The microwave consists of placing a stack of car tires around the victim who is usually left standing. The tires are set on fire often after adding a fire accelerent. The body is burned extensively, sometimes completely.
Goals:
(1) to terrorize others into compliance
(2) to torture victims and to exact revenge
(3) to make any sort of forensic analysis or identification difficult
Sometimes the victim is executed before burning. There may be a bullet wound in the skull but this needs to be distinguished from artifact. A person who is burned alive may have soot in the trachea, bronchi and lungs (Montalti’s sign) and/or carbon monoxide in blood.
A careful examination of the debris field may be able to identify subtle clues but this can be extremely time-consuming. Some things that can be identified include:
(1) gender (by presence of prostate gland or uterus)
(2) orthopedic hardware
(3) dental X-rays
(4) bullets
(5) rings or jewelry
(6) fragments of bones like femoral heads that can be used for gender and height estimates
The number of tires used may give an indication of height since the tires extend from feet to shoulders.
