To plot my next murder, I went to the Body Farm

Anecdotally, my dear old Mum (now in her mid-70s) worked as a forensics investigator on the Snowtown murders (aka the "Bodies in the barrels" case) in the final stages of her career. She took some samples to the FBI in the USA as part of her work, and snagged me a cool FBI hoodie and t-shirt (well, I thought so anyway). Quite a morbid and disturbing business to be in, but I feel fortunate to have a parent is such a good role model; she completed her PhD around the age of 50, and had another whole career in scientific research and forensics after that. As I'm heading towards the same age it gives me some hope I can also make a sea-change.

I also learned, after asking some questions about the case, that sometimes you are better off being ignorant of the details. And that some people are really capable of terrible, terrible acts against others. :( Fortunately she had quite the grim sense of humour to help her deal with the cases she worked on.

Great article! I learned a lot about human decomposition, and I'm glad there's a facility out there doing this kind of research.

One nitpick: The author mentions a recent study claiming that cell phone use can cause bone spurs on an individual's head as an example of how quickly our bodies can change while we're still alive (vs what happens over generations and while decomposing):

> Changes in DNA can take generations to occur. By contrast, our skeletons can show widespread changes in as short as 10 years — from the bony protrusions now increasingly common on the back of our skulls (“text necks,” some are calling them) to our increasingly low bone density as we transition from manual labor to office work.

There have been serious deficiencies identified in the original study, from not actually measuring and providing data to back up their claims, studying the wrong thing, and did not have a random, representative sample. This doesn't detract from the main point of the article, but goes to show how easily an inaccurate study can permeate the societal knowledge without being corrected.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smartphones-arent-makin...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/questions-raised-...

I recently read A Dog's heart, by Mikhail Bulgakov. There is a part where he describes the operation on the dog. When I read that part, i told myself there is absolutely no way he could come up with such a vivid description if he had never operated on a live body.

Turns out, the author had been a doctor in world war 2 and had witnessed some terrible things. And they made their way into the book.

I always pretend this body farm doesn’t exist. I think the research is very important, but I don’t like knowing it is a few miles from my office!

I’m a professor at UTK, where the farm is located.

For anyone who liked this article, I can recommend Mary Roach's "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" (2003) [1]. A fantastic book about what happens to human bodies after death. Part of the book is about visiting a body farm. She's a funny, very talented writer.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32145.Stiff

This is interesting stuff, for sure.

But a key word doesn't appear in TFA: "motive".

No matter how well you hide/burn/dissolve/etc the remains of anyone with whom you have a relationship, you'll be a suspect. You can try to fake an alibi, and obscuring the time of death does help with that. However, any evidence for that having been done may implicate those with motives, because a random serial killer likely wouldn't bother.

That's why most unsolved murders involve ~random selection of victims.

That's a well-placed cliffhanger at the end

Quote: "I finally hit on a possible scenario during my last afternoon. I ran my idea by Jantz. She told me she thought it was deeply disturbing but also brutally effective. I went home and got to work."

Yeah, everybody whom watched Breaking Bad knows it too. It involves 2 barrels of plastic and acid.

You're right about the need for hard evidence to back up unsubstantiated medical claims. Sometimes crooked doctors actually make fake diagnoses of bone spurs as favors to their draft-dodging patients.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/...