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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk and I am absolutely loving it.
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Visit audible.com slash morbid. Some cases fade from headlines.
Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.
Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.
Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now. wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena, and this is a solo mini-morbid.
Mini, mini, mini, mini, mini morbid. Mini morbid, mini morbid, mini morbid.
Yes, you heard that right. I am by myself today.
Ash had a prior engagement that... would not allow her any time to record.
So instead of depriving our listeners of the three episodes we promised this week... we decided that I should just put two more mini episodes out myself.
And Ash will join us this coming week for her Kurt Cobain extravaganza.
So you're stuck with me, just Elena. So we're going to see how this goes.
For those of you who hate our banter and hate...
When we get off track, that won't be a problem in this episode because I'm alone.
So I can only go so far off of our topic.
So this is a mini episode. So I'm going to shout out the Patreons on our next episode.
So hang tight. Again, sorry, this is like a weird week.
Kurt Cobain is coming next week. We just wanted to do that one right.
So instead of depriving you of episodes this week, we just figured this was the best way to do it because we promise content.
We're going to give content. So there's really not a whole lot of business that I want to get to on this mini episode because...
It's kind of weird to be by myself, so I just kind of jump into the story.
So today I am going to be covering The Body Farm.
Some of you may have gotten the hint that I left on our Instagram and our social media.
I left the book by Dr. Bill Bass with a foreword by Patricia Cornwell, Death's Acre.
It's about him. He's the founder, creator, brainchild behind the first Body Farm.
So he's pretty amazing. And his book basically explains how this came to be. how he thought of this, his career before it, his career during and after.
It's a really good read. It's actually one of my favorite books.
I think I mentioned that when I mentioned that everybody should go read it.
But definitely go find it, Death's Acre.
It's a great book. So I think what we're going to do here is...
I'm going to give you just a little insight on what actually happens when you die, so you have an idea of why this is so important, this research.
And a lot of people don't know exactly what happens when you die.
We'll go over it kind of generally. I'm not going to go into crazy detail.
But we're going to go over what happens when you die, maybe talk about how remains can be identified, sex, gender, age. body type and then we're going to talk about the body farm and I'm going to let you know exactly what that is. how it came to be, any of the obstacles that it has faced in its creation, which it has faced a few. and basically why we need it.
So here we go. So what happens when you die?
I mean physically. We have no idea what happens metaphysically or anything like that.
But a lot happens physically. And most of it, if not all of it, is gross as fuck.
Like there isn't a point where you look great.
It's all bad, but it's all pretty fascinating, too.
Body farms allow scientists to study... decay of the human body in a natural setting as well as being able to set up different settings to watch how a decomposing body changes when the environment around it changes you know this can be the climate, it can just be the situation that the body was placed into.
It can be a number of things. And one of the most interesting things is the entomology of a decaying body because entire insect populations can actually be, you know, come into creation because of the presence of a corpse, or it can completely wipe out a whole insect population just because of its presence.
And I mean, decaying bodies also affect vegetation surrounding it. affects the flora and the fauna because digestive enzymes are going to leak out of a dead body, unfortunately.
And that can actually kill part of the ecosystem around it or it can make it flourish.
So pretty interesting. Now let's just let's talk about it right at the time of death.
As soon as your heart stops, your body loses oxygen. which is no good, no bueno.
That means all your cells and tissues just stop getting that oxygen, and that's death.
That's cell death, that's body death. The first cells to die are brain cells.
That's usually within three to seven minutes.
Interestingly, bone and skin cells can actually survive for several days after your body has died.
So that's pretty creepy and cool. Now, after this, blood begins draining from the capillaries, and it will pool in the lower parts of your body thanks to gravity.
This wonderful thing is called Liver Mortis.
I'm sure some of you may have heard of it, maybe watching CSI or... in your own research.
Basically liver mortis looks like big red or purple splotches that will settle in various parts of the body. it always settles in the lowest parts of the body with the rest of the body, you know, remaining pale or turning that fun green, bluey color.
So liver mortis will tell us where the body laid close to death.
So it can tell you. whether a body has been moved post-mortem and when it was moved post-mortem, which is really interesting.
