural thriller based on Jack the Ripper lore, and a textbook, Forensic Investigation: Methods from Experts (2017).

LISTEN: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2016/03/30/crime-and-science-radio-with-special-guest-dr-katherine-ramsland

Link goes live Saturday August 13, 2016 at 10 a.m. Pacific

LINKS:

Website: www.katherineramsland.com

Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Kath.ramsland/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatRamsland

 

 

 

Can a DNA Sample Reveal Age?

DNA found at crime scenes can be extremely useful in identifying a perpetrator. But this only works if they have a known suspect and a DNA sample from that suspect, or if the perpetrator is in the national DNA database—-CODIS. Without something to compare the crime scene DNA sample against, DNA is not very useful. Same can be said for fingerprints. But perhaps DNA offers something else.

Employing DNA obtained from a crime scene, Familial DNA has been used to narrow the list of potential suspects and this has proven useful in many cases—such as the famous Grim Sleeper serial killer. I have blogged on this before in cases such as The Boston Strangler and the amazing case of Yara Gambirasio.

DNA will of course reveal gender, but there is also research suggesting that race, hair and eye color, and physical features such as stature might also be determined from a DNA sample. These aren’t completely worked out yet but they are intriguing aspects of DNA analysis.

But what if a DNA sample could be used to determine the approximate age of the person? This would definitely help as, once again, it would narrow the suspect list. For example, if the crime scene DNA could be shown to have come from someone who was approximately 25 years old it would effectively eliminate a 60-year-old suspect. But is this possible? Maybe.

A new approach, using a process of gene expression called methylation, seems to offer hope. Researchers at the KU Leuven University in Belgium have developed a technique for assessing the degree of methylation in a DNA sample. They believe that this analysis will narrow the age range of the individual down to a four or five year window. If this proves to be true, law enforcement will have another useful forensic science tool.