In 2015, a 69-year-old woman was reported missing by her son, after she hadn’t been heard from for the past four days.
When police investigated, they found her inside the crawl space on the outside of her own house. She was wearing nothing but white shorts and a t-shirt, pulled up high and exposing much of her stomach and chest, and other than that had a few minor injuries.
“Because of the state of the decedent’s clothing, as well as the cutaneous trauma, police and death investigators were immediately suspicious of foul play,” Eric J. Schafer, BS and Joseph A. Prahlow, MD later wrote of the case.
The autopsy, however, revealed a different killer, which would also account for her state of dress: hypothermia.
In around 25 percent of deaths resulting from hypothermia, the affected can go through something called “paradoxical undressing” in the final stages. There are a few theories as to why it occurs, including damage to the temperature-regulating area of the brain. Another theory is that when people undergo hypothermia, the muscles contracting their blood vessels in their limbs become so exhausted they relax, sending blood to their extremities and making them believe they are actually boiling hot, at which point they begin to undress in their confused state.
People who do this often go further and exhibit “terminal burrowing” behavior, particularly in cases where temperature has decreased slowly.
“Nearly all bodies with partial or complete disrobement were found in a position which indicated a final mechanism of protection i.e. under a bed, behind a wardrobe, in a shelf etc,” a review of cases of hypothermia with paradoxical undressing reads. “This is obviously an autonomous process of the brain stem, which is triggered in the final state of hypothermia and produces a primitive and burrowing-like behaviour of protection, as seen in (hibernating) animals.”
The result is that people who have died of hypothermia may be naked, and crammed into a small confined space like somebody had attempted to dispose of their corpse. It’s easy to see why sometimes, as was the case above, law enforcement suspects foul play.
In the end, thanks to the autopsy discovering signs of hypothermia and a colloid cyst on her brain, and statements from neighbors and family, the police were able to figure out what had happened.
“We postulate that the patient became acutely confused related to increased intracranial pressure from the colloid cyst, thus possibly explaining why she remained outdoors, predisposing her to hypothermia,” Schafer and Prahlow wrote. “She then entered the crawl space, either in a continued state of confusion, in a possible attempt to fix the sump pump, or as a manifestation of the “hide and die” syndrome in the setting of hypothermia.”
The death was ruled an accident, with her partial nudity put down as “likely related to ‘paradoxical undressing’ in the setting of hypothermia.”
Source Link: Paradoxical Undressing: Why People Get Naked In The Final Stages Of Hypothermia