The Body Farm: Forensic Science

"Death's Acre" revisits the legendary career of a real-life forensic hero, Dr. Bill Bass. He created the famous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee, which is the world's only research facility devoted to studying postmortem human decomposition. The study, hard work, and research data gathered at the Body Farm has helped Bass and many other forensic scientists and police solve many gruesome murders and put away some particularly brutal, scary killers. The book is structured mostly around these criminal cases, which give it a gritty true-crime feel, but it also sinks into Dr. Bass's own life, and expresses

Dr. William Bass is considered to be the Leonardo da Vinci in the field of forensic anthropology. Famous for creating the Anthropology Research Facility, to the majority of us known as the Body Farm, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Born in Staunton, Virginia, Bass received a BA in psychology from the University of Virginia in 1951, an MS in anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1956. Thus, half a decade he received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961. Originally the thought of anthropology didn’t cross Bass it was until his junior year of college is when he changed majors to anthropology thanks to his mentor Dr. Charlie Snow, who introduced him out on his own forensic case to analyze a corpse

The book gave me an abundance of information from an expert medical examiner that I thought were essential to the determination of a person’s death. I have also read many books from 24/7 and I really take interest in the style of which the book is written in, therefore, knowing that I was going to like this selection. This book gave me a sense of definition as to what my passion will be from the cover and title itself: forensics. Ultimately, I was drawn in by the overall subject, the questions I had, and what information I was eager to learning from this

Forensic anthropologist examine skeletal remains for elements of a skeleton that can give clues to the person it belongs to. The Kennewick man’s skeleton was found in surprisingly good condition meaning the damage to the skeleton was done in his life, not due to deterioration. The skeleton showed a projectile point lodged in his hip, five broken ribs that did not properly heal, two small dents in his skull, and a bum shoulder. These wounds show an insight to the lifestyle

You are probably thinking Death 's Acre is a strange name for a book. And that a skull is a weird covering as well. So if you have not read the summary on the back of the book already you probably don 't know anything about the book and you are confused right now. So Death 's Acre is not only about the body farm in the hills of Tennessee for which forensics students study, but also about Dr. Bill Bass and his strange accounts in the forensic world with murders and anthropology. This book will take you places you have never been and as a reader I really suggest you read it.

In the Kathy Reich’s novel, Deja Dead, a Forensic Anthropologist, named Dr. Temperance Brennan, recently moved to the Canadian province of Quebec to escape her divorce. There, Dr. Brennan works for the “Laboratoire de Medecine Legale”, a coroner’s office in the city of Montreal. The novel begins when Dr. Brennan is called to investigate bones found by two Quebec water workers at an abandoned monastery. At the scene, Dr. Brennan discovers the meticulously mutilated and dismembered remains of a female stashed in a series of trash bags. As the novel progresses, Dr. Brennan begins to notice a pattern amongst the remains brought to her lab: all victims were female, most dismembered with similar methods of disposal and evidence of mutilation.

In the Casey Anthony case Jeff Ashton who is a former state attorney in Orange county Florida, and also the first prosecutor in the United States to get a conviction based on DNA decided to use a new Forensic method in the Anthony case. The smell of death would be the allowed as evidence for the first time ever. In the trunk of Anthony’s car was a stained area on the carpet and an odor. Ashton stated that the smell was that of human decomposition. That piece of carpet was removed, sealed and sent to Dr. Vass, a forensic anthropologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Voss has been studying human decomposition at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm”.

The theme of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is: there are many ethical, social, and medical issues surrounding advancements in science. The following quote supports this theme because it demonstrates to social issues in the New York political system. The coroners were hand chosen by a city’s mayor; typically the mayors chose a political friend or ally to occupy the coroner’s office, rather than a medically trained individual. Thanks to shady, ill-informed, untrained, and occasionally drunk coroners, murderers continually walked free. In the subsequent case, the Mors murder case, the coroner’s misinformation resulted in a lack of evidence

This truth forms an essential link between the enforcement of law and protection of the public in the administration of justice.” Forensic pathology is clearly a crucial role in the justice system. You have to be a little weird and crazy to have a passion for the kind of work that the coroners and M.E. go through on an everyday basis. They use past knowledge to make decisions on how death occurred and they come across many different postmortem changes in dead bodies. Every field is important in forensics, but pathology advocates for truth and justice to dead

I have always loved suspenseful whodunit television shows, movies, and books that use forensic science to crack the cases. My favorite television show is The First 48, my favorite movie is The Silence of the Lambs, and my favorite book is The Body Farm. Therefore, I was excited to have the opportunity to take this course and learn even more about the subject of forensics. This essay gives a summary of N. E. Genge’s book, The Forensic Casebook: The Science of Crime Scene Investigation, and includes the things I disliked and liked about the book.

This book was probably one of the most interesting yet disturbing book that I have ever read. The process of getting cadavers to study has not only been extremely difficult throughout the years, but it has also tested the morales of many people. Whether its stealing people from the grave, or even hiring hit men to kill for you just so you can have a fresh body. In my paper I am going to talk about the topics that really it me, and that I either found really intriguing or disturbing.

But how do you tell what the bodies are getting to? I’ll tell you! There are forensic scientists that study bodies and then try to figure out how, when, where, and why whoever had this body, died! And how do these scientists do it, you ask? I don’t know! But what I do know, is that the scientists look at the height and weight of the skeletons, and then determine what age they were, so that they can then identify who the person was, and what they looked like. By doing this these special scientists

To some, the idea of entering a scene full of blood and corpses may cause them to retreat in shock, but to others, including myself, it will draw their attention. This scene is full of opportunities to uncover the criminal, aid the family of the victim, and help the general public feel safer in their own homes. This program offers a course to learn about the field of forensics. I remember watching shows like CSI and NCIS and being fascinated by what went on. As I grew older, I recognized that it was a Hollywood view of the field and it glamorized the process, making it fit into an hours worth of television time.

The rarity of the mummification event strengthens the usefulness of this report to the field of forensics science. Since mummification is a rare event it is difficult to study urban mummification experimentally, therefore the presence of this case report will serve as a guideline for forensic scientists interested in the study of mummification (Rogers 2015). Furthermore, this case study also establishes suggestions such as accounting for socioeconomic factor and human behavior of the decedents in urban mummification cases (Harding and Wolf 2015). This case report also emphasizes on involving multidisciplinary agencies for the investigation of rare cases which can be used as a future direction for the progression of research of urban mummification (Harding and Wolf

Crime scenes and human skeletal evidence are analogous. This is because they both tell stories of past occurrences. The crime scene reveals what happened before, during and after a crime is committed. The human skeleton also provides information on the ancestry, disease pattern, and the cause of death of a person (murder or natural causes). In Ghana, the layperson does not know what happens at crime scenes and how human skeletal evidence can be used to solve crimes. This study is therefore aimed at providing information on how the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) conduct crime scene investigations and how human skeletal evidence has been used to solve crimes.