Citation

Mackenzie EC. Sci. Justice 1995; 35(4): 253-258.

Affiliation

Physics Department, University of Adelaide, South Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Forensic Science Society, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

7496826

Abstract

A wife was found dead by her husband, lying in a tiled bath on a cast concrete floor, with a 1 kW electric radiator immersed in the bath water. Initially the case was treated as accidental death, but the police charged the husband with murder on the grounds that his wife could not have died in the manner he described. Subsequent investigation showed that the bath had a low resistance to earth and that there were faults in both the house wiring and the radiator cable, which, together with a high blood alcohol content, produced a fatal chain of events.