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Article Contents

Introduction, concealed femicide, method—concealed femicide: qualitative explorative review, policy and practical implications.

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‘The Perfect Murder’: An Exploratory Study of Staged Murder Scenes and Concealed Femicide

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Yifat Bitton, Hava Dayan, ‘The Perfect Murder’: An Exploratory Study of Staged Murder Scenes and Concealed Femicide, The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 59, Issue 5, September 2019, Pages 1054–1075, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azz015

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Presenting cases of criminologically unidentifiable circumstances, authors point to concealment susceptibility of some femicide cases, overlooked by both the criminal system and by scholars, rendering them ‘concealed femicides’. The paper presents descriptive and criminological analyses of Israeli cases whereby the woman’s murder was followed by scene staging. It extrapolates the common characteristics of femicide victims and perpetrators, offers a typology of homicide scene staging behaviour that facilitates domesticity-related femicide concealment and, eventually, introduces tools to enhance exposure of femicide.

Most studies of femicide are qualitative rather than quantitative for various reasons, primarily the absence of sex distinction in official government records ( Weil and Kouta 2017 ). Furthermore, when femicide-oriented qualitative research is conducted, it most likely relies on empirical data extracted from clear-cut and conclusive cases of homicide, analysed using traditional criminological data variables and commonly provided by official enforcement agencies. This methodological approach to studying femicide yields limited derivative conclusions that distort further analyses aimed at understanding the phenomenon, measuring its prevalence, preventing its causes and eradicating it altogether. It misses a hidden bulk of femicide cases not recognized as such and identified in this article as ‘concealed femicide’ cases. To resolve this problem of flawed data, the paper offers a tentative and explorative perspective of these concealed femicide cases that exhibit more elusive inconclusive characteristics with respect to the criminal essence of women’s deaths. Examining cases in which women were the deceased under circumstances identified here as ‘proxies to crime’ suggests that femicide rate is higher than normally reported, and that it includes other various homicide methods normally overlooked by both the criminal system and scholars researching the field. Analysing the common patterns underlying the cases presented here, this article offers new and additional insights about femicide and its detection and proposes mandatory mechanisms to better ensure that these cases will no longer go undetected by the criminal justice system. We also recommend several investigative tools and methods to be applied in cases where a woman’s death occurs under specific domestic circumstances.

The article proceeds in three parts. The first and theoretical part lays the conceptual foundations for women’s unique vulnerability to unnatural and possibly criminal death. Criminological analysis of this sparsely researched topic reveals that typologies of the phenomenon point to its domestic nature, which has significant implications for the emergence of ‘concealed femicide’ as a gendered phenomenon.

The second part uses the descriptive and criminological analysis to present an-in-depth analysis of two cases of domesticity-related at-home deaths of women. Following the explorative analysis of the sample cases, the article proceeds to discuss the findings. As the cases demonstrate, current criminological analysis fails to recognize homicide cases of women with characteristics typical to women’s life experience. This failure helps conceal the fact of their homicide-induced death, rendering these cases ‘concealed femicide’. In the third part, the article concludes with concrete methodological, legal and criminological recommendations.

The currently accepted definition of femicide relates to a homicide perpetrated against a woman due to her gender ( Corradi et al . 2016 ; Weil and Kouta 2017 ). Though not very common, research on femicide is increasing and the sociological and ethnographic characteristics of femicide are being explored in work conducted by diverse research outlets ( Weil 2016 ). Among the many important tools available to researchers seeking to understand this ancient phenomenon, to conceptualize it—and most importantly to develop ways to abolish it—criminological analysis is particularly handy.

Using a crimino-legal framework of analysis, the following three cumulative criteria are observed within the cases of concealed femicide that will be analysed in this paper: (1) a woman was found dead; (2) the woman was buried pursuant to an official determination of her death as natural or non-criminal and (3) the real reason for her death was femicide. In addition to the above criteria, different types of concealed femicide may result in different criteria. For example, cases where women are killed and buried with no witnesses posit major challenges for their detection as both the death scene and the body are missing ( Acosta 2005 ; Ekke 2007 ; Leal 2008 ). Likewise, concealed femicides camouflaged as accidents may bear distinct defining criteria ( Ferguson 2015 ; Pettler 2016 ). By and large, a case in which at some later stage someone is convicted of the woman’s homicide is a case of ‘concealed-and-later-revealed femicide’. Incidentally, identifying concealed femicide will enable researcher analyses and data collection methodologies to include these cases as part of this phenomenon.

Lethal violence against women and its concealment: homicide scene staging

Defining homicide scene staging.

Research identifies three main types of homicide scene staging (HSS): primary staging, which is either ad hoc or preplanned and aims to misdirect the criminal investigation by way of manipulating physical or verbal evidence; secondary staging that manipulates the crime scene devoid of the intention to misdirect the investigation and tertiary scene alterations, which are aimed at protecting the dignity of the deceased victim ( Douglas and Douglas 2006 ). In this article, we focus only on primary staging, which bears substantial implications for society’s ability to identify and prevent femicide ( Pettler 2016 ).

According to Douglas and Munn, staging materializes when someone purposefully alters the crime scene prior to the arrival of the police in order to either redirect the investigation away from the most logical suspect or to protect the victim or the victim’s family ( Douglas and Munn 1992 ). Staging is attained by altering physical evidence at the scene after and at times before the homicide in order to present a misleading appearance of the crime scene. It imitates a ‘legitimate death’ scenario or a disappearance of the victim ( Chisum and Turvey 2011 ; Pettler 2016 ). Staging is thus a primary means of purposefully obstructing the criminal justice process by concealing the true nature of a crime ( Hazelwood and Napier 2004 : 745; Cobin 2009 : 1).

In terms of the e pidemiological aspects and the importance of studying HSS, literature is divided as to the prevalence of HSS, with some estimating it at as high as about 8% of homicide scenes ( Schlesinger 2012 ), while others setting it at as low as 0.1% ( Hazelwood and Napier 2004 : 1308). These numbers, even at lowest estimation, should be questioned, as they pertain to crimes that were eventually solved and thus are relevant only to the ‘formerly-concealed-then-revealed’ category of cases. Our research, however, highlights the intrinsic nature of femicide as particularly susceptible to manipulative HSS acts by the perpetrator due to the domestic nature of both femicide and HSS. As a general rule, one can reasonably and cautiously hypothesize that had better tools been employed to investigate femicide against the threat of concealment, more ‘formerly-concealed-then-revealed’ homicides would have emerged.