Because just by looking at those things, if a body is laying on its face and there's big splotches of liver mortis all over its backside...
You know that body was dumped there afterwards because that body was definitely laying on its back for a while.
So what's interesting about our bodies is we can give a lot away.
Like murderers, sure. Murderers are very cunning and can get away with a lot of stuff.
But they can't trick medical examiners when it comes to how our body naturally decays.
So everyone also probably knows the term rigor mortis.
That's probably the one that everybody's most familiar with.
Rigor mortis is the stiffening of the joints and muscles, basically.
It sets in about three hours after death, and it's going to last about one to four days, really depending on environmental factors and such. cold, hot, wet, not wet.
It all kind of can have an effect on it.
After rigor mortis, and again, rigor mortis can be broken.
We've had to break rigor mortis during an autopsy before.
It's basically just a big crunch, and you have to really put some elbow grease into it, but...
It can be done. The next stage after that is algor mortis.
That basically is just what happens when the body loses all its internal heat.
That's when the body becomes cold. That's going to happen within 24 hours because everybody knows dead bodies are cold, but that doesn't happen right away.
A lot of people think you die, all of a sudden you're this ice cold corpse.
Because in a lot of movies you see like, oh no, the body is cold and it happened like four minutes ago.
No. Within 24 hours, you're going to get pretty cold.
So as all the cells are dying, something else is going on.
Bacteria within the body begins breaking them down.
So enzymes in the pancreas are actually the craziest ones because they'll actually cause the organ to digest itself.
Like that's happening inside your body as you die.
The pancreas is just so metal. I can't even handle it. the microbes in the intestine also start eating you up as well.
And they will also start eating up the bacteria in the soil.
So this is when you really start to look the part of dead.
You know, we've all seen that. Before that, you're just kind of at the dress rehearsal, but now is when you really shine.
This is when you start to look gruesome as hell and you gonna start to smell.
You see, gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide are gonna start to emit from you.
That gas is gonna cause your body to bloat.
And I don't mean like bloat, like I had six pieces of pizza and a bag of chips.
Bloat. I mean like nasty. there's a ton of gas in you bloat your eyes are going to start to bulge out of their sockets And because of all this gas and bloat and pressure and just delicious symphony of... physiology going on inside of you your tongue is going to start to swell and it's going to start to protrude from your mouth so honey you're going to look great Because you know what you do next?
You turn colors. So that's fun. First you're going to be green, then you're going to be purple, and then you're going to turn straight up black.
So this is when, after you've turned all these colors, this is when your lungs are going to start to expel fluid through your mouth and nose as well.
So you're going through it at this point.
You really are. I don't really know what else to say.
There's just a lot going on. At this point, because you're so delicious, insects and animals are now starting, they're starting to notice you.
All of a sudden, all these heads are turning and they're like, who is this snack over here?
Because there's just a lot of delicious putrefying going on and they'll just come running.
But they're going to come running in shifts. they don't all just bombard they don't want to overwhelm you with their affection so they're going to come in shifts Now, the first type of insect to arrive at a dead body is usually the blowfly.
I believe the fancy Latin name is the caleforidae.
But we're going to call it a blowfly because we're simple.
They're attracted to body fluids and gases, which who isn't?
You know what I mean? They're going to lay eggs within two days after your death, and it's going to go through the developmental stages of egg, larval stage, pre-pupil, and then pupal stage.
And then they're going to be grown ass bullflies.
Now, when they look at what stage of development a blowfly is at on a dead body, this can help investigators, forensic anthropologists. determine how long that corpse has been lying undetected.
So again, It's not just you physically that's helping investigators tell your story.
It's going to be your... you know, really gross friends that show up after you die too.
They're going to help you out. So that's nice.
So be nice to flies. Different environmental conditions are going to affect how soon after death the blowflies arrive, so that can, you know, put a little bit of a...
That can put a little bit of a wrench in the wheel of trying to figure out how long you've been there.
But they can also, investigators and forensic anthropologists, they can all... take environmental factors into account when they're looking at what stage they're in.
So they're pretty good at that. This is also going to change how soon the maggots develop.
And maggots are the larvae that emerge from the blowfly eggs.
