Posted on 09/29/2008 8:50:43 AM PDT by Gamecock
TV dramas that follow detectives as they investigate a crime have long been a staple of American television. But in recent years, these shows have taken a decidedly graphic turn, focusing on the forensic teams that examine the victim's body and look for evidence that can help investigators bring the killers to justice. While autopsies, blood spatter analysis and DNA research apparently make for entertaining television, Mike Osborne discovered that real forensic science is far less glamorous.
It's a beautiful spring day in East Tennessee. The trees are just putting on leaves and every shrub and wildflower is in full bloom. But as you enter one of the most unusual research facilities in the world, even the sweetest smelling blossoms can't mask the stench of rotting flesh.
This is the Anthropological Research Facility at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a facility more commonly referred to as The Body Farm.
Graduate students are carefully brushing away leaves and twigs from a patch of ground at the edge of a gravel path. They're looking for the last few small bones of a human skeleton. Clipboard in hand, Kate Driscoll checks off each bone as it's discovered, while Brannon Hulsey places them in a plastic collection bag.
"At this point we're doing pretty well," Driscoll reports. "We're missing about… yeah, about five to ten finger and wrist bones, which is not too bad. Usually you're missing a lot more distal toe phalanges - to the very ends of your toes. They're really small and they get lost very easily."
To find those last few bones, Driscoll and Hulsey use mason's trowels to scrape up a thin layer of topsoil and sift it through a metal screen.
They seem oblivious to the many bodies lying under the trees around them. There are currently more than 160 cadavers interred on the Body Farm, which encompasses just a half-hectare of land. Some are little more than bones, but others are in various stages of decay. It's a gruesome sight but Driscoll says the worst part of her work is the odor. "It's actually not as much as you would expect. But in the height of summer, when you have newly decomposing bodies, it gets pretty stinky," she admits with a laugh. "We're having a good day today."
While working with rotting corpses may not be for everyone, it's a price students like Hulsey and Driscoll are willing to pay for a chance to be involved in cutting edge research.
When it opened in 1981, the Anthropological Research Center was the first facility of its kind in the world, and it is still one of only three such research centers, all in the United States.
Researcher Rebecca Wilson oversees body farm operations, which she says provide extremely important information for law enforcement. "How do we decompose? What do we look like at different stages of decomposition? If I have a body that's been dead for three days, what does that look like and can I tell you it's been dead for three days?"
Graduates of the program have gone on to work with law enforcement agencies around the world, and criminologists come to Tennessee to sharpen their skills. "We work with the National Forensic Academy, as well as the FBI, in training their officers on how to recover remains in an outdoor context; be it on the surface or in a burial environment."
Wilson says the Center also collaborates with law enforcement agencies to research specific crimes. "What we'll do is simulate that scenario – usually a differential decomposition, where something doesn't decompose the way it's expected to," she explains. "Is this natural, or is this because what the perpetrator did? But we will simulate a scenario like that and see if it is related to natural processes, or related to the incident." Just such a project is underway this spring in collaboration with an Australian researcher.
Of course, these studies wouldn't be possible without a steady supply of bodies. Remarkably, all the remains interred at the body farm are donated. "We started our body donation program in 1981," Wilson says. "That year we received 4 donations. Last year we received 116 donations." She says that could be related to those TV crime dramas. "We've seen a significant increase since 2000, which is the same time that your popular television shows have taken off. We have seen an almost exponential increase."
Wilson says it's a diverse group of individuals who donate their bodies to the Center; everyone from a Circuit Court judge to schoolteachers. Once the decomposition of their remains is studied at the body farm, graduate students like Driscoll and Hulsey collect the bones and place them in a permanent research collection housed at the University of Tennessee.
Rebecca Wilson says bones always have a story to tell. With the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Department preparing to move into a new, larger facility, it's a story scientists like Wilson will be better able to tell.
Hulsey and Driscoll use a portable screen to separate tiny bones from the soil of the body farm
Tiny toe bones are easy to miss in the mix of leaves, dirt and gravel
This was mentioned on Fox News earlier today, found it interesting.
Body Farm ping..... isn’t this the place that noted the decomp smell in the Anthony case?
What is the list up to? About 20 of these shows? I am proud to say I have not watched one full episode of any of them. They are incredibly formulaic and boring, IMO.
The same goes for CSI, SVU, and all the other "crime investigation" shows.
Yes, they are the ones that did the air sample analysis............
Yup. The Body Farm was mentioned in the context of the Anthony Case.
Thanks - that was my first thought on seeing the headline. Cool article -
I thoroughly enjoy these shows. I love science. I like seeing how they use science to determine death and ultimately put criminals in prison. If I were younger, I’d seriously look into some form of forensic science to be involved with. Forensic science is an exciting field with a HUGE future.