The gendered nature of HSS

What makes femicide particularly susceptible to HSS? Analysing the profiles of both offenders and victims, HSS researchers have found clear evidence of gender relevance to their identity as victims or perpetrators. First and foremost, a relationship or acquaintance with the victim is associated with homicide staging cases ( Douglas and Douglas 2006 ). More to the point, the most common victim–offender relationship involving HSS is an intimate partner relationship, and most staged homicidal scenes involve the killing of an intimate partner ( Pettler 2016 ). These HSS characteristics comfortably align with the fact that in most HSS cases the perpetrator knows the victim, and the perpetrator was the last person to have seen the victim alive. Added to this typicality are other gendered HSS features: stagers are more often men rather than women ( Hazelwood and Napier 2004 ; Keppel and Weis 2004 ), and women comprise the majority of victims of crimes where HSS took place ( Pettler 2016 ). These findings suggest that men employ HSS to conceal femicide of their intimate partners. They do so due to the effectiveness of this practice, as they tend to alter the scene so that the death appears to have been committed by someone other than the most logical suspect—they themselves ( Douglas and Douglas 2006 ).

The distinctive characteristics of HSS feature significant domestic elements, also typical to femicide. Among them, just to name a few: most scenes are staged in the home ( Eke 2007 : 92; Dobash and Dobash 2015 ; Pettler 2016 : 18, 20), better facilitating HSS as it requires the perpetrator’s unobstructed time alone on the homicide premises, which also comports with committing the crime in the couple’s home. In most HSS cases, the cause of death was strangulation or blunt force trauma, the victim had previous relations with the offender, in most cases the offender discovered the victim’s body, most homicide scenes were in the victim’s home, offenders opted to clean or destroy physical evidence and they did not have a previously established alibi for when the homicide took place ( Ferguson 2015 ; Pettler 2016 ). From a socio-criminological perspective, these characteristics resemble those of femicide, whereby offenders usually act alone ( Ferguson 2015 ), they are mostly male ( Ferguson 2016 ; Pettler 2016 : 39) and their killing mostly involves one victim, most often a female between the ages of 19 and 44. The association between femicide and HSS is further supported by the fact that staging is less frequent in homicides committed by criminals and in street crimes ( Douglas and Douglas 2006 ; Pettler 2016 ). Interestingly, men who kill their intimate partner usually have a more ‘ordinary’ and ‘conventional’ personal appearance ( Dobash et al . 2004 ). Such a ‘normative’ appearance helps sustain the non-criminal façade of their homicide scene and supports HSS. Summing up this lethal interconnection, Douglas and Munn regrettably recommend exercising extra caution when the male intimate partner is the sole survivor of a fatal intruder attack on his wife ( Douglas and Munn 1992 : 251).

The seemingly neutral fact of life that women die as all people eventually do warrants specific attention, as women’s existence—and hence death—is more susceptible to an unnatural ending at the hands of men than vice versa ( Jordan et al . 2010 ). More to our point, a recent study on the worldwide prevalence of intimate partner homicide (IPH) showed it constitutes a large share of all homicides, with gender-based statistical significance ( Stockl et al . 2013 ). This unequal reality has drawn feminist attention, and indeed feminist theorists have concentrated heavily on analysing the violence that relations entail for women and the ways by which women become more prone, more susceptible and more vulnerable to harm induced by gender-based violence. Women’s vulnerability to unnatural and wrongful death merits extreme caution from a criminological perspective that seeks to ensure that a woman’s allegedly random death is not, in fact, a concealed femicide. Simply put, women’s vulnerability to violence is enhanced by the domestic nature of HSS to be introduced hereinafter.

Concealed femicide scene: home—not (yet) a safe haven

HSS, which prospers in domestic surrounding ( Ferguson 2015 ; Pettler 2016 ), points to the home as representing an unsafe space for women, where most femicide acts are perpetrated behind closed doors ( Marcuelo-Servos et al . 2016 ) and women most commonly die at the hands of their intimate partners or ex-partners ( Bloom 2008 ). Despite this asymmetrical gendered reality, bound by the underpinnings of liberal thought, the law still struggles when called upon to apply to a person’s most private sphere, traditionally perceived as a sacred—however, masculine—haven ( Landes 1998 ). Protected from the law’s intervention, ‘the home’ left women at the mercy of lawlessness. In extreme circumstances, this lawlessness paved the way for criminality, with domestic violence being a template of such experience ( Gauthier and Bankston 2004 ; Hannawa et al . 2006 ), even at present when the law no longer immunizes the home from legal interference and intervention ( Marcuello-Servos et al . 2016 ). Viewed from this vantage point, the domestic nature of femicide renders it particularly susceptible to HSS and concealment. Within this framework, even though the law protects women at home, treating women’s unnatural deaths as neutral might restore their vulnerable and inferior position, particularly because even nowadays most assaults on women take place in the home ( Wallby and Myhill 2001 ; Corradi et al . 2016 ).

Concealed femicide—reintroduced

Cases of women’s sudden and unnatural death at home come to mind as potential arenas of concealed femicide warranting special crimino-legal attention and a more nuanced analysis ( Geberth 1996 ; Ferguson 2015 ). Such cases may fail to attract the attention of prosecutorial authorities and remain unrecognized as such due to successful HSS. Under such disposition, methodological analysis of concealed femicide cases becomes paradoxical: how can femicide be identified if it is not recognized as such by the authorities? Hypothetically, given the fact that such cases likely managed to escape legal scrutiny due to their elusive nature, an attempt to critically review them from a legal standpoint is doomed to fail. This hypothesis is only true to a certain extent as our analysis reveals. The most powerful indicator of the persistence of concealed femicide is the ‘concealed-and-later-revealed’ sub-type of the phenomenon. This sub-type pertains to the rare cases in which an unsuspected death is later found to be a concealed femicide, in a manner that illuminates the elusive nature of the concealed crime. A criminally unsuspected death is considered a concealed femicide when the authorities, for some reason, ‘correct’ their initial mistaken decriminalizing decision. The correction carries its own redemption value by virtue of the corrective and positive eventual outcome of the case, whereby the killer’s criminal actions are subsequently exposed and penalized. It does not, however, eliminate the need to rigorously examine the case in search of ways by which probable femicide cases may go unidentified. These rare cases therefore serve as ‘study cases for our exploratory observations of the nature of concealed femicide.

