Everything about the process of mummification has been shared by a forensic pathologist named Judy Melinek.
It is pertinent to mention that, when police went inside the couple’s residence at Santa Fe, N.M. they were met with the body of Hackman in the mudroom, while his wife as in the bathroom laying on her side, near a countertop, next to scattered pills.
The authorities also made note that, at the time of falling, she potentially knocked over a space heater which was near her head, and signs of decomposition, bloating near her face as well as mummification in both the hands, as well as feet were observed when she was found.
Their dog was also passed away barely a few feet from Hackman’s wife Betsy and it was only later that Hackman’s body was discovered though, and a walking cane was found near his body leading to suspension’s that he had “suddenly fallen”.
Explaining all of this, as well as the mummification, the forensic pathologist spoke to People magazine and said, “When you have bodies that are decomposed or haven’t been seen, and especially with people who haven’t been seen for a while, the first question in terms of trying to figure out what happened is figuring out the time of death.”
“And one way of figuring out the time of death is to look at markers at the scene, indicators of when was the last time, they were alive. And those tend to be more reliable than the anatomic markers once the body is badly decomposed.”
Because while “in the early phases after death, we can rely on things like rigor mortis — the stiffening of the body — or algor mortis, which is the body temperature. And we can use those to try to narrow down the postmortem interval, but once the body’s decomposed, it’s a lot harder to do.”
Hence in such cases “scene findings and circumstantial evidence” are utilized.
Questions like, “When was the last time they were seen alive? When were they found dead? When did the mail start piling up?” also become part of the equation because “that indicates that nobody was going to the mailbox to pick it up. So, you can tell from the date stamp on the mail, when was the last time they logged into their computer or opened their phone or called anybody.”
According to Melinek’s findings, it was over 10 days since everything happened and at that point they “start to fall apart and there’s going to be certain organs that disintegrate and are no longer showing the anatomic markers that could help us figure out whether they were working or functioning properly.”
Even the chief medical examiner stepped forward to tell the outlet, “you’re not going to be able to tell from the postmortem changes, because once you get to mummification then all bets are off. It depends where in the house they were, what were they wearing, all sorts of things can affect the postmortem changes. Once you get to that mummification stage there’s nothing to … be able to distinguish the two deaths timewise.”
