What is Rigor Mortis and how can you use it to tell how long a person has been dead?
Rigor is the stiffening that a body undergoes after death. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t stay stiff. Rigor begins at about 12 hours after death and lasts for another 24 hours and then vanishes. If rigor is present, you can use that to establish that death occurred within a certain window. It is one of several ways to establish time of death, but by no means the only one.
