Have you ever attended an autopsy that surprised you in some way?

[cheesegrate]

For those that have worked autopsies , do you recall any cases that surprised you in a way that was peculiar or memorable?

I'm especially thinking of "fresh" bodies [in relative terms, of course] that might seem outwardly much closer to their walking, breathing brethren than to the putrefied, bloated bodies that share autopsy room space at times. It's those outwardly "normal" bodies (ignoring gore from trauma or soiling from the environment) that sometimes harbor the biggest surprises.

Was it a unique tattoo perhaps? A sensitive body piercing? Or a surprising choice of underwear worn by the victim? Maybe it was something else revealing or intimate that the dead person would not have wanted anyone else to know about, ranging from a peculiar body odor you encountered which you didn't expect, to something as embarrassing as a male corpse exhibiting "angel lust" (postmortem erection), or the proper, well-to-do appearing individual who secretly harbored pubic lice?

Please post your contributions, including any juicy or sordid details.

 

[Bad Hippo]

Yes. I was very surprised to be attending an autospy, once. I thought it was a D&D convention.

My turning up to the autopsy, dressed as a necromancer, upset a few onlookers.

 

[cheesegrate]

For starters, I can share some memorable ones from my own experience, having attended autopsies in the past (although I did not work specifically at a morgue or forensic lab):

I recall the case of a man who was found slumped on the shitter in his apartment, his belly full of fluid (and as it turns out, something else) and liver scarred by years of alcohol abuse. The most memorable event at his autopsy came early on when the morgue technician pressed on his swollen belly and the corpse promptly pooped out this disgusting black, extremely malorderous load right onto the autopsy table, reminiscent of toothpaste squeezed out of a tube! The autopsy showed his bowels were chocker-block loaded with digested blood, due to backup of pressure in the main vein draining to the liver, causing a rupture of a vessel in his stomach. His liver looked very abnormal, shrivelled to one half the normal size for a man his age and weight. The pathologist who bread-loafed the liver into sections showed me the immense scarring or "fibrosis" that had been the culprit of the high pressures.

***

In another case, there was an emaciated heroin addict I remember well because he was completely naked and smelled strongly of stale urine when his body bag was opened. His complexion was chalky and his skin was literally hanging off his bones. He looked exactly how you might expect a junkie to look, except for being exceptionally well endowed (!) with a horridly long and flaccid, snakelike penis that had innumerable needle tracts in it. He also had matted pubic hair that looked gross, like it hadn't been washed in days. The guy had evidently treated his cock like a pin cushion during life, to feed his addiction. It felt weird watching the photographer take all those close-ups of his pock-marked manhood, tagged with an adhesive scale and case number stuck to its tip - a sorry footnote to a sorry life.

***

Lastly, there's the woman I recall vividly because she was attractive and wearing tight fashionable jeans and boots and a cute white jacket with faux-fur lined hood around the border, looking like she was out for a night clubbing, who had not been paying attention crossing a busy downtown road, and that's how it all ended suddenly for her in the wee hours of the morning. It was raining steadily (not pouring though) and of course the body had lain exposed for some time even though someone eventually decided to cover it with a plastic tarpaulin. Her clothing was still damp by the time of her autopsy the next morning, and when her boots were removed at autopsy we could see one leg was clearly broken, but underneath the boots she had on these very flimsy knee-high nylons (skin tone and very sheer so you could easily see her cute pedicure) but they smelled like death because the moisture had gotten inside the boots and a bacterial orgy had obviously broken out. The odor was extremely pungent, similar to the smell of wet cabbage or cornchips, but with an acrid intensity of the mustiness so that there was no doubt about what I was actually smelling. Embarrassingly for me, I got hard just from the spontaneous physiologic reaction to the strong smell, enough to grow a bulge which threatened to get noticed, so at an opportune moment, I quietly excused myself to go to the washroom, rubbed it out, and returned to the autopsy as if nothing had happened.

I'd kill to get access to the photos from those autopsies (and those photos almost certainly exist in some archive or warehouse), but sadly, all I have are my memories to hold onto

 

[hedgerow]

no

 

[1fktmind]

I don't have so many memories on autopsy's, since it is long time ago, that I had experience's in it. I worked with research, so some would agree to donate when they passed away.
Death itself, I have no issue with. But those who has been deceased for a long time, having zero visitors, no family, or anyone who care that they have past away. You can't help but feel a bit sorry when they come in. But the emotions quickly go away when you smell them.

