Abstract Police in the UK received information that a person had been reported as missing. Despite a diligent search and investigation, the person was not found. Several years later police received intelligence giving the location of a grave believed to contain the remains of the person previously reported as missing and now believed to be a victim of homicide. This new information suggested the missing person had been murdered and their remains were buried in a shallow, unmarked grave. Following a systematic search, the murder victim's body was found at a shallow depth, less than 1 m. Following the forensic recovery of the body, soil samples were collected at, beneath the floor of the grave, along the strike of the grave, downslope and upslope. Analysis of the soil samples showed elevated levels of putrescine, at nearly 150 ppb in the soils beneath, downslope and for several metres upslope from the body at localities where detector dogs had showed an ‘interest’ before the grave was discovered. The mineralogical analysis, using integrated automated mineralogy and petrology detected the presence of diagenetic calcite in the soil profile beneath the grave. Additionally, the organic analysis detected the presence of elevated stanols at the grave and down slope.

ABSTRACT A migration geochemical study was conducted over an area of approximately 15,000 km 2 (5792 mi 2 ) in northeast Saudi Arabia to define regional migration patterns and de-risk oil charge away from the Late Jurassic source kitchen of the Gotnia Basin to prospects further to the south and west on the shelf margin and Summan Platform. Discovered accumulations range in depth from more than 10,000 ft (3048 m) subsea on the shelf margin in the north to around 5000 ft (1524 m) on the Summan Platform in the south. Shallowing south/southwestward is associated with a wide API gravity variation (15–35°) and gentler molecular and isotopic maturity trends. Defining migration patterns based on bulk, isotopic, and saturated and aromatic hydrocarbon distributions alone proved ineffective, especially given that all oils examined from the target Arab-A reservoir have a narrow peak-oil window maturity and a largely common source, that is sulfur-rich (up to 6.1 wt.%) anoxic marine carbonate, presumably within the Hanifa/Tuwaiq Mountain formations or their equivalent Najmah/Sargelu formations in the Gotnia Basin. Molecular geotracers, based primarily on compositional correlation coefficients of aromatic nitrogen compounds, identified several southwest-trending migration pathways that have charged traps in the Late Jurassic Arab Formation. Prospects falling along inferred migration pathways or entry/spill routes are therefore high-graded.