Throwing someone down the stairs.

[fanfictionaxis.livejournal.com]

To hide breaking their neck by hand.

Would there be bruising around the neck from where the person had snapped this
person's neck at or would there not be any but the normal bruising around the
body from where it hit the stairs as it fell?

And how fast does the body let go of it's muscles after death?

The murderer happens to be a vampire who breaks this person's neck and throwing
him down the stairs to hide the fact that he broke his neck to make it look like
a suicide. I'm writing this in a fanfiction story of mine and I want to make
sure that I have everything right in this 'suicide' cover-up. But if this is a good way to hide a murder, I might use it for one of my original murder mystery stories that I'm thinking about doing.

Comments

[tea-doll.livejournal.com]

Not sure, but I think if one applied enough force to snap a person's neck it would leave some bruising on the flesh. Probably enough for an investigator to make out that their neck had been manually broken.

As for the muscles, some research on rigor mortis would probably be most helpful. This site here (http://www.deathreference.com/Py-Se/Rigor-Mortis-and-Other-Postmortem-Changes.html) has some stuff on it:

At the moment of death, the muscles relax completely—a condition called "primary flaccidity." The muscles then stiffen, perhaps due to coagulation of muscle proteins or a shift in the muscle's energy containers (ATP-ADP), into a condition known as rigor mortis. All of the body's muscles are affected. Rigor mortis begins within two to six hours of death, starting with the eyelids, neck, and jaw. This sequence may be due to the difference in lactic acid levels among different muscles, which corresponds to the difference in glycogen levels and to the different types of muscle fibers. Over the next four to six hours, rigor mortis spreads to the other muscles, including those in the internal organs such as the heart. The onset of rigor mortis is more rapid if the environment is cold and if the decedent had performed hard physical work just before death. Its onset also varies with the individual's age, sex, physical condition, and muscular build.

Hope that helps you out.

[nozomi-chan.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that, while it might look like a fall at first, if an autopsy is done, it would be figured out that the person's neck was broken before the fall down the stairs. Certain kinds of breaks can result from different actions, and I'm pretty sure the kind of break and damage done by snapping someone's neck is different from what would result from a fall down the stairs. Also (I watch a lot of CSI, so I've learned some stuff), the medical examiners can tell whether bruising was there before death or after. So if the guy is dead before being tossed down the stairs, any bruises that are on the body from the fall would be after-death bruising, and an autopsy would show that he was dead before being thrown down the stairs.

It would probably work...at least until the medical examiner did an autopsy. Then the truth would be revealed.