An elderly woman was found dead in October 2002 in her third floor apartment in urban Cologne, Germany. The apartment was very clean except of the bath room in which a bath tub had been filled with water and clothing. The minimum interval of around 3 weeks would have been a misconduct of the paid professional care giver who was supposed to check for the woman every week. The care giver, however, claimed that she had called the woman ca. 2 weeks ago to check on her; the now dead woman allegedly rejected any visits. This possibility could not be ruled out since the old woman was known to be healthy, yet mentally unstable and behaving ‘‘difficult’’ against everybody. The prosecution assumed that the care giver tried her best, and therefore, the D.A.’s office closed the case.
Fig.1 Note that the eyes are intact whilst the lower part of the body is partially decayed due to influence of faces and urine/bacteria. Upper part of body mummified (dried out).
Fig.2 Maggot crawling tracks—note the curved shape of tracks indicating that they are not simple tracks caused by oozing decomposition fluids or blood.
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