Investigation of death through body writing: a case study

Various surfaces or substrates are often encountered in the examination of questioned writing; however, no writing is more interesting than that found on the human body nor more challenging when the writing in question is linked to a death investigation. The body of an 18-year-old male was brought to the State Crime Laboratory, Little Rock, Arkansas, with a gunshot wound to the head and several messages written on his arms and chest. This paper will discuss the examination of evidence used to determine the manner of death through a cooperative effort between the Medical Examiner's Section and the Questioned Document Section of the Crime Laboratory.