Dismemberment as a method of body disposal in Spanish forensic cases

Abstract

This study provides an overview of victim and offender data, the cause and manner of death, the dismemberment type, the post-dismemberment alteration, and the forensic investigation, for 35 Spanish forensic cases. The main aim of this study was to perform a retrospective analysis of dismemberment and body part alteration in Spain since 1990, in particular relating to burning. The sample was selected from a Spanish national database on criminal records (CENDOJ). Official court records were examined for 96 variables, which were analysed through non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis (nMDS). The results obtained revealed that the number of dismemberment cases between 1990 and 2016 totalled 35 (amounting to a total of 40 bodies) with an incidence of 0.29% of the total number of homicide cases in the database. Most of the aggressors were Spanish adult males, and the victims were adult females of foreign nationality. The most commonly employed tool used to kill and dismember was the knife. A total of 15.00% of the 40 bodies were further altered by fire. It was concluded that dismemberment and other postmortem actions contributed to complicating the forensic investigation and hindering the identification of the deceased.