Everybody knows what maggots are. You may not know, they're like very efficient.
They're very efficient and very thorough flesh eaters. which may not sound like the best title to you, but they take a lot of pride in it, and they do a good job.
And I appreciate people who are good at what they do.
So good job, maggots. So they're going to start on the outside of the body because that's where they're going to hatch out of the eggs.
And they use mouths that have hooks on them.
Yes, maggots have hooks on their mouth, which is kind of terrifying.
And they use those hooks to... Get ready because it's going to get gross here, guys.
Like, hang on. Hang on tight. It's an Elena episode, so.
You know, these hooks are going to scoop up the fluids that are oozing out of you at this point.
And within about a day, maybe 24 hours, the maggots are going to have entered the second stage of their larval lives.
And that's when they're going to start burrowing into you.
I've actually read a couple of books where...
You know, a corpse kind of explodes or some puncture happens and maggots just kind of flow out from them like gumballs and...
I want to say I read that in another great book which I'm going to tell you guys to go take a look at.
It's called Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand. which is the greatest title for a book ever.
Curious Adventures of a CSI, and it's by Dana Coleman.
That's a great book. It tells her whole life as a CSI investigator, and she has some great stories, which involve maggots.
So maggots all move around together. They're very social nasties, and... while they're eating the decaying flesh, they're going to spread enzymes that will actually help to turn the body into Goo?
I don't really know how else to explain it.
They're going to turn you into goo. So...
So that's going to happen. And another fun little fact about maggots is...
Where they breathe is actually at the other end of its body.
So it's got a mouth on one end with hooks that are scooping up all this yummy flesh.
And then it's breathing out of its ass. So what that does is it allows it to continuously eat very efficiently. while also breathing, which is important.
And to be honest, I mean, I'm kind of wondering why humans weren't built that way.
I know we have a nose and everything. But I have a deviated septum.
I can't really breathe that well. So when I'm eating, I'm not breathing efficiently.
And if I could just breathe out of my ass, I think that would be great.
I don't know. Maybe I'm alone in this. I'm sitting in a room alone.
So let me know. Would you want to be able to eat and simultaneously breathe at the same time, possibly out of your ass?
Let me know. Either way, that makes maggots very... Exactly how efficient, you might be wondering?
Or you might not be, I don't know. They start this whole thing, the first stage of larva is about two millimeters long.
And by the time it goes through the third stage, and pieces out of the body as a prepupa, it's going to be about 10 times that initial size.
So it does a lot of eating and they can actually consume up to 60% of a human body in under a week.
These things are no joke. Like we should have maggots like as CEOs running companies because they get shit done.
So the next stage of insects that are going to come to the party happens as the body decays because of microbial fermentation.
So now flesh flies. Crazy, fancy name, Sarcophagidae?
Call them flesh flies. That's actually really hard to say.
Flesh flies. Don't call them flesh fries because they're not.
So the flesh flies are now going to be attracted to this microbial fermentation that's going on.
And the microbial fermentation is basically what's going on in the gut.
And like I said, the maggots are leaving these enzymes that are gonna be breaking things down. turning you into that delicious goo.
And this is what the flesh flies are getting attracted to, is this whole... gaseous gooey process that's going on who doesn't love that so after the flesh flies come and they do their thing Beatles are going to come because they are interested in the decomposition of body fat.
That's when they're like, hmm, hey girl, and they start coming.
Now those are the main ones that we're going to talk about but there's also a couple of other species that are going to pop over after those main ones are done.
They're referred to as necrophagous species and they're also called carrion feeders.
They're flies and beetles, basically. And they just eat dead flesh.
There's a lot of different species that do eat dead flesh besides the flesh flies and the blow flies. but these ones are going to come later.
Now after these ones come, There's a whole other layer to this.
It's not just all of these insects feeding on you.
Next we have the rove beetles, which are called, fancy name, Staphylindae.
And these roe beetles are actually predatory on the carrion feeders.
So the carrion feeders, like the flies and the beetles that are eating the dead flesh, these rove beetles are actually eating those insects.
So there's this whole circle of life going on while you lay there dead.
Now at the later stages of decomposition...
There's going to be more beetles coming, and these ones are called the dermistidae.
