Dear Professor Death

This month’s letter may be a little gruesome for some.

Dear Professor Death,

I am writing my first murder mystery and I need to know how to effectively dispatch my victim with a knife. Where on the body do I need to cut to make her go into shock and die right away? And what would the coroner’s report say was the cause of death? Exsanguination?

Mystery Writer in Bozeman

Dear Mystery Writer,

If your killer is a professional assassin, they can insert the blade between the neck bones and sever the spinal cord. The attacker would approach the victim from behind, take a firm grip of the victim by covering the victim’s mouth with their hand and then inserting the blade. The victim would die almost instantly.

The killer could also draw the knife across the victim’s neck from behind, slicing through the carotid arteries and the trachea. The arteries would bleed out, slicing the trachea prevents the victim from crying out.

The killer could thrust the knife into the victim’s heart in a front-facing attack. The killer would need to know a little anatomy in this scenario. Be aware that a stab to the heart or chest can be survivable. Worse, they’d be able to call for help, increasing the rick for your killer.

An abdominal wound is more risky, as the killer would need to slice the body deeply to reach the aorta or vena cava, both located along the back of the abdomen. It would take several minutes for a body to bleed out in this case.

The cervical spinal cord cut, throat slashing, or stab to the heart are the most effective ways to quickly kill a person. The first would be reported as “transection of the spinal cord at the cervical level.” A slashed throat is reported as “transection of the carotid arteries,” and the stab to the heart would be termed “death due to pericardial tamponade secondary to a penetrating knife wound.” (The stab to the heart causes the sac around the heart – the pericardium – to fill with blood, putting pressure on the heart and impeding its function.)

All of these are pretty gruesome ways to dispatch a person and will depend upon your reading audience and your killer’s personality.