Forced double suicide by fire revealed by autopsy and toxicological examination: a case report

We report here a forced double suicide by fire. Two burned bodies discovered in the debris of a house fire were identified as a father and his son by odontological findings. In the father, the concentration of carboxyhemoglobin (CO-Hb) in the left ventricle was over 90% and endrin, an organochlorine pesticide, was also detected in the stomach contents. However, 30.5% of CO-Hb in left ventricular blood and gasoline traces from an intratracheal puncture were detected in the son who had been undergoing treatment at a neuropsychiatric clinic. From these results, we determined this case to be a double suicide forced by the father in which the father set a fire with gasoline, thus burning his son to death, and then died in the fire himself after ingestion of Endrin. This case suggests the importance of integration of the results from the detailed forensic pathological and toxicological examinations and the scene investigation.