Faking a death

meowzbark

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I have a character, doctor, that wants to falsely identify a body found in the Sonoran desert, and thus, fake another character's death. This happens around 1990. The body found is Hispanic so authorities would assume that the person died of exposure to the elements, as many do trying to cross the border. Would my character be able to achieve this by bribing a pathologist to lie on the autopsy about the identity of the deceased or would other people need to be involved?
 
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Trebor1415

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Some questions you should ask yourself that might help people answer:

How is the body identified? Is it through ID found on the body, fingerprints, dental records, DNA or what?

Once you figure out how the body will be ID'd in your story than you can figure out what needs to be done so that this body can be identified as being that specific person.

The more important it is to positively ID the body, the more steps will be taken to do so. If its someone trying to sneak into the U.S., and there is no special reason to dig deeper, my bet is only a cursory investigation will be made and they won't go as far as trying to get DNA from relatives in another country, etc.

On the other hand, if it's supposed to be someone fleeing from the law or there is some other special circumstance, they may look closer.
 
Karen Junker

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meowzbark

meowzbark

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Thanks for the assistance. Reps. :)

Character A, who the doctor will bribe, has a flexible career, so I think I might make him a medical examiner instead. The story takes place in Arizona. Was border patrol heavily involved in Arizona in 1990 or would it be more likely that state police would discover the body?

Character B, whose death they're faking, isn't wanted by the police. Foul play won't be suspected.

The motive behind the doctor faking the death is so that mutual love ones won't go searching for Character B when the doctor kidnaps and attempts to murder Character B.
 
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lottarobyn

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I don't know if this is entirely on topic, but it reminds me of something a I heard on NPR a few weeks ago - http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/08/04/baylor-migrant-burials

I remember them talking about the difficulty of identifying the remains because not only do the families sometimes not step forward, occasionally they'd find some with missing fingers/teeth/other identifiers that may work in the place of a DNA match (scavengers often found the remains long before anyone else did, so sometimes they'd only find parts).
 
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jclarkdawe

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A lot of identities are done simply by comparing the wallet and any photo I.D. in the wallet to the person. Create a fake I.D. and to give this some better credit and a little more drama to your plot, have the guy pay a homeless person from Mexico to confirm the identify.

Quite honestly, most identifications aren't very complicated, especially in busy offices. You want it to be right, but there's a question of how much time and money you want to spend on it.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe
 
Karen Junker

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This is totally off topic, but it reminded me of when my first husband was traveling across country to meet up with me back in 1976 -- he was driving a 1938 Chevy truck he'd traded someone for back in the Ozarks and it didn't have plates, so he 'borrowed' some from a junkyard car along the way. He got pulled over in eastern WA because the taillights didn't work and realized he had no ID on him. Since his last name was Spanish, the cops put him on a bus for the Mexican border with a bunch of other illegals they'd rounded up (there's a lot of work picking fruit in that area in the fall) and it was a good thing the bus traveled slowly. His mom made it to the border with his birth certificate and passport just in time.

Not having ID on a body might just mean that it would wind up buried in a John Doe grave. But I bet if it did have reasonably believable ID, nobody would spend a lot of time checking it out.
 

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Karen Junker said:
This is totally off topic, but it reminded me of when my first husband was traveling across country to meet up with me back in 1976 -- he was driving a 1938 Chevy truck he'd traded someone for back in the Ozarks and it didn't have plates, so he 'borrowed' some from a junkyard car along the way. He got pulled over in eastern WA because the taillights didn't work and realized he had no ID on him. Since his last name was Spanish, the cops put him on a bus for the Mexican border with a bunch of other illegals they'd rounded up (there's a lot of work picking fruit in that area in the fall) and it was a good thing the bus traveled slowly. His mom made it to the border with his birth certificate and passport just in time.

Not having ID on a body might just mean that it would wind up buried in a John Doe grave. But I bet if it did have reasonably believable ID, nobody would spend a lot of time checking it out.
Click to expand...


Did he get the truck back?
 
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