Archiv für Kriminologie
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Archiv für Kriminologie · May 2008
Case Reports[Unusual circumstances in a fourfold complex suicide].
Complex suicides are defined as suicides using more than one method, which may sometimes suggest homicide. We present the case of a 27-year-old man who killed himself by using four different methods. The man was known as a loner and sufferd from bipolar psychosis. ⋯ The CO-Hb value in the blood amounted to 7%; the other toxicological tests were negative. Death was found to be due to exsanguination from a deep stab wound in the abdomen and multiple trauma caused by the fall from a great height in the course of a suicide. Homicide could be excluded due to the circumstances of the case, which demonstrated again that both the medical findings and the investigation results of the police are indispensable for the differentiation between suicide and homicide.
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Apart from typical suicides, there are sometimes unusual deaths from gunshots to the head. The presented case is a double death from the autopsy material of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Berlin. The report deals with a murder-suicide of a man, who killed himself and his 2-year-old daughter by a single gunshot. After having administered a tranquilizer to the child, he held her head to his own and fired a contact shot to his right temple so that the bullet passed through both heads.
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A 55-year-old man was found dead on the bed lying on his side in a pool of blood with a bullet entrance hole in the nape. Behind his body, a semi-automatic rifle Remington Nylon, cal. .22 LR, was detected. ⋯ A remarkable fact of the present case is that a long firearm had been used. Reports on suicidal shots to the nape are comparatively rare in the medicolegal literature and usually refer to pistols or revolvers.
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Archiv für Kriminologie · Mar 2007
Case Reports[Fatal chest injury from a shotgun slug: homicide, accident or suicide?].
A 78-year-old hunter was found dead beside his raised hide with a gunshot wound to his chest. In the present case, the reconstruction of the shooting event revealed an accident. ⋯ One of the triggers interlocked with the button of a camping chair's cushion and a shot was fired. Furthermore the morphology of wounds from shotgun slugs is discussed on the basis of the autopsy findngs.
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Archiv für Kriminologie · Sep 2006
[Not enough help for themselves--the risk of physicians to commit suicide].
Physicians seem unwilling to deal with their own suicidal problems professionally. Suicide is a repressed topic. According to international studies, medical students and physicians are clearly over-represented among suicide victims. ⋯ In this context it cannot be excluded that out of "professional respect" cardiovascular causes of death are sometimes falsely documented in death certificates instead of suicide. Despite their special education, physicians are not very good at diagnosing their own emotional disorders and asking colleagues for adequate professional help. They rather tend to camouflage their own psychological problems also because they are afraid of occupational and personal discrimination.