Dermistidae? I'm a bug expert. Let me know.
I'm killing these names. And after these guys show up...
The Hesteridae may also come. And these ones are eating the Dermestidae.
So there's just all these layers of beetles that...
One beetle comes, a blowfly comes, or some kind of fly.
They come to eat you. The next set comes to eat those insects.
And then the next ones come to eat you. The next ones come to eat those ones.
So it's like this pileup of carnivorous just delight happening on you while you're dying.
Or excuse me. While you're dead and decomposing and have no idea about all the fun that's happening outside of you.
Like we said before, the environment in which a dead body is put is also going to have an effect on its decay. how fast it decomposes, how it decomposes, whether it decomposes at all.
Like bodies in water decompose at least twice as fast as those left just out in the open on land.
Decomposition is slowest underground so buried bodies definitely decompose slower.
Mostly ones that are left in clay or other really solid earth objects.
You know, the kind of thing that like prevents any kind of air or oxygen from reaching the body. those ones are going to stay preserved longer because a lot of bacteria requires oxygen to survive.
So if no air is coming into that body, there's no oxygen for that bacteria to thrive and start making enzymes, digesting your organs and turning you into goo.
Obviously, once we've taken away all this fleshy loveliness and the body turns skeletal.
That can complicate things significantly because the normal physical qualities that identify someone have now been decayed away.
But don't worry, because forensic anthropologists are basically magic wizards.
And they can determine somebody's age, sex, race, and body type just by looking at a corpse's bones.
Now, this normally, when it comes to skeletal remains of children who are pre-adolescent, it's pretty hard to identify the sex of that child.
Because at that point... In your skeletal development, there's not a lot of things that separate you two from each other when it comes to just bones, obviously.
The easy and most generalized way to detect the gender of an adult skeleton, however, is just to look at the size of the bones.
Male's bones just tend to be larger. And the places where muscle attachments and connections are made tend to also be larger on males as well.
The huge difference between men and women's skeletons are definitely their pelvic bones.
You're going to see an obvious difference in size of the pelvic inlet, which is the space inside of the pelvic bone.
If you're looking at it, it's kind of that little, it's an inlet.
It's exactly what it looks like. That's going to be bigger on women.
And raise your hand if you know why. It aids in the birthing process.
Obviously we're not all going to use those inlets, but they're there in case we want to.
So when it comes to the bones, sure, there's some ways that we can determine between men and women. look at age and all that.
But skulls are what are very handy for determining sex and age particularly.
When you look at a skull in profile, so you look from the side of a skull, female skulls are going to have a rounded forehead.
Male skulls are going to have a less rounded and more slopey forehead.
It's going to slope backwards at kind of like a gentler angle.
Also the ridge along the brow. So the brow ridge is going to be very prominent in males, which you can see, you know, just by looking at a male face.
Just look at the male near you. You got a male near you, look at him.
So that brow ridge in a male is obviously going to be much more prominent than in females.
In females, it tends to be smoother. Obviously, this can... you know, change somewhat.
But in general, it's always going to be smoother in females.
It's always going to be more prominent in males.
This ridge you will sometimes see referred to as the supraorbital ridge because it sits above the eyes which tend to be called the orbits, the place where those eyes sit.
Now females also tend to have, and this is a really interesting difference because when you see a skull, it's very obvious when you know to look for this.
Females do have rounder eye sockets with sharp edges in the upper corners.
And male skulls have square orbits with really blunt upper eye margins.
When you look at two skulls, a male and a female, you'll notice it.
I'm going to post some skulls on the... the Instagram page so you guys can kind of see how, like, if you know what you're looking for, you can really tell the difference because...
Sometimes skulls all look alike, but when you know what you're looking for, you're like, oh shit, you're right.
That is a much rounder eye than a male skull, you know?
So... And then there's the other stuff that you might know already.
Males have a square jawline for the most part.
And the line between the outer edge of the jaw and the ear is vertical. and female's jaw is much more pointed and the edge of the jaw slopes towards the ear.
When we're looking at young children, things can get a little wonky.
But we're really, forensic anthropologists are really looking for whether or not teeth have come in and which ones have come in.
That's going to help them. to determine a child's skull.