To demonstrate the chronology of ‘concealed-and-later-revealed’ femicide cases in Israel, we used qualitative analysis to examine two cases of a court decision that convicted a man on two counts of concealed femicide of his two wives. 1 At first glance, using this explorative qualitative methodology to analyse these cases may seem too limited to enable meaningful analysis and to provide convincing recommendations. Yet qualitative methodology of this kind is compatible with the explorative nature of our study and is in fact the only method by which the victim’s story can be reconstructed and ‘heard’ ( Weil 2017 : 119). The methodological constraint of a victim who cannot tell her story is not inherent to cases of violence against women as a whole. Evidently, non-fatal violence against women can be more fully and realistically represented by self-reporting practices that can be used to convey a more accurate picture of the phenomenon that goes beyond the state’s official reporting ( Wallby and Myhill 2001 ). Added to the intrinsic difficulty of analysis when the victim is dead are the elusive criminological characteristics of concealment that increase the difficulty involved in examining and learning from these cases.

Despite their shortcomings as particularized and scanty, qualitative empirical methodologies of the kind used here offer distinct advantages: they present a highly detailed, nuanced and contextual picture of concealed femicide; serve to reveal motives and emotions of those involved in the ordeal; provide an in-depth look into what happened at the scenes that enabled their staging and help identify risk factors indicating femicide concealment ( Wallby and Myhill 2001 ). Based on these understandings, we suggest that the generalizability of these case analyses is solid ( Wallby and Myhill 2001 ), and that coupled with existing criminological knowledge it is possible to formulate particularly suitable death-detecting policies, applicable worldwide, to prevent femicide perpetrators from escaping the law.

Very few concealed-and-later-revealed femicide cases have been officially identified as such to date in Israel. As mentioned above, this scarcity of sample cases stems from the paradox by which it is improbable—at times impossible—to identify as femicide what was not suspected and investigated as femicide by the authorities. Successful homicide scene staging is what enables the concealment and hence the alleged absence of officially identified concealed-and-later-revealed femicide court decisions in Israel. Not surprisingly, the two concealed femicides we present were executed by the same man, against two of his wives. Most likely, had one murder not been revealed, the other murder committed by the perpetrator would probably have gone unidentified as well. Analysing these two cases allows for a close look into the murderer’s mode of operation in concealing the femicides utilizing HSS tactics.

Findings—The Study Cases

Almost 20 years after murdering his first wife and 2 years after murdering his second wife, Shimon Cooper’s concealed femicide acts were exposed and he was indicted and convicted of murdering the two women. The elaborate decision delivered by the trial court, spanning hundreds of pages, provides an unusual opportunity to identify, in detail, the different stages of concealment carried out by Shimon’s utilization of classic HSS tactics. Shimon himself embodied the classic and most prominent perpetrator characteristics mentioned above: a male who kills his female spouse; in the typical age range; committed the crime at home; when alone with the victim; had time alone on the premises to stage the crime scene; was the first person to find the victim and the last to have seen her alive; engaged in the primary staging type—ad hoc preplanning aimed at misleading the criminal investigation by manipulating physical and verbal evidence; staged a legitimate death scenario, whether natural as in sickness-induced death or unnatural yet non-criminal-like suicide; and influenced the impression of the police and the general public by making homicide appear as suicide—the most prevalent homicide scene staging scheme. The next part uses this excessive use of HSS tactics to critically examine and explore the shortcomings of the legal system that facilitated Cooper’s successful strategy.

Orit’s murder

Orit and Shimon Cooper were married 11 years. After living with another woman and establishing intimate relationships with her for almost two years, while still married to Orit, Cooper decided to murder Orit. One night, in January 1994, he killed her in an unknown manner. Subsequently he staged the murder scene as suicide, spreading a poisonous amount of sleeping pills around Orit. On the day of her death Orit was a healthy 32-year-old mother of two, at the prime of her life, with no prior health problems. 2 Based on Orit’s autopsy—on which her father insisted and to which Cooper strongly objected—the pathologist was unable to determine the cause of her death and she was brought to burial, no more questions asked. This was the first concealed femicide Cooper successfully executed.

Orit’s murder and HSS typologies

In an attempt to establish solid foundations for his convincing story of suicide, Shimon engaged in lying to family, friends and associates about Orit’s allegedly growing depression, which he alone ‘divulged’ to her family and friends. 3 Further preparing her death, he asked his mistress’s elderly mother for some of her sleeping pills. 4 His lies continued subsequent to the murder, calling his mistress and Orit’s best friend on the day of Orit’s death, updating them that she had taken her own life. 5 As is often the case with HSS perpetrators, Cooper was the person who found Orit dead and also the last person to have seen her alive. 6

In his behaviour, as described above, Cooper acted first and foremost as the creator by tactically adding the pills to the crime scene. Additionally, as a fabricator he also used his verbal ability to persuade investigators as well as Orit’s family and friends of her alleged suicide by spreading his lies before and after the killing.

Jenny’s murder and HSS typologies

As in Orit’s case, here again Cooper acted to establish solid foundations for his convincing suicide story. He invested in spreading lies about Jenny’s health and stability, which he alone ‘divulged’ to her physician, family and friends as well as to his mistress. 7 Having experienced the risk of incrimination in Orit’s autopsy and aware of the potential performance of an autopsy, Cooper worked to establish both the psychic and the physical deficiencies from which Jenny supposedly suffered, alleging that she was depressed due to a financial dispute the couple had with neighbours while simultaneously claiming that she also suffered from a respiratory disease. He also acted to ensure that in case the suicide story would not be convincing enough to rule out the need to perform an autopsy, invoking an alternative non-criminal explanation for Jenny’s death would be reasonably accepted. 8 Cooper’s staging went beyond the scene itself, when he called his mistress to inform her that Jenny suicided. 9 His statement facilitated the non-suspecting mistress’s subsequent move into Jenny and Cooper’s house. Yet she was suspiciously ordered to present herself as Shimon’s housekeeper, though being a distinguished physician at the time. 10

Typical to an HSS events, Cooper found Jenny’s dead body, although his elder son lived in the house with the couple. 11 Moreover, he had the chance to tamper with evidence and manipulate Jenny’s body position, given that as a husband calling emergency services he was instructed by the dispatcher to move the body in order to attempt CPR on Jenny. 12

Upon their arrival at the scene, the emergency squad found Jenny’s staged scene peppered with unreasonable amounts of sleeping pills, to the extent that hundreds were spread around her body. 13 Staging the scene so convincingly, Cooper managed to sway the squad physician so that he was inclined to accept the possibility that Jenny had suicided. 14 Subsequently, Cooper executed his right as a husband to object to Jenny’s autopsy 15 and had it not been for the insistence of the police officer in charge—Jenny’s autopsy would have been denied. 16

In his behaviour, as described above, Cooper displayed similarities to one of the least prevalent HSS behavioural types but also its most sophisticated—‘the planner’, who organizes and plans the homicide in advance down to the smallest foreseeable detail, including measures taken both before the homicide and after its execution. This behavioural type is strongly associated with borrowing or buying things prior or immediately following the homicide ( Pettler 2016 : 95). This resonates with Cooper’s efforts to obtain the lethal drug from his physician mistress, to lie to those closest to Jenny about her alleged wish to suicide and her alleged disease and to obtain enormous quantities of sleeping pills from his own physician, allegedly, for himself. Alongside this primary type, Cooper presented, once again, a combination of ‘the fabricator’ and ‘the creator’ types. As a fabricator, he lied to investigators, family, friends and physicians related to his victim. As a creator type ( Pettler 2016 : 92–93), he tactically added what the court described as ‘astronomical’ amounts of pills to the crime scene and moved Jenny’s body from her bed to the floor.