I can also tell you, occasionally they bring people into emergency, who is closer to an autopsy, then a trauma patient.

So to give one story, that I do remember. It was an older gentlemen, who lived remote.
According to what I was told, he was apparently a drunk, who feel asleep or so while smoking. He had been wearing some sort of blanket on half of he's body to keep himself warm, which he had lit on fire. It had burned into he's skin and clothes making him unable to take it off (or too drunk to fight it). You could see he had been struggeling to get it off, because he managed to burn off most of he's fingers badly or to the bone. He's injuries was probably near fatal, but he had survived long enough, despite being unable to walk (too drunk or pain from burning) to drag himself outside he's house. It seems he had been trying to get help, as he was found in he's driveway. He was preserved pretty well, because it was at very cold temprature which most likely killed him. He was found only a few hours later in the morning This is one of the cases I remember because this guy's alcohol level itself would had been enough to kill him. Messurement of alcohol level in he's eye postmortem which is pretty acurate was still way over lethal limit. So this guy essentially killed himself three times in a matter of hours.

Anyway, never had anyone so fresh smelled so bad. To give my closest description, immagine a cat peeing on a rotten fish, mixed with cheap stinky cigars and skunk diarrhea with some burnt plastic and horse sweat inside a pig farm while sniffing a homeless man's armpit, smegma and ass when he has fungus in he's hemorrhoids.

 

[cheesegrate]

I don't have so many memories on autopsy's, since it is long time ago, that I had experience's in it. I worked with research, so some would agree to donate when they passed away.
Death itself, I have no issue with. But those who has been deceased for a long time, having zero visitors, no family, or anyone who care that they have past away. You can't help but feel a bit sorry when they come in. But the emotions quickly go away when you smell them.

I can also tell you, occasionally they bring people into emergency, who is closer to an autopsy, then a trauma patient.

So to give one story, that I do remember. It was an older gentlemen, who lived remote.
According to what I was told, he was apparently a drunk, who feel asleep or so while smoking. He had been wearing some sort of blanket on half of he's body to keep himself warm, which he had lit on fire. It had burned into he's skin and clothes making him unable to take it off (or too drunk to fight it). You could see he had been struggeling to get it off, because he managed to burn off most of he's fingers badly or to the bone. He's injuries was probably near fatal, but he had survived long enough, despite being unable to walk (too drunk or pain from burning) to drag himself outside he's house. It seems he had been trying to get help, as he was found in he's driveway. He was preserved pretty well, because it was at very cold temprature which most likely killed him. He was found only a few hours later in the morning This is one of the cases I remember because this guy's alcohol level itself would had been enough to kill him. Messurement of alcohol level in he's eye postmortem which is pretty acurate was still way over lethal limit. So this guy essentially killed himself three times in a matter of hours.

Anyway, never had anyone so fresh smelled so bad. To give my closest description, immagine a cat peeing on a rotten fish, mixed with cheap stinky cigars and skunk diarrhea with some burnt plastic and horse sweat inside a pig farm while sniffing a homeless man's armpit, smegma and ass when he has fungus in he's hemorrhoids.

It's amazing how much odors factor into the experience of attending an autopsy. You'd think the fancy morgue ventilation would take care of that, but not even close! The air movement is usually sluggish enough that strong smells linger noticeably, I found. Putrefaction was the absolute worst. It stinks like rank shit. It gets into your hair, your clothing, everything. I remember carrying that scent around even after showering. I had to use vaseline or vapor rub on my nostrils to block it out (for the internal portion of the autopsy I would wear a respirator, thank god). I remember one case of a body of a homeless person found under a tarp under an overpass, dead for several days in the heat, his body was this greenish-black color, bloated with marbled veins and skin slippage, tongue protruding, eyes bulging. His nether regions were a seething mass of maggots. It looked like a horror show. And not surprisingly, the smell of putrefaction emanating from his decomposing body was unimaginable. The female pedestrian fatality in the white hooded jacket I described earlier - the one wearing the really stinky knee-high nylons - her foot smell, although extremely pungent and memorable in its own characteristic way, was a cinch to endure by comparison. That body was still "fresh" and there was no decomposition smell to it. I'd rather bury my face in that girl's stale nylons any day over getting my face even within a few inches of a putrified corpse in advanced stage of decomposition without a respirator!