Obviously, that's not going to do anything With older skulls, but it really does.
That's the thing they're really looking for in children's skulls because that's really the main marker.
Now, when we're looking at whether someone is an older, younger person, not necessarily prepubescent, But if we're looking at an older person, their rib, the ends of an older person's ribs are going to be more ragged.
At the end, like where they meet the cartilage that connects them to the sternum.
So the more ragged the ribs are, the more older that body is going to be.
It's just – that's just something that happens with age, which is like –
When you really think about it, you're like, awesome.
So my ribs just start shredding as I get older.
Yeah, pretty much. so that's how they're going to tell if you old now once we figure out the you know the sex the age you know, all that good stuff, that's when they can look at bone measurements and they can start to figure out somebody's height weight and obviously it's going to be approximate because they're just going off of bones here but it's amazing how close they can really get which i'm sure people know Now that we've talked about what happens when you die, what kind of flying friends come and feast on you when you die, how we can tell how old you are, what your birth sex is and what, you know, if you were a bodybuilder or really small.
I think we should talk about the body farm now.
So the first body farm was, which is a officially known as the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility. was opened by Dr. William Bass in 1971.
Now, according to that book that I told you guys to go run out and grab, Deathsaker, A Tennessee prosecutor actually suggested that they name the body farm the Bass Anthropology Research Facility.
Yes, that acronym is BARF. And for those of us who work with death and dead bodies for our day jobs, that's a big hearty har har.
And also extraordinarily accurate. So...
I thought that was like a fun little thing.
So Dr. Bass recognized the need for research into human decomposition after police kept asking for his help analyzing bodies in criminal cases.
So he figured there's got to be a way that we can research this to better aid investigators because They're always calling him.
He's always running out to these specific scenes.
He's always trying to help them out. If he could just do the research on his own, he could already have the answers ready.
Or he could at least have a place that would allow him to run experiments.
Because there's just. so many variables.
Now it started as a pretty small area, the body farm.
It basically had only one body that they were working on. named 81-1, and it soon turned into a three-acre complex. that has the remains of about 40 individuals at any one time inside of it.
The facility became famous and gained its name after it inspired Patricia Cornwell's 1995 novel, The Body Farm.
That's also a great book. And personally, I love Patricia Cornwell, have all her books, read them all.
Totally recommend her if you're into crime fiction, which I tend to be very picky when it comes to fiction books.
The other great thing with Patricia Cornwell, she does a lot of research for her books, obviously, which we will go into actually in a minute. she really puts herself in these positions.
So all of her, the medical stuff, All of the criminal stuff is all very, very true to life.
She makes sure she gets everything accurate which I appreciate.
So where do the bodies come from that are all laying around the body farm?
You might be asking, or you might not be.
When Dr. Basque first started the body farm, he just used unclaimed bodies from the medical examiner's office, which...
I'm telling you guys, you'd be surprised how many bodies go unclaimed, especially at the medical examiner's office at any one time.
Sad but true. So they, I mean, they were using those ones because if you're unclaimed, you might as well, you know, aid in scientific research.
Later, people did start donating their bodies to facilities and now that's how it is done.
When it first opened, it wasn't like everybody around this body farm was like, wow, what a great place for scientific research because I don't know if anybody has seen the world today but not everybody is immediately open to science or scientific research.
And especially when it has to do with decomposing bodies laying behind fences just in the open.
So in the book Deathsaker, Bass does talk about one protest that happened really early on. in the construction of the body farm.
And this group that came to protest were called Solutions to Issues of Concern in Naqta. of Knoxvillians.
Yes, that is sick for short. They picketed in front of the entrance to the body farm, complete with a giant, huge, banner across the front entrance fence of the facility that read, quote, this makes us sick.
I'm annoyed because science, but Dr. Bill Bass has like a great sense of humor that outreaches mine apparently.
Because in his book, he said when he pulled up to this protest, he said he had to, like, chuckle at the cleverness of the phrase because...
I mean, you have to kind of give them a little credit for that.
But I guess what happened to strike this protest up in the first place was that, and this is kind of funny.