Thanks for posting this. Attending UT and doing Post-Graduate work at the Body Farm before moving on to a career in Forensics is my Daughter’s dream. She’s 15 now, but has wanted to do this since she was 6, I kid you not.
WOW!
Keep us posted.
That is exciting.
A few years later, after the police had said it needed to be a civil matter, rather than a criminal (??? hit and run?) - she found someone through a magazine article who was the foremost expert in tire tracks for legal cases. He looked at the marks on her daughter's head from the time of the accident, and compared and they found who had hit the four year old child and driven off.
Really interesting stuff and she is now going to school for this very science!
I had to comment on this one, since I live near Knoxville, and have been reading about the body farm for years.
Dr. William Bass founded the farm in the 1970s, is the country’s foremost expert on forensics. He has written a book about how he came to create the farm. I read it years ago (can’t remember the title).
And yes, this facility is the one involved in the Anthony case. Forensics experts across the U.S. use the expertise from the students and Dr. Bass to crack homicide cases.
Now I have a funny story to tell you about the Body Farm. It is one of the most hilarious (true) stories I’ve ever heard.
Back in the early 1990s few people, other than law enforcement officials, knew about the body farm. The first time I read about it was in an article in the “Knoxville News Sentinel” about a breakin at the farm.
A couple of drug addled burglars were out wandering one night looking for something to steal. They came upon this place near the UT campus that had high fencing, and decided there must be something really valuable in there. So, they cut the fence (I believe) and went into the (unknown to them) Body Farm.
The body farm has bodies laying all over the place, so scientists can study the different stages of decomposition in various situations. Therefore they have bodies buried in shallow graves, laying on top of the ground, in car trunks, in shallow bodies of water, etc.
One can only IMAGINE what these burglars thought when they sneak into this place and see all these bodies laying around.
I do remember reading in the article one of the burglars was found the next morning, where he had broken down the door of a shed on the property, underneath a desk with his arms wrapped around his head. The way I remember it he was sitting in a fetal position and rocking back and forth, mumbling something to himself.
Can you IMAGINE what he must have thought? The Night of the Living Dead movie comes to mind. I bet that guy has turned his life of crime around (LOL).
I had to comment on this one, since I live near Knoxville, and have been reading about the body farm for years.
Dr. William Bass founded the farm in the 1970s, is the country’s foremost expert on forensics. He has written a book about how he came to create the farm. I read it years ago (can’t remember the title).
And yes, this facility is the one involved in the Anthony case. Forensics experts across the U.S. use the expertise from the students and Dr. Bass to crack homicide cases.
Now I have a funny story to tell you about the Body Farm. It is one of the most hilarious (true) stories I’ve ever heard.
Back in the early 1990s few people, other than law enforcement officials, knew about the body farm. The first time I read about it was in an article in the “Knoxville News Sentinel” about a breakin at the farm.
A couple of drug addled burglars were out wandering one night looking for something to steal. They came upon this place near the UT campus that had high fencing, and decided there must be something really valuable in there. So, they cut the fence (I believe) and went into the (unknown to them) Body Farm.
The body farm has bodies laying all over the place, so scientists can study the different stages of decomposition in various situations. Therefore they have bodies buried in shallow graves, laying on top of the ground, in car trunks, in shallow bodies of water, etc.
One can only IMAGINE what these burglars thought when they sneak into this place and see all these bodies laying around.
I do remember reading in the article one of the burglars was found the next morning, where he had broken down the door of a shed on the property, underneath a desk with his arms wrapped around his head. The way I remember it he was sitting in a fetal position and rocking back and forth, mumbling something to himself.
Can you IMAGINE what he must have thought? The Night of the Living Dead movie comes to mind. I bet that guy has turned his life of crime around (LOL).
Just read the article before you posted. Really interesting, altho nothing I’m personally interested in. :)
Your story is too funny! Can you jsut imagine the horror stories that break in generated?! BWAHAHA
Interesting.
On a less serious note, have they located Phil Fulmer’s career? The Tennesse football program?
Thanks Phil.
That’s good, he got more than he bargained for. :)
I read about this Body Farm a few years back, very interesting.
I can agree with boring, but I don’t know about formulaic... sometime after I started studying forensic science, my roommate convinced me to watch Bones and CSI with her a few times, and I have mixed feelings on them. CSI is pretty much just laughable, and that’s one of the shows I watch when I just want to veg out and not use my brain for a while. Bones is OK scientifically, but the writing and the relationships between the characters are actually the reason I watch it... I’d probably watch it if it didn’t involve forensics at all. However, I really hate how everything ends up so neatly tied up at the end of most crime-show episodes, and everything works so perfectly. It’s too fake for me, I’d like to see a crime show where they didn’t catch the killer every time.
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