Has anyone ever had to autopsy a fetus? I remember one case where we autopsied a stillborn fetus where the mother had birthed it herself many weeks premature at home. The fetus didn't arrive in the standard body bag but arrived at the morgue in a bucket-like container with a lid. It looked alien to me. The umbilical cord and placenta came with it, still attached. We confirmed the sex (a boy), which wasn't hard because there was a tiny penis. Everything was tiny - toes, fingers. The head and eyes seemed disproportionately large compared to the rest of the body. Freaky.

 

[Nihilianth]

I don't have so many memories on autopsy's, since it is long time ago, that I had experience's in it. I worked with research, so some would agree to donate when they passed away.
Death itself, I have no issue with. But those who has been deceased for a long time, having zero visitors, no family, or anyone who care that they have past away. You can't help but feel a bit sorry when they come in. But the emotions quickly go away when you smell them.

I can also tell you, occasionally they bring people into emergency, who is closer to an autopsy, then a trauma patient.

So to give one story, that I do remember. It was an older gentlemen, who lived remote.
According to what I was told, he was apparently a drunk, who feel asleep or so while smoking. He had been wearing some sort of blanket on half of he's body to keep himself warm, which he had lit on fire. It had burned into he's skin and clothes making him unable to take it off (or too drunk to fight it). You could see he had been struggeling to get it off, because he managed to burn off most of he's fingers badly or to the bone. He's injuries was probably near fatal, but he had survived long enough, despite being unable to walk (too drunk or pain from burning) to drag himself outside he's house. It seems he had been trying to get help, as he was found in he's driveway. He was preserved pretty well, because it was at very cold temprature which most likely killed him. He was found only a few hours later in the morning This is one of the cases I remember because this guy's alcohol level itself would had been enough to kill him. Messurement of alcohol level in he's eye postmortem which is pretty acurate was still way over lethal limit. So this guy essentially killed himself three times in a matter of hours.

Anyway, never had anyone so fresh smelled so bad. To give my closest description, immagine a cat peeing on a rotten fish, mixed with cheap stinky cigars and skunk diarrhea with some burnt plastic and horse sweat inside a pig farm while sniffing a homeless man's armpit, smegma and ass when he has fungus in he's hemorrhoids.

Are you black?

 

[Imi]

Yes, I once saw a very beautiful woman dead on the autopsy table
She was covered, only her head was visible, but there was no sign of death, it was as if she was just sleeping and even dead she was beautiful (she was a white woman with brown hair around 30 years old)

Second: the profession of an autopsy is not very complicated anyway, but it does require a stomach and some expertise and technical tools
I once saw someone being dissected in an extremely fast and professional manner, quite simply with a sharp knife and a hacksaw and a lopper

 

[lechmich]

Second: the profession of an autopsy is not very complicated anyway, but it does require a stomach and some expertise and technical tools
I once saw someone being dissected in an extremely fast and professional manner, quite simply with a sharp knife and a hacksaw and a lopper

I wonder why you need all that med school just to hack someone up..... Surely a butcher would do?

 

[Pensacola333]

This was posted last week
.....

 

[Dark_Voyeur]

Nope. I'm sure my tune will come though.

 

[Imi]

I wonder why you need all that med school just to hack someone up..... Surely a butcher would do?

I saw it on video: with top-notch amateur equipment
- a sharp normal big old kitchen knife
- with a larger pruning shears
- with a hacksaw
- and a metal T key
In 15 minutes, an unknown coroner performed an autopsy on a corpse in a completely legal manner (he took out all the internal organs and the brain and then sewed the whole body together)
I have never seen professional and fast work with such amateur tools before, I was completely surprised by it
This requires many years of experience for someone to perform regular work even with such rudimentary tools, the person was clearly neither a "butcher" nor an amateur in the coroner profession

 

[evilgirlfriend]

For those that have worked autopsies , do you recall any cases that surprised you in a way that was peculiar or memorable?

I'm especially thinking of "fresh" bodies [in relative terms, of course] that might seem outwardly much closer to their walking, breathing brethren than to the putrefied, bloated bodies that share autopsy room space at times. It's those outwardly "normal" bodies (ignoring gore from trauma or soiling from the environment) that sometimes harbor the biggest surprises.