Discussion—Investigative and legal shortcomings in the study cases in in relation to HSS

Orit’s case.

It took the police 16 years from Orit’s death to initiate an investigation of her death. 17 This delay is particularly troubling given that a basic inquiry into her spouse’s life would have revealed that he was already intimately involved with another woman at the time of her death, a woman with whom he moved into a new home only one week after Orit’s death. 18 This romance included substantial financial commitments on the part of Cooper to his new spouse, which were squarely and conveniently resolved with Orit’s death and his inheritance of her entire estate. 19 Furthermore, monitoring Cooper’s cellphone on the death day would have revealed that his first call was to Orit’s father, and only about 40 minutes later to 911 emergency services 20 —not exactly the behaviour expected of a person fearing that his wife might be dead.

In terms of the immediate aftermath, the police also showed little interest in investigating the unusual death. It was mainly the insistence of Orit’s father, given his daughter’s healthy condition and young age, that led to her autopsy despite Cooper’s strong opposition. 21 Cautious and wary of the risks entailed in investigating her death, Cooper objected to Orit’s autopsy and agreed only following extreme pressure exerted on him by Orit’s father. 22 The autopsy revealed that there was no determinable cause for Orit’s death 23 . More importantly, it concluded that no toxic-related irregularities were found in her body. 24 Namely, Orit did not commit suicide. This finding stood in striking contrast to the death scene, where she was found surrounded by an alarming amount of sleeping pills. Moreover, the toxic-related examination was performed in line with the successful HSS, which led the detectives to instruct the pathologists to test Orit’s body fluids for suicide-induced drugs alone. 25

As the husband, Cooper was the only person to receive the official autopsy report. Frustrated with its indeterminate tone regarding Orit’s cause of death, he added to the report, in handwriting, the finding that some signs of ‘pill remains’ were found in her stomach, before sending it to Orit’s parents. During the trial, however, the prosecution was unable to retrieve this copy of the report, as it had been stolen from Orit’s parents’ home during a mysterious burglary. 26

Jenny’s case

As described by the court, two different investigation teams were assigned to investigate Jenny’s death to no avail. The first team operated subsequent to Jenny’s death. The second team operated two months later, after Jenny’s suspecting daughters approached the police, raising concerns as to their mother’s cause of death 27 and Cooper’s increasingly suspicious behaviour with each passing day. Cooper’s interrogations were all conducted while he was not under arrest, enabling him to conveniently prepare himself for each. Despite death scene discrepancies and the revelation about Orit’s death, both teams concluded their work and accepted Cooper’s staged murder scene narrative of suicidal Jenny. The autopsy did not reveal any traces of the hundreds of pills found around her, a conclusion in sharp contrast to Cooper’s staged scene. This alarming discrepancy was later settled by the suggestion in the autopsy report that cardiovascular failure had led to Jenny’s death. However, Israel’s Chief Pathologist admitted to the court that this was a ‘non-suspecting death case’, namely that it was referred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine as a ‘probable suicide’ case. 28 This designation implies that the pathological default would be to associate an untimely yet natural death with cardiovascular failure ( Timmermans 2007 ). Only a pathologist informed about potential crime would have been more cautious and look for other unnatural death causes, such as poisoning. 29

It was not until the end of 2010, two years after Jenny’s femicide, that a popular investigative TV show aired a segment describing the case and raising the suspicions of Jenny’s daughters. Only then was the case reopened and assigned to a female detective, who independently decided to follow the program’s leads. 30 Cooper was re-interrogated over an intensive period of two weeks, this time while under custodial arrest, enabling the police to employ more rigorous means of investigation. 31 Police efforts yielded the revelation that Cooper had made arrangements to become the sole heir of Jenny’s estate, depriving her beloved minor daughters from any such right, to the extent that they were forced to leave the house after her death. Furthermore, immediately following Jenny’s death, Cooper’s mistress and her son moved into Jenny’s home. He also made it clear to his mistress that she would be responsible for providing for their livelihood, while he offered a residence, squarely facilitated by Jenny’s vacant apartment upon her death. 32 In fact, a week prior to Jenny’s death, the mistress’s belongings were shipped to Jenny’s premises, ‘waiting’ for her home to be ‘vacant’. This finding about Cooper’s mistress was particularly beneficial and played a key role in prosecuting the case, as during her investigation she confessed to providing him deadly, untraceable narcotics.

In its decision to convict Cooper the court took an interesting step, which some might consider a leap, stating that the fact that there was no positive definitive forensic identification of Orit’s death does not prevent the legal identification of Cooper as her murderer. Coupled with the assailant’s other suspicious behaviours, the court was able to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, nonetheless, using circumstantial evidence doctrine. 33

The Shimon Cooper case is an example of how concealed femicide could have escaped the rule of law but for a private TV network’s insistence on broadcasting a show reiterating both women’s death scene discrepancies. Alarmingly though, the court did not seize this opportunity to address this legal failing. No critical effort was made by the court to reassess the forensic or prosecutorial flaws and shortcomings that led the authorities to consider these deaths to be non-criminal—however, unfortunate—deaths of young healthy women. 34 Most of the court’s criticism was directed at the murderer’s staging efforts of both murder scenes, rather than at the failure of the police to detect them. 35

In an effort to change this reality in which femicide can escape detection, the last part of the article focuses on legal and investigative mechanisms aimed at preventing femicide concealment.

Towards a criminological gender-sensitive review of women’s fatality

The findings emerging from the explorative analysis of the two cases indicate that, as is often the case with regard to women’s life experience, the ostensibly scientific analytical tools used to investigate homicide cases are biased towards what can be described as ‘masculine killing scenes’ ( Keeney and Heide 1994 ; Wilson and Hilton 1998 ; Byard et al . 1999 ). This refers to unequivocally ‘visible’ and ‘bloody’ patterns of killing in which ‘their criminality appears self-evident’. As the cases presented here demonstrate, classic criminological homicidal paradigms fail to recognize the rather covert methods of killing and seemingly natural appearance of a female death. These help camouflage the homicide-induced fact of death, rendering these cases ‘concealed femicides’. The elusive nature of concealed femicides, which do not display external physiological signs that might suggest a homicidal cause of death (such as cutting/shooting/strangulation wounds), assign them, almost automatically, a non-criminal classification. Unless such deaths are known or suspected to be unnatural, they normally go uninvestigated.

