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Body farm creator spreads knowledge |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Friday, 18 March 2005 |
Dionne Waugh and Cynthia T. Pegram
Lynchburg News & Advance
Friday, March 18, 2005
Bill Bass hates to say it this way, but nothing makes his day like a dead body.
“I look at it as a puzzle, not as a dead body, to try to tell who it is,†he said.
Bass, whose family is from New London, is known throughout the country for his studies in forensic anthropology. He is the creator of the world’s first facility devoted to the study of human decomposition at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. It’s nicknamed “The Body Farm.â€
He has worked with the FBI and numerous law enforcement agencies across the country helping to identify human skeletal and decomposing remains and determining the time of death based on the rate of decay. He has also testified in hundreds of court cases, including the crematory scandal in Noble, Ga., as well as written more than 200 publications.
On Thursday, he shared some of his stories with Lynchburg College students in the morning and about 200 people at a public lecture at Heritage High School in the evening. Proceeds from the night lecture will fund a Timberlake Christian Church youth mission trip this summer.
Bass, 76, grew up south of Winchester, but he still visits Lynchburg because his wife is from the area and he owns his grandparents’ farm in New London. William Marvin Bass Elementary School is named after Bass’ grandfather, a longtime city schoolteacher.
Bass starts with identifying the body’s age, sex and race and then goes from there. He gave one such example to students at Lynchburg College.
The white shadow of a skull was a perfect fit when superimposed on the face of a teenager in a photo.
The skull had come from a knife-pocked skeleton found in a farmer’s field.
Sometimes it’s the evidence found after a death that can lead to a positive identification, Bass told the class.
Almost any career in forensics is interesting, Bass said, urging the students to consider the career field.
Bass has a knack for comparisons - like maggots and rice, or goo and decaying flesh. Or the method used to get flesh off bones - using something like a steam jacket kettle, “the same thing you have in your cafeteria.†Add some meat tenderizer and a little bleach and the bones come out “looking real nice.â€
When the youth’s remains were found, there seemed to be no identifiers, no dental or medical records, although there was a missing person.
In the field, a dark stain outlined the area where the remains lay, as though it had been burned.
“This is a stain caused by volatile fatty acids that leach out of a body,†said Bass. “They will kill the vegetation immediately around the body.
“Let me show you why it’s not a fire,†said Bass, adding, “It’s not how much you learn in a class, but it’s how you put all these things together when you think about it. Think about what you’re looking at.â€
He pointed to the dead broom straw plants in the stain. A fire would have burned the plants, but the line of dead plants could be traced through the stain.
The boy was stabbed at least 17 times, judging by a count of injuries to the bone.
The intact skull was photographed and the family of the missing youth loaned a photo of the boy. The images were superimposed.
The technique doesn’t confirm an identity, but excludes people it doesn’t fit. In this case, it matched.
The smiling boy in the family photo was wearing a gold marijuana leaf medallion - also found in the skeletal remains.
“To make a positive identification, you need something that is there after death that you can compare to before death,†said Bass. The family accepted the identity. Police determined he was killed in a drug deal.
Mihaela Piron, an LC biomed major, said the lecture was really interesting. She wasn’t at all queasy.
“It’s normal stuff - we’re all going to end up looking like that, anyway,†she said.
She liked the way Bass reasoned out the cases.
“You don’t just look at the area where the body is, you have to look at the whole environment,†she said.
Though the decay may gross out some people, the smell doesn’t bother Bass.
“I don’t have a very good sense of smell,†he said.
Identifying a body is not as easy or as quick as it looks on TV shows such as “CSI,†Bass said. It can sometimes take months and they still may not know any more than they did initially.
Though Bass has worked on many cases, he considers all of those he identifies as a success.
“The thousands that I was able to, as a forensic anthropologist, tell them who the skeleton is … those are the ones that make you feel good,†he said in an afternoon interview.
Bass received an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in psychology before enrolling in the University of Kentucky for a master’s degree. He had planned on getting a degree in counseling but after taking a class in anthropology, he switched his major.
He came up with the idea for the Body Farm in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t until a little while later that he was able to put the idea into practice at Knoxville.
There, corpses are studied in all kinds of positions and conditions, such as locked in a car trunk, lying in direct sunlight, buried in mud, hung from a scaffold, refrigerated in the dark and submerged in water. If possible, the facility will also try to accommodate a specific request for a donated body.
Up until 2003, most of the bodies came from the medical examiner’s office, but that changed in 2004. That year, donated bodies became the No. 1 way the facility received corpses. They received 74 last year. Overall, more than 700 people have willed their bodies to the facility.
So will Bass donate his body to the Body Farm when he dies?
“I’ve lost two wives to cancer. My first wife and I said yes. The second said no, and the third wife and I haven’t talked much about it,†he said.
“I have been fairly impressed with cremation, doing the work in Noble, Ga. That is not a bad way to get rid of a dead body, and I feel like what I will do is be cremated. But I’m not saying I won’t give my body to the Body Farm.â€
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.” - Samuel Beckett 1906-1989
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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