This young guy was on a survey crew. Now, this survey crew was actually in the process of taking half of Bill Bass's land that he thought he had for the body farm, and they were turning it into a parking lot expansion.
So this kid who was on the survey crew took a lunch break one day and he ended up sitting right next to some rotting corpses unintentionally.
So he went home. He bitched to his mom, who happened to be a member of Sick and Boom.
So this little bitch causes a protest. Luckily, all it took was the installation of a huge fence around the facility to please them, though.
So they were pretty easy to just be like, all right, here we go.
You can't see anything. Everything's fine.
Now, some citizens in San Marcos, Texas, where there is another body farm facility, were not psyched either when they learned that Texas State University was planning on having a body farm.
The concerns that were raised were basically regarding smell, what it was going to look like.
And they were worried about coyotes and other predators redistributing decaying body parts around town. which sounds like a kind of a valid concern.
So when the new site was proposed... The construction was actually halted before it even began because they were worried mainly about buzzards.
Because people were thinking that the body farm was going to attract buzzards and other birds of prey, vultures, all that good stuff.
Texas State University finally made everybody chill because they said the body farm would be located within a 3,000-acre property. and would be at least a mile away from any properties that even come close to bordering the site.
And the isolation and privacy was what satisfied everybody.
So I mean, as long as these facilities can convince people that they're not going to have decaying body parts on their back lawn and they're not going to smell it.
I think people are generally okay. But another really common fear that's associated with body farms is contamination or disease spreading.
Which, I mean, you can kind of get. It's a valid fear.
A lot of people just immediately think dead body.
They think dead body is just spread malaria all over the place.
But you don't really have a lot to worry about here either, and I'll tell you why.
Many farms don't accept any bodies that test positive for any infectious diseases.
These bodies have to be clean. Also, anyone who is going to be working with the corpses in any way. any proximity with these corpses has to have a round of vaccinations that will prevent them from catching hepatitis, tetanus, any of these pathogens that people are commonly worried about.
What's funny, though, is that the bodies themselves actually kind of prevent this whole thing from even being a problem to begin with.
Because these bodies, as they putrefy, during the putrefaction process, disease-causing organisms are also decomposing and putrefying. which completely kills them.
They're totally harmless. putrefaction process and decomposing process actually eliminates the fear of disease being spread.
But again, it's a totally valid fear that I understand people who don't have a whole lot of... super like intricate knowledge of the decomposition process probably wouldn't know so it makes sense What's exciting now is that this started in Tennessee at a university, really small, and one guy doing it with this small research team, and now there are body farms all over.
Which is awesome because it's necessary to have them all over because not everywhere has the same climate or environmental conditions.
So... So there's no common set of standards or guidelines that they have to adhere to as a body farm, right?
Really, there's just security, safety, privacy, all those guidelines they do have to.
But the facilities vary in size, like Western Carolina University's Body Farm is...
59 feet squared and it's a really built to hold about six to ten bodies at a time which that's still a great facility.
But the University of Tennessee, the original one, now holds about, like we said, 40 bodies and covers nearly three acres.
And Texas, of course, has a bigger body farm.
The body farm at the University of Texas San Marcos. covers about five acres.
And it really kind of depends on what kind of facility and land they have available to them.
Obviously, like we've discussed, you really have to make sure that these body farms are not... sitting in the middle of a residential area or anything.
They have to be in a place. that you can reasonably tell the citizens of that area that they're not going to be affected by it.
Now, besides just varying in size and varying in how many bodies they can hold at one time, Each facility also kind of has a different focus.
So the Tennessee, the original Body Farm... kind of has a really broad range of research that they go into.
They do it under all conditions, buried, unburied. submerged in water, out in the open, in trunks of cars, inside of other parts of cars.
I mean they literally will run the gamut.
The Body Farm at Western Carolina. really likes to focus on decomposition in their environment, so in the mountainous region of the Carolinas.
So they like to focus on what happens in that atmosphere.
Texas's Body Farm. really likes to focus on their regional climate as well.
So they're really looking to see what happens in desert-like climates. like forensic anthropologists from states like New Mexico, Arizona, All these kind of places.
They look to Texas to tell them what kind of research they have been able to compile about decomposition and desert climate.