The search to reveal criminal suspicion

The notion of suspicion is central to establishing the legitimacy, and at times the obligation, to conduct post-mortem investigations. Thus, suspicion carries significant implications for concealed femicide, warranting its designation as suspicious in and of itself. For example, several countries have amended their laws to ensure that suspicious deaths are addressed, by provisioning a required investigation, at the very least. 36 Suspicious death circumstances are not unique to femicide; in fact, about 20 per cent of people die under suspicious circumstances where the social and medical institutions identify the death as unanticipated ( Timmermans 2007 ). Different countries use various proxies to describe deaths that call for the state’s attention through comprehensive medical and criminological investigation. The most clear-cut proxies are deaths occurring in violent circumstances (i.e. when external bruises are visible) or deaths occurring in relation to the deceased being kept in a state facility [e.g. hospital (mental/medical/natal) and jail facilities]. Such deaths are categorically defined as ‘suspicious’ and therefore warranting state investigation.

Conversely, the state’s allocation of investigative resources is less prevalent with regard to deaths occurring outside the state’s scope of ‘suspicion’, namely, not in official facilities or by seemingly non-violent means. Some exceptions can be found, however, to this conventional approach. Canada’s Alberta county refers to deaths that occur ‘ unexplainedly’ or ‘ unexpectedly’ when the deceased was in apparent good health or ‘while the deceased person was not under the care of a physician’ . 37 In Manitoba county, Canadian law refers to deaths that are ‘ unexpected’ or ‘ unexplained’ or occurred ‘ suddenly of unknown cause’ 38 ; California refers to ‘sudden, or unusual deaths’ 39 ; Cayman Islands refers to ‘ unnatural deaths’ or ‘ sudden deaths of which the cause has not been medically determined’ 40 ; United Kingdom refers to ‘unnatural deaths’ or deaths with an ‘unknown cause’ 41 ; New Zealand refers to ‘deaths that appear to have been without known cause , unnatural , or medically unexpected’ 42 ; Kentucky refers to deaths where their manner ‘appears to be other than natural’ , when ‘sudden and unexplained’ and when ‘there is no ascertainable medical history to indicate the cause of death’ 43 ; Louisiana refers to deaths that are ‘suspicious, unexpected, or unusual deaths’ , ‘sudden’ or ‘due to unknown or obscure causes or in any unusual manner’. 44

Redefining ‘suspicion’ to include concealed femicide

As the examples indicate, the various terms used to describe ‘suspicious’ deaths, such as ‘unexpected’, ‘unexplained’, ‘unclassifiable’, ‘unnatural’, ‘sudden’, ‘unknown’, ‘unusual’ or ‘undetermined’, are used interchangeably. The terms are not defined in the relevant legislation and remain enigmatic. What would constitute a ‘suspicious death’ in general and of a woman in particular? Such articulation and conceptualization are needed. The only additional clarification offered by the relevant legislation refers to the circumstantial fact that the death occurred while the deceased was not under the care of a physician or when the death was not medically foreseen. Still, classifying all unexpected/unnatural/sudden/unexplained deaths where the deceased was under the care of an attending physician as suspicious—is far from a workable definition that can be employed to identify suspicious deaths.

Another attempt to establish suspicion is presented by Timmermans, who defines suspicious death as occurring ‘out of time and out of place’, namely, whereby the social institutions and professionals taking care of the deceased could not anticipate the death ( Timmermans 2007 ). Timmermans argues that suspicious deaths create the possibility of a public health danger, either medically or criminally, but does not offer a clear-cut definition for such deaths. The two general principles that he offers, ‘out of time and out of place’, may guide suspicious deaths in general but require finetuning with respect to femicide. Femicide cases occasionally match the circumstances of a suspicious death, ‘out of time and place’, and are therefore duly investigated. However, concealed femicide cases may easily fall outside the scope of traditional ‘suspicious death’ provisions, particularly due to the susceptibility of femicide to homicide scene staging. To begin with, most femicide cases take place in the woman’s home, i.e. ‘in place’, as were the two cases of concealed femicide we discussed. Moreover, given that concealed femicide is staged to camouflage an explained foreseen death—in our cases—depression/a respiratory medical problem followed by suicide, a suspicious death of a woman may also seem ‘on time’. Concealed femicide deaths may therefore seem natural—not out of time and certainly not out of place.

Integrating HSS literature and a case study approach for relevant extrapolations, we suggest several specific circumstances that may constitute suspicion and facilitate the revealing rather than the concealing of femicide. First, and in view of the relatively young age of both Orit and Jenny and the circumstantial evidence of their good health (to the point of Jenny being a volleyball team player and a triathlon athlete), 45 any premature death of a woman unforeseen by her personal physician—should constitute suspicious circumstances. A statutory provision rendering mandatory investigation of all unexpected deaths in Israel 46 would have at least secured both Orit and Jenny’s police investigations.

Second, and in line with both Orit and Jenny’s manner of death, the allegedly suicidal death of a woman should be defined as suspicious in and of itself. Circumstantial evidence in both cases implied that both Orit and Jenny were in good emotional/mental health prior to the alleged suicide. Orit was looking forward to her parents’ anniversary celebration and was happy with her new job, 47 and Jenny was equally enthusiastic about her new job. 48 Suicidal narratives should be investigated in and of themselves in order to rule out criminal homicide. Some states in the United States include suicidal deaths as deaths that should be examined. Illinois, for example, explicitly provisions a preliminary investigation in cases of suicide. 49 Such a provision in Israeli law would have resulted in a statutory and mandatory investigation of both Orit and Jenny’s alleged suicides. 50 It would also make such homicide scene staging susceptible to an official criminal investigation and thus a greater risk for femicide scene stagers.

Furthermore, and as we observed in the two cases, even if the scene attests to a suicide-induced death, i.e. a large number of pills found around the body, and perhaps even a note left by the deceased, a post-mortem medical examination should be conducted, at least to confirm the cause of death. In our cases, the post-mortem medical examination ruled out the death narrative indicated by the scene staging: both Orit and Jenny did not die from the astronomical amounts of sleeping pills scattered in their death scene. 51 This discrepancy between forensic evidence and the crime scene narrative should have alerted to a possible crime scene and lead to a comprehensive criminal investigation.