Was it a unique tattoo perhaps? A sensitive body piercing? Or a surprising choice of underwear worn by the victim? Maybe it was something else revealing or intimate that the dead person would not have wanted anyone else to know about, ranging from a peculiar body odor you encountered which you didn't expect, to something as embarrassing as a male corpse exhibiting "angel lust" (postmortem erection), or the proper, well-to-do appearing individual who secretly harbored pubic lice?

Please post your contributions, including any juicy or sordid details.

Yeah, some 300lb dude overdosed. He had a lot of tattoos, nothing note worthy. All shittly done lmfao.

He wasn’t decomposing, but he did smell like shit. Organs were placed into a bag, they all stunk. His cavity had the most interesting smell. All autopsies I’ve been present in, the hollow viscera always smells interesting to say the least.

It’s always weird to feel how warm they are if they’re recently dead and how flaccid they feel. Very different from rigor.

 

[cheesegrate]

Yeah, some 300lb dude overdosed. He had a lot of tattoos, nothing note worthy. All shittly done lmfao.

He wasn’t decomposing, but he did smell like shit. Organs were placed into a bag, they all stunk. His cavity had the most interesting smell. All autopsies I’ve been present in, the hollow viscera always smells interesting to say the least.

It’s always weird to feel how warm they are if they’re recently dead and how flaccid they feel. Very different from rigor.

One case I recall was a guy who literally died naked sitting on the shitter at home. He had advanced liver cirrhosis and had a variceal bleed (for those who don't know what that is the pressure of all the blood to the scarred liver backs up and causes veins in the stomach and esophagus to dilate, eventually rupturing). He ended up digesting a huge amount of his own blood. At the man's autopsy, the technician pressed on the his distended belly which was full of ascites due to liver failure, not because he was full of poop (although that was true too, actually!) Anyhow, the corpse literally poops out this sticky, black, highly smelly excrement right there, directly onto the autopsy table! - basically digested blood - squeezed out like someone squeezes toothpaste out of a tube. It was f*cking gross. And it was rank smelling, well, like shit. I felt sorry for the technician who had to run his bowels in the sink basin. Nasty stuff.

One case I recall was a guy who literally died naked sitting on the shitter at home. He had advanced liver cirrhosis and had a variceal bleed (for those who don't know what that is the pressure of all the blood to the scarred liver backs up and causes veins in the stomach and esophagus to dilate, eventually rupturing). He ended up digesting a huge amount of his own blood. At the man's autopsy, the technician pressed on the his distended belly which was full of ascites due to liver failure, not because he was full of poop (although that was true too, actually!) Anyhow, the corpse literally poops out this sticky, black, highly smelly excrement right there, directly onto the autopsy table! - basically digested blood - squeezed out like someone squeezes toothpaste out of a tube. It was f*cking gross. And it was rank smelling, well, like shit. I felt sorry for the technician who had to run his bowels in the sink basin. Nasty stuff.

whoops, I realize I had already mentioned this story earlier! Please - more interesting/embarrassing morgue stories please from viewers to this forum!

 

[Coolbreeze40]

For those that have worked autopsies , do you recall any cases that surprised you in a way that was peculiar or memorable?

I'm especially thinking of "fresh" bodies [in relative terms, of course] that might seem outwardly much closer to their walking, breathing brethren than to the putrefied, bloated bodies that share autopsy room space at times. It's those outwardly "normal" bodies (ignoring gore from trauma or soiling from the environment) that sometimes harbor the biggest surprises.

Was it a unique tattoo perhaps? A sensitive body piercing? Or a surprising choice of underwear worn by the victim? Maybe it was something else revealing or intimate that the dead person would not have wanted anyone else to know about, ranging from a peculiar body odor you encountered which you didn't expect, to something as embarrassing as a male corpse exhibiting "angel lust" (postmortem erection), or the proper, well-to-do appearing individual who secretly harbored pubic lice?

Please post your contributions, including any juicy or sordid details.

I worked for the Travis county coroner assisting in autopsies. We had a rancher come in that was trampled to death by his cattle. When we opened him up his stomach was full of steak.i found that kind of ironic.

 

[chewbok]

For those that have worked autopsies , do you recall any cases that surprised you in a way that was peculiar or memorable?

I'm especially thinking of "fresh" bodies [in relative terms, of course] that might seem outwardly much closer to their walking, breathing brethren than to the putrefied, bloated bodies that share autopsy room space at times. It's those outwardly "normal" bodies (ignoring gore from trauma or soiling from the environment) that sometimes harbor the biggest surprises.