And like we said before, the more body farms across the nation, the better because Any given environment really gives us more information about every kind of situation that you can find decomposed corpse in. which is important because we're not all decomposing in, you know, Tennessee or in like, there's going to be people everywhere.
But when you look at places like Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, there's going to be specific problems that are... arising with people decomposing in those areas that aren't happening over in you know the northeast It's important to be able to have a set of data that will span this entire nation's environmental conditions.
Ideally, they're actually really looking to have a body farm in each state. which would be phenomenal, and I would like to raise my hand and... volunteer as tribute not to be a corpse in the body farm just yet but i would love to get the one for massachusetts going so hi pick me i'm the one So what happens when a body farm takes in a corpse?
Do they just toss it on out into the back, you know, throw it in a car? throw it out into the back of the, whatever, how many acres they have.
So when a facility gets a body, It's obviously refrigerated, placed in a refrigerator, like in a morgue.
The body is then assigned an identifying number, just like that very first one was 81...
They all get a number. They are then placed in very specific location in the farm.
The location of each of these corpses... is logged, it is mapped, they know exactly who is where, and those identifying numbers are very important for that.
The researchers and students that work with these corpses and in these farms actually get a really good lesson on how to... deal with chain of custody, chain of evidence, because they really have to make sure that they know who is where and what is going on and what conditions go with each body.
Just like it's in a criminal case, it's really important for investigators to keep a chain of evidence.
We've talked about that on many of our cases. not maintaining a chain of evidence in anything like this can be catastrophic.
It can totally change the way that everything goes.
And in research, it's even more imperative, I feel, because it can change the research completely.
So each of these bodies that they put in the farm, logged, located, mapped, all that good stuff...
They're all allowed to decompose for a varied amount of time in a varied amount of ways, like we've talked about.
That's when the students and researchers get a lot of practice locating remains. collecting evidence from the scene, and removing the remains from the area safely.
Once they are removed, once they've gone through their... proper decomposing scenario that they are made for.
The remains are taken to the lab. Everything is kind of analyzed there like further from what they... Anything they couldn't analyze in the field, they analyze in the lab.
And when that is done... The corpse, which is likely a skeleton by now, it might be returned to the family for burial, but...
That's only if it's requested. Sometimes it's not.
Sometimes they don't really... They don't need the remains back.
They're happy to... donate completely to science.
And if that is the case, then the remains will stay with the department's collection of skeletons.
Because even years later, they can use these remains to solve cases.
So if you're donating to science, you're really...
You have a lasting legacy. In fact, at the University of Tennessee, I keep saying it, but the original body farm.
It has a collection of skeletal remains in its care of more than 700 people.
So 700 people killed. completely donated themselves to science in Tennessee.
That's pretty awesome. That gives me like so much hope for the future.
So you might be wondering the bodies that are laid out in the open.
What happens to them in respect of, you know, scavengers?
Sure, they have really tall fences. But what about birds and shit that can scale those fences?
I know, I was worried. I was like, what the hell do they do with that?
Because... I know sometimes that maybe they will have scenarios where they're looking to see what scavengers will do to a body.
But if they're not looking for that and they're looking for a more clean way, they will. some of the bodies with like wire cages if they're leaving them out in the open.
And that stops animals from, you know, doing... doing things to the body that will kind of skew the natural decomposition process that they're looking for.
This actually takes care of the problem that the people in Texas were so worried about with like buzzards and coyotes and stuff just taking body parts and... scaling a fence and running away with them.
I mentioned earlier that Patricia Cornwell wrote the foreword for Death's Acre and that she actually used the term body farm. for her novel, The Body Farm, which is a great novel.
So in the summer of 1993, when she was beginning to write this novel...
She contacted Dr. Bass to ask about decomposition, which at this point in 1993, he was very used to this, like I said.
A lot of investigations were coming to him for help or decomposition questions, but So Patricia Cornwell came to him because, and I mentioned earlier, she likes to get things really right.
So she came to him to ask about decomp because she had... a decomposing corpse in her story.
In her story, she was having her killer move a body from a basement somewhere else.
And she needed to know what kind of changes to decomp this move might cause.
So this actually was the thing that set Dr. Bass. into researching more various types of situation when it came to death and decomposition.
