This little baby died and was buried a few years prior to this exhumation. Almost all flesh has been converted to adipocere. The infant's tiny coffin is in the background. In the lower right corner a few ribs are seen, extracted from the tiny corpse. On the table, an arm (or two). Under the proper conditions, infants' small, chubby bodies will nearly completely turn into adipocere as they possess little muscle and few putrefying bacteria. Very sad, poignant, and ghastly.
This woman drowned and was submerged for seven months. "Wet" adipocere formation throughout nearly all fatty tissue in her body.
Oh, look at this little angel's face! So precious. Sometimes adipocere formation, under the right circumstances (and with a little help from a friend- in this case an especially gifted embalmer), can create a masterpiece to withstand the tests of time and biology. This beautiful little three year old girl, passed away in 1920; the photo was taken in about 1995! Palermo, Italy.
Three studies of "dry" adipocere formation on human skulls. Top: eyes, brain and right cheek fat all turned into adipocere. Unknown burial time, but possibly many years. Right: extensive adipocere formation in and on skull. Corpse had been stuffed in a dry sewer for two years. Below: more adipocere in the usual places. Elapsed time between death and photo is unknown.
Perhaps the most famous example of adipocere formation in the world. "The Soap Lady" is thought to have passed away during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1892, at Philadelphia USA. Some eighty years later she was exhumed, perhaps as the result of a redevelopment of an old graveyard. The Soap Lady has resided in the Mutter Museum ever since. Photo courtesy of Roadside America.
Julia Buccola Petta was an Italian-American housewife living in Chicago after World War One. On the occasion of the birth of her second child, she died. She was interred in famous Mount Carmel cemetery, site of the Chicago Archdiocese's Cardinal Crypts, Al Capone's grave, and many others. Buccola's ghost, legend has it, visited her mother and asked to have her corpse exhumed. For whatever actual reason, the corpse was disinterred six years after Mrs. Buccola's death; the photo plainly shows a corpse with a great deal of adipocere formation in the face- but also a corpse very well preserved. Note the stains (Mud? Mold? Body fluid purge?) which can be seen on the light colored fabric of the casket lining. This occurred at some point during its six years in the ground. The alkaline soil at Mount Carmel is likely responsible for this so-called "miracle".
Concretions, like the three spherical
objects near the bottom of the picture on the right, are found in Ohio and
elsewhere. They are likely a result of adipocere falling to the bottom of a
long-since disappeared sea or lake.
Minerals and other organic debris
became attached to the adipocere,
which acted as a nucleus for the
concretion. These concretions, in the
right circumstances, could have gone
on to become coal, oil, or
natural gas; but these became shale.
This series of seven autopsy photographs are from the investigation of a tragic auto accident, whereupon a car drove into a Japanese lake in 1982. The car and it's occupant, a 41 year-old woman, were missing for nine years. The automobile and driver were discovered by amateur divers on holiday in 1991. Clockwise from top left: the car being lifted from the bottom of
the lake. Top right: view inside the car- victim still clothed. Upper right: at the morgue. Victim's clothing removed. Skull
has detached from adipocere and lower jaw bone. Note how adipocere formation has preserved virtually all her body, with exception of scalp. Middle right: view of victim's back side. This woman may not have been this stout in life; adipocere formation creates more volume than when flesh was alive. Lower right: it appears as though this victim may have died in a cadaveric spasm, owing to her posture; drowning victims often do. Bottom right: view of victim's lower half. Note panties (or
pantie crease marks on adipocere). Bottom left: close up of head,
with skull placed back into position. The adipocere has separated from the bone of the skull; quite understandable after nine years in water. This death
was ruled a suicide.
This poor sailor drowned and was in the sea for some months before his adipocere-laden body was fished out of the briny deep. Note the condition of ear lobes and nose. Surprisingly, most of his corpse was not consumed by sea creatures, which is unusual in open water.
The whitish/yellow bits in this photo is very infamous adipocere indeed. That's the decomposed toothy smile of the late Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Oswald was himself gunned down by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby on 23/11/1963, and was buried in a Texas cemetery. Nearly 18 years later, assassination conspiracy theorists' lingering doubts concerning exactly who was buried in Oswald's grave prompted an exhumation and a new autopsy. While no full facial photos were allowed by agreement with LHO's widow, a tight shot of his teeth was permitted, for identification purposes. The condition of the corpse was described as poor, due to the fact that the burial vault LHO's casket was deposited in had cracked open at some point, allowing water to fill it. The casket itself was full of putrid water. However, some adipocere still clung to parts of Oswald's remains, as evidenced in this image. Note the wire, used to secure the jaw for open casket display at the time of embalming in 1963. By the way, the remains were positively identified as being those of Lee Harvey Oswald. He was reburied in a new vault and casket, presumably in a dry grave. See Links page for LHO's official autopsy report.
About two years in another wet grave. The gentleman was disinterred
for reburial in a different cemetery. The vault and it's contents were
waterlogged. Just before reburial, the casket was opened for this photograph. During the transfer to the new cemetery, the water drained out of the porous recepticle. This grave had filled with ground water much as Lee Harvey Oswald's resting place had. Unfortunately, this is a rather common occurance in cemeteries. Adipocere formation is complete.
Two years, 18 years....
how about 66 million years' burial? These two photos are of the now-famous fossilized dinosaur heart and other tissues. An extraordinary find, it will likely lead
to many more such fossils being located and recognised for what they are: just another manifestation of the amazing preservative powers of the substance
