Elementary Murder

About one death in five in the U.S. calls for official investigation. So says Dr. Le-Moyne Snyder, medico-legal director of the Michigan State Police. The number of unsolved killings is considerable. Dr. Snyder believes that this is largely due to police bungling. To show the need for scientific detection, he published last week an elementary manual on murder (Homicide Investigation, Charles C. Thomas; $5).

Dr. Snyder's chief thesis will be no surprise to detective-story fans: the first 15 minutes of investigation is likely to make or break a case. He insists that nothing must be moved until the scene of a murder has been thoroughly photographed and sketched, distances measured, fingerprints recorded and full notes compiled.

He notes a number of ways of telling a murder from a suicide. Hanging is almost a sure sign of suicide; murder by hanging is rare. To determine whether a body was strung up after death to simulate suicide, Dr. Snyder looks for small black and blue marks on the neck: if present, they show that blood vessels were ruptured by the rope and the person was alive when hanged. Suicide by shooting also has a characteristic pattern: a suicide usually shoots himself in the temple, often misses the first two or three times (technically known as "hesitation shots"). Shooting oneself in the head is not the quickest or surest suicide method. Shooters often live for hours or days after hitting themselves. It is very difficult to shoot oneself in the heart (the bullet usually ricochets off the breastbone or a rib). Oddly, suicides never seem to shoot themselves through their clothes, seem always to bare the skin. Suicide by stabbing, Dr. Snyder has found, is rare in the U.S.

In murder cases, detectives go wrong surprisingly often on the cause of death. Dr. Snyder says that they sometimes mistake a knife wound for a bullet hole and vice versa, often wrongly assume that a body found in the water was drowned.

There are many modern techniques for unearthing clues. For example, laboratories can now determine (by the "dermal nitrate test") whether a suspect has recently fired a gun: if he has, a paraffin cast of the back of his hand, when peeled off, will pull out particles of gunpowder imbedded in the skin. A new X-ray test reveals tiny particles of lead in clothing, showing that a bullet has been fired through it. Dr. Snyder reports that detectives have found the lie detector extremely useful. Though it is exceedingly dubious in the case of pathological liars, drunks, dope addicts or morons, it has solved many an otherwise unsolvable crime. Of 1,551 suspects tested with Leonarde Keeler's famed lie detector, 563 were caught lying and of these 308 promptly confessed.

Death behind the Door. Deadliest weapon with which U.S. police have to cope is the shotgun: "It seems that nearly every farmhouse in the country has a shotgun behind the kitchen door and these frequently become involved in crimes. . . ." Dr. Snyder debunks some common notions about poisons: arsenic and strychnine, for example, though often used, are very dangerous to a murderer, because their presence in the body can be detected for some time after the murder. Strychnine, one of the surest, quickest killers (sometimes within 15 minutes), can be detected three months after death. One of the hardest poisons to detect is morphine (its effects are easily confused with alcoholism, apoplexy). One of the deadliest is aconite (a hundredth of a grain is a killing dose). Perhaps the worst poison a suicide can choose (but often chooses) is bichloride of mercury, which causes a horribly painful, lingering death.

Dr. Snyder attacks several fallacies about murder: that it will out; that a murderer always returns to the scene of his crime; that quicklime will liquidate a body (quicklime tends to preserve it); that surprise or fear may be fixed on a victim's face (death relaxes the muscles); that a bullet in the heart kills instantly (Dr. Snyder tells of a policeman who, after being shot through the heart, fired six shots at his murderer, walked across a street to his car before he died).

Prime fallacy: that dead men tell no tales. Says Dr. Snyder dryly: "Sometimes the dead man actually becomes eloquent."

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