# Cause and Manner of Death of a Skeletonized Cadaver: Meeting Some Challenges

## TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges in determining cause and manner of death in a skeletonized cadaver with a gunshot injury.

## Contribution

The study highlights the limitations of forensic analysis in advanced decomposition cases and the difficulty in determining the manner of death.

## Key findings

- Gunshot injury to the head was identified as the cause of death.
- Lack of soft tissues made determining the manner of death (suicide, homicide, accident) impossible.
- The case could not be classified definitively as criminal due to insufficient forensic evidence.

## Abstract

Cause of death is defined as a natural disease or injury that led to physiologic changes resulting in death. Manner of death refers to the circumstances surrounding death. Decomposition, especially in advanced stages, creates difficulties in post-mortem examination for it encompasses the processes that lead to the loss of important observable findings and features. Traumatic injuries observed in decomposed cadavers might be analyzed by their vital features and significance for the occurrence of fatal outcomes that help determine the cause and manner of death.

An almost fully skeletonized cadaver was admitted to the Department of Forensic Medicine and Deontology at The Medical University, Sofia, Bulgaria. Along with the obligation to answer the post-mortem interval, what were the anthropological and biological features, the cause and manner of death had to be determined in order to classify the case as criminal or not. The cause of death was established by the morphological finding - gunshot injury of the head, passing the brain. The manner of death remained undetermined because of the absence of soft tissues in the areas of the injuries. It was concluded that there was no sufficient forensic data to answer if it was suicide, homicide, or even an accident.