In this case, the victim is a white female of seven years old. She is brutally strangulated and killed by someone and the wounds of the victim reveal a lot of elements about the killings.
The right side of the face of and neck
On the right side of the face and neck of the victim, there are clear wounds. These wounds can be generated from merciless beatings, like slapping the victim hard on one side of the face. She has been strangulated by some sort of synthetic rope, and as the knot of the rope is on the right side of the neck we can surely understand that the assassin was a left-handed person. The other wounds of the neck can give us some more details. The wounds can tell that she was held by her neck, and she was in the position for a long. It might indicate that she was assaulted by more than one assassin (James & Nordby 2005).
Scratches
There are some scratches on the neck of the victim. These are clearly by the scratches from her fingernails. When she was being strangulated by the rope she tried to loosen the knot of the rope desperately with her fingernails, and this has caused the scratches on her neck. The other wounds have been caused by hemorrhages for the wound and the blood loss inside the body of the victim. It also suggests that the victim was held by her neck.
Heart mark on the hand
There is a heart drawn on the hand of the child, and it is quite faded. This is a point of the question in the case. There can be two inferences that can be drawn from this. First, the child could draw the heart herself some times ago and now it is quite faded due to the nature of the ink. The other one is that someone deliberately tried to erase the heart from the child’s hand and a dim version of the heart has remained on the girl’s hand.
And this someone can be the assassin. The heart can be a very important fragment of information for the investigation. There can be fingerprints of the assassin around the spot where the hand was placed if he had tried to erase the mark. This was an end effort from the killer probably after the death of the girl he noticed the mark. Then he tried to erase the mark and probably he was running short on time so he could not completely erase the mark (Acker & Krap 2006).
Loosely tied Wrist knot
There was one loose wrist knot on the right hand of the girl. This can say that initially the girl was tied to something and after the murder, she had been cut off from the place. The assassin forgot to take off the knot. The hands of the girls can be tied in front and this allowed the girl to try to make some resistance when she was being strangulated, hence there were scratch marks on her neck. But she was only seven years and she was tortured brutally, so she could not resist her killer. All the signs say that the killer tortured the girl for some time and then killed her.
Burns
It is seen that there are two burns on the torso of the girl and this is surely made by the killer. Mostly these are burns made by a cigarette. This is evident from the condition of the dead body that the victim was tortured before she was murdered. There are two visible wounds and they are really deep, so we can determine from here that the killer wanted her to torture for a long time (James & Nordby 2005).
Discussion
The dead body of the victim can show us that before getting killed she was tortured. She was beaten brutally and she had been given cigarette burns. Later she is strangulated. She was alive when the killer started to strangulate her, and she tried to resist that, as the scratch marks suggest, but she was overpowered by the assassin (there may be more than one assassin, but this is highly improbable in the case). This is not a crime of passion, this is a cold-blooded murder, as the victim was tortured it can be said that it was a pre-planned one too.
Debate
There can be no other points that will not regard this as murder. In the final analysis, we can surely say that the girl was murdered after brutal torture. She was buried in her torso then tied and beaten, and after everything she was strangulated. There can be debates about the motive of murder and we can say that the way the murder happened; we can say that it was a murder due to revenge. If it was a crime of passion the killer would not be that precise, and he would not have tortured the girl like in the case.
References
Acker, J., & Krap, D. (2006). Wounds that do not bind: victim-based perspectives on the death penalty. Boston: Carolina Academic Press.
James, S., & Nordby, J. (2005). Forensic science: an introduction to scientific and investigative techniques. NY: CRC Press.