Third, and in light of the circumstantial evidence that was later revealed with regard to Cooper’s wish to terminate his intimate relationship with both Orit and Jenny, 52 circumstantial evidence pointing to one of the intimate partner’s wish to end the relationship should render the women’s death suspicious at the initial stage. Such circumstantial evidence resonates with findings of femicide studies, indicating that the vast majority of femicide cases involve a backdrop of the women’s wish to terminate the relationship ( Dawson and Gartner 1998 ; Dobash et al . 2004 ; Koziol-McLain et al . 2006 ). Such suspicion should be heeded, notwithstanding the fact that in some cases, as in our examples, it was the killer who sought to terminate the relationship. Such an indication is in line with empirical criminological findings that women hardly ever kill for this reason, while men often do ( Browne et al . 1999 ; Browne 2008 ).

Fourth, and as our cases imply, any woman’s death, even if seemingly natural, should be considered suspicious if domestic violence was previously inflicted by the deceased’s intimate partner towards relatives, family or acquaintances. Such a circumstantial fact should indicate that the death is suspicious, even if the deceased herself was not victimized by her intimate partner’s domestic violence. As one of our cases demonstrated, the television reporter had reached out to Cooper’s second wife, who had reported his violent behaviour towards her when she wanted to terminate their relationship, to the point of restricting orders issued against him. 53 Such evidence should constitute a sufficient suspicion, as empirical findings on femicide establish time and again the link between the perpetrator’s domestic violence (even if not towards the victim herself), the killing of his female intimate partner ( Dobash and Dobash 1977 ; Siegel 1995 ; Downs 1996 ) and the staging of her homicide ( Eke 2007 : 92–93).

Fifth, finding a woman dead in her home should raise suspicion, as the vast majority of femicide cases and their staged homicide scenes bear numerous domestic elements ( Eke 2007 ; Dobash and Dobash 2015 ; Pettler 2016 ). As noted, such characteristics of gendered deaths squarely contradict the commonly-held assumption that a suspicious death is ‘out of place’. In our cases, both Orit and Jenny were found dead in their homes, rendering these scenes suspicious and susceptible to homicide scene staging. 54

Sixth, having the woman found by her current or previous domestic spouse. Both Orit and Jenny were ‘found’ in the early hours of the morning by their killer, both allegedly having spent the previous night sleeping on the living room sofa. 55 As literature on scene staging indicates, the person finding the body is more often than not the probable perpetrator ( Pettler 2016 ; Ferguson 2016 : 11.)

In summary, the following characteristics should render a women’s death conspicuously suspicious:

(1) premature death when in apparent good health (not foreseen by her personal physician);

(2) suicidal death scene;

(3) circumstantial evidence of one of the intimate partners’ wish to terminate the relationship;

(4) prior domestic violence on the part of the deceased’s intimate partner;

(5) the woman was found dead in her home;

(6) the woman was found dead by her current or previous domestic spouse.

Given the explorative nature of these extrapolated observations, this list of suspicion proxies is preliminary. The more concealed femicide cases are studied, the more the comprehensive articulation of criteria for classifying a woman’s death as suspicious will materialize.

Enhancing institutions and tools to reveal concealed femicide

Once a death is considered suspicious, several tools and institutions operating in various countries should be mandated in the aim of exploring and identifying the cause and manner of women’s deaths. If adapted to women’s life-experience, the following tools and institutions can serve to better expose the concealed criminal nature of camouflaged natural/non-criminal women’s deaths.

The coroner

The coroner is the most suitable institution for investigating suspicious deaths. Entrenched in English law tradition and prevalent in common law countries, this mechanism, whose sole task is to perform inquiries of death causes, conducts independent investigations of deaths alongside the work of other prosecutorial legal authorities. Though countries differ in the investigative tools they provide to their coroner, the underlying shared principle is that the coroner mechanism reflects society’s obligation to its members to clear any suspicion that a person’s death was affected through some form of crime. 56

Coroners are statutorily authorized to investigate deaths utilizing a variety of methods, ranging from collecting relevant evidence and conducting hearings, at times in the presence of jurors, to ordering the physical inspection of the corpse and the death scene, all with adequate judicial power. 57

Israel does not have a legally institutionalized coroner’s office. Furthermore, the Israeli law authorizing an inquisitorial judge to investigate suspicious fatalities 58 is not enforced and is de facto replaced by standard official regulations of police investigations. 59 Had such a mechanism operated in Israel, Orit and Jenny’s deaths, and possibly other such deaths, would have been investigated, even though the police had discontinued its investigation. A coroner’s investigation, heightened by the fact that both Orit and Jenny’s post-mortem medical findings did not correlate with their death scene narrative, could have provided the impetus to continuing the investigation despite the initial police conclusion of the non-criminal nature of these deaths. Such a decision by the police ends any further investigation in countries lacking a coroner mechanism. Still, it is important not to over rely on a coronial system as the sole or leading tool for uncovering a possible concealed femicide, as the availability of such a system does not necessarily ensure that the police will not close the investigation. 60

Medico-legal post-mortem examination

A medicolegal post-mortem examination is the prerogative to mandate an autopsy as well as the body’s disinterment for a post-mortem autopsy needed for the investigation. 61 It is of utmost relevance to suspicious deaths, as histology studies indicate clinically unexpected autopsy findings in more than 20 per cent of the cases; in 5 per cent of the cases, these findings are regarded as ‘major’. Legislating a mandatory autopsy in cases of a woman’s suspicious death would be beneficial since the primary cause of death and prior related injuries can only be detected by means of a post-mortem forensic examination ( Leth and Vesterby 1997 ). Should all undetermined deaths be subjected to a mandatory autopsy? To ensure that suspicious deaths are adequately investigated, in certain unexpected death cases, some countries require mandatory post-mortem medical examinations (which may or may not include an autopsy). 62

Such mandatory autopsies may reveal the true criminal nature of the death, as, for example, many strangulation injuries are not visible to the layperson and are often only detected in an autopsy ( Pritchard et al . 2016 ). At the very least, as in the cases of Orit and Jenny, an autopsy would rule out the non-criminal death scene narrative propounded by the killer. Disproving the death scene narrative is of utmost importance because the gist of concealed femicide is ingrained in the killer’s ability to create an alternative, non-criminal scenario for the homicide he committed. Refuting the narrative portrayed by the scene by forensic means may therefore in and of itself establish the suspicious nature of the death and alert the authorities to the need for a much wider criminal investigation into the manner of death ( Underwood 2012 : 101). An autopsy should not be delayed, since in some cases poisonous or toxic traces in the blood are short-lived and untraceable within a few hours. In cases of a lethal injection, for example, that are typical in deaths caused by poisoning, needle scars that constitute forensic evidence are identifiable but only if specifically searched for based on concrete suspicion. 63 In Jenny’s case, the court alluded to possible lost traces of the needle hole. 64 It is therefore of utmost importance to ensure that homicides possibly disguised as non-criminal deaths will require an immediate and extensive medicolegal examination.

