‘Hiding in plain sight’ – mass disasters and murder

‘The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend’.

Henri Bergson (1859–1941)

Mass disasters take a variety of forms ranging from dozens of victims in mass shootings to many thousands of decedents in natural disasters such as the South-East Asian tsunami. Clearly terrorist events such as the Bali bombings and the World Trade Centre attack involve large numbers of homicides, however is it possible that events where there are numerous dead with stretching of resources and infrastructural support lend themselves to the concealment of murders?

Most homicides do not occur in situations of mass disaster, instead, they are often solitary events perpetrated by someone who is known to the victim. Concealment of bodies following homicides may occur to either hide the crime completely, or to delay investigations. A study of homicide victims in South Australia found that in 8% of cases bodies had been deliberately hidden. ¹ The causes of death were varied and included blunt and sharp force trauma, asphyxia, drowning and gunshot wounds. The methods of concealment involved dumping at hidden/isolated locations, burial, dismembering, incinerating, disposing of in garbage and hiding in wheeled garbage bins, sheds, a suitcase, a river, a mine shaft, a septic tank and under a concrete floor. However, it may be that mass disasters provide alternative methods to disguise murders, particularly if the injuries are not dissimilar to those that are expected.

After the tsunami in Thailand delays in finding bodies and suboptimal storage facilities resulted after several weeks in most bodies showing changes of marked decomposition with well-established putrefaction (Figure 1). ² One day while working in Khao Lak on body identification my attention was drawn by a mortuary attendant to a coffin that had been exposed after other coffins had been removed. Inside was the perfectly fresh body of a young woman who was clearly not a victim of the tsunami but whose body would have quite rapidly decomposed if she had been left for a few more days in the tropical heat. The authorities were alerted, and the body was removed. I am uncertain as to the outcome of the case as my deployment terminated several days later but it did lead to consideration of the potential ease of disposing of homicide victims amongst hundreds of other bodies – that is, ‘hiding in plain sight’.

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Figure 1.

A body identification team at Khao Lak, Thailand, in January 2004, 2 weeks after the tsunami.

In addition to having large numbers of cases arriving over relatively short periods of time, mass disasters often occur in relatively isolated locations with limited resources and facilities. Mobilising teams to conduct body identification work also requires considerable logistical support, often under strict time constraints.^3,4 For these reasons it is usual not to perform full autopsy examinations and cases may be processed far more quickly than is usual. Under these conditions it would not be surprising if injuries due to inflicted trauma were not always identified, particularly if bodies had been damaged by collapsing buildings, the action of fire or subsequent putrefaction. The rapid interment of bodies into mass graves would also increase the risk of missing homicides.

The Blitz in London during the Second World War was another example of how infrastructural chaos and overworking of emergency and police services might facilitate crime. The Blitz was a bombing campaign conducted by Germany against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, with the term derived from the German Blitzkrieg, or ‘lightning war’. ⁵ A total of 71 raids were carried out against London causing 28,000 civilian deaths with more than a million houses destroyed or damaged. ⁶ It has been documented that crime figures in the United Kingdom rose from 303,771 in 1939 to 478,000 in 1945 with murder rates increasing by 22%. Bombed-out buildings were used to conceal bodies, and bodies were also placed in the rubble of bomb-damaged houses in the hope that it would be assumed that they had been killed during a raid (Figure 2).^6,7 This provides a good example of how perpetrators may take advantage of conditions during disasters/mass casualty situations. Of course, as these data can only refer to cases that were recognised as being suspicious the actual homicide rate is unknown. Injuries in a death from inflicted blunt head trauma might be impossible to distinguish from head trauma from falling masonry. Similarly, identifying a death from manual strangulation after a bomb strike could be problematic.

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Figure 2.

Destroyed houses in Birmingham after a German bombing raid (Public domain).

Changes in crime rates are not, however, consistent after natural disasters. A study in India showed that while homicide rates increased in some states after a cyclone in 1999 and the tsunami of 2004, they declined in others. ⁸ Similar variability has been demonstrated between different communities in homicide rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⁹ An apparent fall in crime rates in the Indonesian province of Aceh after the tsunami may have been due to under-reporting given the extensive destruction that occurred. ¹⁰ Certain sectors of the population may also be more vulnerable than others, with a review demonstrating that violence against women and girls, including homicides, does increase after disasters. ¹¹

Thus, when working in situations of mass disaster it is important to be aware of Bergson's statement and to try to avoid the trap of only seeing what you expect to see. Although the scale of the work is sometimes daunting, a methodical and paced approach to each case is essential. A good technique is to ask at the end of each examination – ‘what else could this be?’ In this way the possibility of a concealed homicide will always be given appropriate consideration.