In front of Asser Hedegård Thomsen, the victim’s ribcage is open, with the ribs arching out on each side like a striped fan. The left lung cavity is full of blood. A stab in the back has caused severe inner bleeding. Erling Laursen spoons it up into a measuring jug. There is about a litre.



»That explains is why he is so pale,« he says and puts the filled jug to one side. Small drops of condensation quickly form on the outside. He uses a plastic syringe to suck urine up from the bladder. Half a litre. It is noted on a form.



»He seems to have had some prostate problems,« states Asser Hedegård Thomsen, who is in the process of examining one of the wounds by passing thin metal probes out through the veins to see where they have been severed.



»Can we start rolling his fingers?« asks Ruth Glerup.



The forensic pathologist nods.



Ib Jensen carefully holds the deceased's hand, while Ruth Glerup rubs ink powder onto his fingers. They take fingerprints, which are then fixed on a transparent sheet for further investigation.



During the autopsy, samples are also taken of tissue, blood, urine and from the nostrils. They allow the forensic chemists to determine whether, for example, the victim was drunk or high when he died. The tissue samples can help exclude other causes of death.



»You never know what might be relevant before you have tested for it. This guy here might have been snorting cocaine with his attacker. And if the victim behaved strangely leading up to the homicide, might it have been because he had meningitis,« asks Asser Hedegård Thomsen.



All the internal organs are placed on a metal table. Asser Hedegård Thomsen lifts them up in front of him like a curtain. He goes through each one using a pair of pincers, scissors and knives of varying sizes and tries to determine what injuries each individual stab wound has caused internally and in which direction.



»It is always difficult when the body has been stabbed many times. And I need to think hard now,« he says.



Stomach, pancreas, liver and heart have been struck several times. There was plenty of force behind it.



»My greatest fear in an autopsy is that we overlook something. That someone comes along after the victim has been buried and says, ’It was me. I killed him,’ when I have pointed to another explanation. My other worry is the opposite: overinterpretation.«



Almost an hour passes before he is confident. The man died from a stab wound in the back, which struck the aorta and led to major bleeding in the lung cavity.



»From a legal point of view, it is important to know which stab wound killed the victim. If there are a number of wounds, their sequence is important, so the offender is not sentenced for something that, for example, may have happened two days previously, when the victim fell off his bike and hit his head. And if there are several attackers who hit or stabbed him, then it is important who administered the fatal lesion.«



He weighs each individual organ and notes the weight to the nearest gram. After that, he assesses the depth of each stab wound by passing a ruler through the holes. The deepest is ten centimetres. All these measurements are to be used as documentation, he explains.



»We take something disorderly, measure it precisely and in so doing create another kind of order.«



Forensic pathologists rarely make lightning analyses and conclusions of the kind seen in crime series and films.



»We discuss, have doubts and reservations. We are rarely as sure of ourselves as those you see on TV. But they off course have to hurry on to the next scene,« says Asser Hedegård Thomsen.



The research project has given him extra experience, for even though he has not been present at all 1,417 cases, he does in a way have them in the back of his mind when he descends into the cellar.



»I will only manage to do a certain number of autopsies in my career, but through my research I have had the opportunity to see a lot more. When I look at this fellow here, I get a picture in my head of ten other homicides, where the victim also was stabbed in the chest and neck. You can compare it to people who have heard an awful lot of music and who can say, when they hear a new piece, that its rhythm and key remind them of Thin Lizzy one moment and of Art Garfunkel the next.«



When the department secretary has laboriously typed in all his many observations, Asser Hedegård Thomsen will have to spend the days ahead finishing drawings from his sketches, writing a summary and a conclusion. The whole thing has to be watertight when at some stage the case comes before the court, when he will probably be called in as an expert witness.



At the end of the day, a colleague comes by. Together the two forensic pathologists go through the day's findings and their hypotheses. The colleague also has to read and sign the report before it is sent on to the police.



»That is to ensure that I haven’t cut any corners or overlooked anything,« says Asser Hedegård Thomsen.



At a few minutes to four, the crime scene investigators make their way home with their evidence cases. The room is silent, apart from the soft humming of the ventilator. Erling Laursen replaces the skull, pulls skin and hair back over the cranium, threads a leatherwork needle with white cotton thread and starts sewing. Within a few stitches, the thread has turned red. He starts along the temples, and 40 minutes later, the body is almost intact. Through a small hole above the navel, he replaces all the inner organs in the body. Then he closes the man up. The wounds are part of the investigation. They remain open.