Furthermore, and given the elusive nature of concealed femicides and their non-violent appearance, a post-mortem medical examination might not be granted in cases of next of kin objection. Mandatory examination provisions would override any possible next of kin objection to an invasive medical examination of the deceased ( Hershenov and Delaney 2009 : 371). In fact, Cooper had the legal right to object to both Orit and Jenny’s post-mortem medical examination and had it not been for his fear that his objection would seem suspicious to his wives’ parents/children, the bodies of Orit and Jenny would probably not have undergone an autopsy. Had that been the case, the forensic medical evidence that ruled out the suicidal narrative and the accompanying staged murder scene would not have been obtained. To efficiently exhaust its investigative usefulness, an autopsy should be conducted under the assumption of suspicion. In Jenny’s case, for example, the prosecution had no way of proving that she had been murdered by lethal injection, since her autopsy was conducted under the ‘no suspicion’ assumption. In other words, the pathologist did not search for needle holes on Jenny’s body, later openly regretting that he had not applied this routine protocol that is followed in autopsies conducted under a premise of suspicion. 65

Eliminating the legal requirement for the next of kin’s consent to conduct a medical examination is all the more important in cases where the deceased is cremated. As in the case of Orit’s death, the criminal investigation was only launched 16 years after she was buried. 66 In cases of cremation, the deceased’s body cannot be exhumed and forensic criminal evidence is lost forever.

Post-mortem criminal inquests

In some cases, autopsies are biased by the police’s no-suspicion assumption (as demonstrated in Jenny’s case), and some corpses arrive at various stages of decomposition, making any conclusive medicolegal finding almost impossible. In addition, many manners of death do not leave noticeable physiological traces except for various pathological heart findings. It is therefore important not to over-rely on post-mortem medical examinations as the sole or leading tool for uncovering evidence in an inquiry of a possible concealed death. Investigations should not be discontinued in cases of an undetermined medical cause of death, where the death scene as it appears is ruled out by the post-mortem medical examination and circumstantial non-medical evidence points to possibly suspicious aspects related to the death.

Such further inquiry, normally conducted in countries with a coroner system, is termed an ‘inquest’. 67 The definition of an inquest is a hearing held by a coroner in connection with an inquiry instigated and conducted by a coroner. Such an investigative procedure, conducted in addition to the initial inquiry and the post-mortem medical examination, is of extreme importance in revealing concealed femicide cases. Its effectiveness is grounded in the fact that it searches for non-explicit, hidden, non-medical and non-forensic circumstantial facts that may be relevant to the resolution of suspicious deaths, highlighting features that in such cases suggest homicidal death. In Jenny and Orit’s case, for example, the broadcast journalist carried out a ‘quasi-inquest’ (albeit without the legal authority to demand information disclosure whenever deemed relevant)—adding to the body of relevant evidence pertaining to the analysis of their deaths. In doing so, the journalist exposed the legal arrangements that rendered Cooper the sole heir of Jenny’s estate, made shortly before her premature and unexpected alleged suicide. 68 Similarly, he found that Cooper became the sole beneficiary of lucrative financial transactions shortly before and after Orit’s alleged suicide. Thus, inquests should broaden the range of evidence collected, by investigating the narratives of the deceased’s friends and relatives, particularly in light of the offender’s tendency to offer confused and inconsistent narratives to friends, family members and the police ( Pettler 2016 : 21). In Cooper’s case, for example, the police investigation was very limited, focusing almost entirely on Cooper and much less on the victims’ family and acquaintances. Once the broadcast journalist, and subsequently the police itself, contacted broader circles of the deceased wives’ family and friends, the truth about Cooper’s problematic relationships with both Orit and Jenny was quickly revealed. 69 Investigation of possible related prior domestic violence should be a multi-agency effort and supported by administrative orders authorizing the search for any prior information or complaints made by the deceased or prior partners. Such information is crucial, since with the advent of femicide research and throughout its analytical span ( Marcuello-Servós et al . 2016 ), the primary, most prevalent and most important risk factor of intimate partner homicide was identified as prior violence in general and violence against the female partner in particular ( Campbell et al . 2007 : 253). If such an inquest mechanism had been in force at the time of Orit and Jenny’s deaths, the true cause and manner of their deaths would have been exposed earlier, or at the very least, their deaths would have been subjected to more comprehensive and rigorous investigations.

Fatality review board

Some countries have established special fatality review boards or committees, within the coroner’s office, in order to review the frequency and nature of certain types of deaths (most often children’s deaths). 70 These boards take a panoramic view of certain types of deaths, with the aim of monitoring and investigating their frequency and patterns. Moreover, they are composed of a range of experts depending on the specific matter at hand and instruct investigators not to succumb to medical explanations of the causes and manners of the deaths in question. In Canada’s Alberta province, for example, the law prescribes a permanent Fatality Review Board composed of both medicine and law professionals that review all fatalities and determine the need to establish a designated public fatality inquiry to further investigate death cases they consider to be of public interest. 71

Assisted by multi-disciplinary and multi-agency members and authorized to collect data on the incidence and causes of unexpected deaths, such boards are able to identify patterns and profiles of entities and persons that may be responsible for particular types of deaths, as well as systemic characteristics of these deaths. Furthermore, these boards can promote detection and prevention through education, information dissemination and evidence-based policy recommendations to governmental bodies. A model of this mechanism can be found in Australia, which established special fatality review boards to review all deaths under circumstances of domestic violence ( Walsh et al . 2012 ). Had such a mechanism been in place at the time of Orit and Jenny’s death, feminist organizations in Israel and the public that is wary of the ever-rising number of women killed by their intimate partners would have probably contributed to the impetus and criminal attention needed to reject the scenario that Cooper portrayed in both their deaths. Furthermore, and in line with the ability of such designated boards to identify patterns and profiles of various types of femicide—perhaps, they would have alerted police investigators earlier to the plausible criminal profile of concealed femicide cases.

In summary, our overview of the coroner’s power and benefits suggests that establishing such a mechanism, supported by statutory mandatory mechanisms (such as an autopsy, inquest and fatality board reviews) and in specifically defined cases, would be of great value in revealing concealed femicide cases as such. Such protective mechanism is arguably expected to exhaust additional public means, but given its restricted application on cases of death of women in their own homes alone, we presume that the limited number of such cases will keep expected public expenses on this mechanism at a reasonable degree.