Was it a unique tattoo perhaps? A sensitive body piercing? Or a surprising choice of underwear worn by the victim? Maybe it was something else revealing or intimate that the dead person would not have wanted anyone else to know about, ranging from a peculiar body odor you encountered which you didn't expect, to something as embarrassing as a male corpse exhibiting "angel lust" (postmortem erection), or the proper, well-to-do appearing individual who secretly harbored pubic lice?

Please post your contributions, including any juicy or sordid details.

In paramedic school we had the option of doing a pathology/autopsy rotation in conjunction with cadaver lab. My patient was a 14 yo black male with a contact .410 wound to the trachea, compliments of his little brother. As expected it took out all the anterior structures of his neck and blew out C2-5.

I was focused on the GSW aspect of the autopsy and seeing close and personal trauma and gore for the first time was tough (no internet then, just some slides of autopsy’s in class. I was light headed but holding my own until they cut down to his pubic bone. The pathologist said something like “…this is cool…” and started pulling 8-12” worms out of his lower abdomen. I lost it, puked and sat out the rest of the autopsy.

This was a black kid growing up in an urban, US city, not some true 3rd world slum. I don’t remember what type worms they were, but they weren’t tape worms, they looked like long fishing worms and weren’t in the digestive tract, they were in the peritoneal cavity.

Not what I expected in a GSW to the neck autopsy. That was my first and last live autopsy. I have seen my share of shit in almost 40 years as a critical care RN/Paramedic but that still takes the cake.

 

[cheesegrate]

yikes, that does sound disturbing

In paramedic school we had the option of doing a pathology/autopsy rotation in conjunction with cadaver lab. My patient was a 14 yo black male with a contact .410 wound to the trachea, compliments of his little brother. As expected it took out all the anterior structures of his neck and blew out C2-5.

I was focused on the GSW aspect of the autopsy and seeing close and personal trauma and gore for the first time was tough (no internet then, just some slides of autopsy’s in class. I was light headed but holding my own until they cut down to his pubic bone. The pathologist said something like “…this is cool…” and started pulling 8-12” worms out of his lower abdomen. I lost it, puked and sat out the rest of the autopsy.

This was a black kid growing up in an urban, US city, not some true 3rd world slum. I don’t remember what type worms they were, but they weren’t tape worms, they looked like long fishing worms and weren’t in the digestive tract, they were in the peritoneal cavity.

Not what I expected in a GSW to the neck autopsy. That was my first and last live autopsy. I have seen my share of shit in almost 40 years as a critical care RN/Paramedic but that still takes the cake.

 

[cheesegrate]

I worked for the Travis county coroner assisting in autopsies. We had a rancher come in that was trampled to death by his cattle. When we opened him up his stomach was full of steak.i found that kind of ironic.

 

[Imi]

No, I haven't participated in an autopsy yet, but I have seen a morgue in person (I have seen a traffic accident in person, so that was worth a uglier meat grinder)
I saw a photo on the internet of a beautiful white, brown-haired woman in her 30s photographed on the morgue's autopsy table, but the body was covered up to the shoulders with a white sheet, so only her neck and face were visible
The surprising thing was that there were no signs of death at all on the woman, she looked like she was sleeping, she must have been a very fresh corpse at the time the photos were taken, and the other sad thing was that the woman was very beautiful even in her dead state
I have been looking for the photo to show you, but unfortunately I can't find it

 

[chewbok]

One case I recall was a guy who literally died naked sitting on the shitter at home. He had advanced liver cirrhosis and had a variceal bleed (for those who don't know what that is the pressure of all the blood to the scarred liver backs up and causes veins in the stomach and esophagus to dilate, eventually rupturing). He ended up digesting a huge amount of his own blood. At the man's autopsy, the technician pressed on the his distended belly which was full of ascites due to liver failure, not because he was full of poop (although that was true too, actually!) Anyhow, the corpse literally poops out this sticky, black, highly smelly excrement right there, directly onto the autopsy table! - basically digested blood - squeezed out like someone squeezes toothpaste out of a tube. It was f*cking gross. And it was rank smelling, well, like shit. I felt sorry for the technician who had to run his bowels in the sink basin. Nasty stuff.


whoops, I realize I had already mentioned this story earlier! Please - more interesting/embarrassing morgue stories please from viewers to this forum!

You never forget the smell of your first GI bleed…a rite of passage of sorts.