[Methane in cadaver blood--homicide by natural gas or postmortem formation?].

A man had a quarrel with his wife. Suddenly he collapsed and became cyanotic. The woman supposed him to be dead. Because she was afraid of familiar requital, she opened the gas-cock of the cooking-range to pretend a suicide; methane emitted. The autopsy revealed a fresh cardiac infarction. Postmortem chemical analysis established methane in the blood. The question was, whether the methane had any importance for the death. By experimental inhalation of a methane-air-mixture (3%) we could expose, that the methane concentration in postmortem blood didn't have any relevance for the death.