The type of insect found also gives clues, since different varieties of insects inhabit different environments and geographic regions. Even the location of maggots on the body can help investigators determine cause of death. In one suburban Maryland case, entomological evidence helped solve a murder years after the body of a woman had been buried. Originally, she was believed to have died of a drug overdose. Much later, a police officer who had attended a seminar on entomology noticed that the maggots in photos of the corpse were in atypical places.
Maggots cluster on exposed, moist body orifices-eyes, nose, mouth.
But, on this woman's body, they also were on her chest, neck and palms, indicating trauma to those areas. After exhuming her skeletal remains, forensic anthropologists determined from knife marks on her ribs that she had been stabbed to death, the wounds on her hands resulting from efforts to defend herself. Her boyfriend was arrested and convicted-nearly five years after her death. It serves as a primer on arthropod biology and provides instruction in collecting and analyzing entomological evidence. Lord, the only forensic entomologist in the FBI, has consulted on cases across the nation and has taught seminars at the FBI Academy and elsewhere.