Women die, as all people eventually do. This seemingly neutral fact of life warrants specific attention, as intimate partner homicide constitutes a large share of all homicides, with gender-based statistical significance ( Stöckl et al . 2013 ). For legal systems to properly protect women from this vulnerability to femicide and its concealment, it is imperative to design more nuanced tools for identifying it. A toolbox designed around our recommendations can bring about such a desired change. We recommend subjecting all women’s premature deaths to investigation and inquests conducted by professional teams with criminological knowledge about femicide. Such inquests should be authorized to receive all relevant information from official authorities and from the deceased’s friends and acquaintances with regard to possible relevant evidence. This would include, for example, possible prior domestic violence, personal medical records, the nature of the deceased’s intimate relationship with the perpetrator and any financial or legal transactions related to the deceased. We also recommend subjecting all seemingly suicidal deaths of women to an immediate mandatory autopsy, overriding any possible next of kin objection. Establishing designated fatality review boards to monitor and examine all possible types of femicide is also recommended.

Implementing this set of crimino-legal tools, designed to prevent or detect femicide concealment, can achieve the multiple purpose of private, public and social change: the desired private change is that the real story of a woman’s life and death will be presented accurately, however painful; in the public change domain, killers will be brought to justice and the social change goal is to expose the real and full extent of femicide. Last but not least, this set of tools advances an additional crimino-legal goal—bringing more justice to the fore when it comes to femicide perpetrators. In this respect, the need to analyse cases of concealed femicide is evident. As for the killed women victims, it endows them with agency. Their agency ensues by virtue of their perpetrator’s conviction, enabling them to recount, from their grave, the story of the hidden phenomenon of concealed femicide.

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TPH 47934-11-12 People v. Cooper (28.6.2016).

Cooper at para 398, 402.

Cooper, at para.38

Cooper, at para. 324.

Cooper, at para. 380, 452.

Cooper, at para. 91.

Cooper, at para 121–122 (accordingly). Shimon also spread some pills around Jenny’s body, to maintain the other suicide staging option, but opted for the illness tale which he had better established among family and friends. Cooper, at 123.

Cooper, at para. 348.

Cooper, at para. 67.

Cooper, at para. 7.

Cooper, at para. 86.

Cooper, at para. 88.

Cooper, at para. 137–138.

Cooper, at para. 146–147.

For Jenny, see Cooper, at para. 151–152; for Orit, see Cooper, at para. 384.

The police officer at the scene initially allowed Jenny’s immediate burial. As time went by however, he began, as his own court testimony indicates, noticing more suspicious details, with the absence of a farewell letter the one that convinced him that an autopsy would be crucial to solving some scene discrepancies. See Cooper, at para. 149.

Cooper, at para. 371, 373.

Cooper, at para. 254.

Cooper, at para. 6.

Cooper, at para. 390.

Cooper, at para. 384.

Cooper, at para. 151–152 (for Jenny); at para. 238 (for Orit).

Cooper, at para. 425.

Cooper, at para. 397.

Cooper, at para. 417.

Cooper, at para. 414.

Cooper, at para. 164.

Cooper, at para. 172–173.

Cooper, at para. 165.

Cooper, at para. 195. The police conducted not only face-to-face interrogations, but also employed the service of a fake inmate to whom confessions are occasionally made. Cooper, at p. 197–198.

Cooper, at para. 7, 112.

Cooper, at para. 264, 279–281.

The only implied criticism was the court’s reference to the initial police investigation, described as ‘rudimentary’. Cooper, at para. 202.

For Jenny, see Cooper, at para. 215–217; for Orit, see Cooper, at p. 243.

See, e.g., S.P.E.I. 2006, c. 29, s. 17. See also Coroners Act 2006, Section 60; 55 ILCS 5/3-3013; Coroners and Justice Act 2009, Section 1.

R.S.A. 2000, c. F-9.

Manitoba Province in Canada, the Fatalities Inquiries Act, S.M. 1989–90, c. 30.

California Code, Government Code—GOV Section 27491.

Cayman Islands (C.I. Coroners Law (2015 Revision)).

Coroners Act 2009.

Coroners Act 2006.

Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 72: 72,025.

Louisiana Revised Statutes, Chapter 13: 5713

Cooper, at para. 112, 119, 174.

See Investigation of Causes of Death Law, 5718-1958.

Cooper, at para. 230–231, 246–247, 369, 398, 402.

Cooper, at para. 86, 121.

55 ILCS 5/3-3013.

Cooper, at para. 245, 259, 291.

Cooper, at para. 25–27, 46–47, 51.

Cooper, at para. 32, 27.

Cooper, at para. 6, and para 7.

Cooper, at para. 224, 385–388.

See, for example, New Zealand coroners act: Coroners Act 2006, Section 3.

See, for example, section 7 of coroners Act 2009; 55 ILCS 5/3-3013; C.I. Coroners Law (2015 Revision); Coroners Act S.P.E.I. 2006, c. 29.

See Israel Police National Headquarters Ordinance- Investigations - 14.01.01.

See, for example, the Australian case where 36 years after the disappearance of Lynette Dawson, and as a result of investigative journalism, Lynette’s husband was charged with her murder. In this case, the police declined to charge the husband despite two coronial inquests that had pointed to the husband as her likely killer. (See https://www.theaustralian.com.au/the-teachers-pet )

See, for example, Coroners Act 2009, section 14; C.I. Coroners Law (2015 Revision), s. 15. With regard to the authority to order a disinterment, see, for example, Alberta Canada: R.S.A. 2000, c. F-9: 28; CORONERS ORDINANCE (CAP. 504), section 6; The Fatality Inquiries Act, S.M. 1989–90, C. 30, sections 13(1),22(1); New Zealand Coroners Act 2006, section 31; 55 ILCS 5/3-3015, Ch. 34.

See Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 72: 72,025: the Fatalities Inquiries Act, S.M. 1989–90, c. 30, s. 12; 55 ILCS 5/3-3015; and Jargin (2008) .

Cooper, at para. 176–177.

Cooper, at para. 295.

Cooper, at para. 295, 360.

C.I. Coroners Law (2015 Revision), s. 7; 55 ILCS 5/3-3013; Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

Cooper, at para. 158–171.

Cooper, at p. 102, 122, 163, 247.

See, for example, Fatalities Investigations Act, S.N. 1995, c. F-6.1 Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, section 13.1; Kentucky Revised Statutes, Chapter 12, 72.029.

See, for example, Alberta Canada: R.S.A. 2000, c. F-9: 35; Fatalities Investigations Act, S.N. 1995, c. F-6.1 Newfoundland and Labrador, s 25(1.1).

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