Because initially, like I said, they only had a few bodies in the original body farm.
And I think they were mostly doing natural decomposition.
They weren't throwing people into cars or anything like that. or doing very situational things.
They were just kind of really looking at the natural decomp.
But this kind of made him think and be like, huh, what would happen if a killer left a body in a basement on concrete? and then moved it outside.
And it kind of got him rolling on these more traumatic death situations and how to look at them from an anthropological point of view.
So in the fall of that same year, 1993, Dr. Bass took her around the farm himself to show her in the flesh so to speak, exactly how decomp happened in the various stages that she was interested in putting in her book.
So he took her there and said, you can look right at it.
So this is the best way to describe decomp is to look at it yourself.
Then they did an exact replication of the scene she was looking to write for her book and gave her the research.
So him and his team literally set up the situation, props and all, because I think she had the person like laying on a coin.
And had like a key in there or something like that.
There was various things this person was laying on that was like evidence.
And they actually put these things under this corpse. and actually did the whole thing so they could tell her exactly what it would look like.
And then they gave her the full research at the end.
In return, This is when she told him that she was naming the book The Body Farm.
He said, quote, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
It's not just authors that are interested in Dr. Bass's creation.
And not even just local law enforcement agencies, the FBI has really started to become really interested in this.
Because the University of Tennessee, like I said before, does reproductions of crime scenes and crime scene scenarios using bodies, they are actually starting to do it with bodies designated specifically for FBI training and research.
FBI teams. every now and then will perform excavations at the body farm just to like sharpen their, you know, their skills when it comes to corpse... identifying and bone identifying all these skills that they're going to need.
The FBI has also raised the possibility of testing ground-penetrating radar at the facility, and that would help them find bodies that were buried under concrete. which is something that was just in the news, actually, and it's interesting.
I know you guys knew about the Maura Murray... you know, supreme slap in the face this week where investigators, the FBI. were all in that particular house, and they were using ground penetrating radar to see if there was remains under the concrete.
It ended up being nothing. So unfortunately, trust me, we have all grieved that because I really thought it was going to be it.
But it's just interesting that was the technology that they were using at the body farm as well.
Just a really interesting way that the Body Farm has aided in some pretty legendary crime scenes and deaths.
So I think everybody probably knows at least a little bit about the death of the Big Bopper. the musician.
He died in a plane crash with Richie Valens and Buddy Holly the day the music died.
Now, in that scenario, the distance of Richardson's body from the plane, which was 40 feet. had people wondering whether or not he had actually survived the plane crash and died like trying to go get help, which is horrific to think of.
But Richardson's son actually contacted Dr. Bass to try to figure this out once and for all.
Dr. Bass agreed to examine the body, which had to be exhumed for something else anyways.
So he said, while it's already being exhumed, I will take a look at it.
He took a look at the body. Now, this was 48 years later.
And according to reports, they said it was very well preserved and still very recognizable as the Big Bang.
Dr. Bass determined that there was absolutely no way that Richardson survived that crash.
Nearly every bone in his body was broken.
And they said what happened was he was probably 40 feet away from the plane.
Because his body had been literally launched from the plane.
I mean every bone in his body was broken.
So there's a perfect example of Dr. Bill Bass and his body farm and the research that's done there.
I mean, solving not a cold case, but solving a mystery that was part of one of the most legendary... you know, scenes of death that all of us at least know something about.
And it gave his family a little bit of closure that they know now that he didn't survive the initial impact and try to get away.
He died on impact. So I think we have presented enough evidence that body farms are necessary.
They're amazing research opportunities. And they've honestly done nothing but positive things for... the study of forensic anthropology, decomposition, and identifying bodies.
But for them to exist, they still need bodies.
And if you want to be one of them, hey, you are absolutely welcome to.
I mean, like, finish living in the bag of flesh that you currently inhabit first and then, you know, go there.
But if you want to donate your body after you pass on to a forensic anthropology facility, You basically just make arrangements with the body farmer of your choice before you go.
What's important, too, is you should also let your family members and attorney, all the important people know about your decision so that the body farm can be, one, notified of your death.
And they can also, you know, take your donation without many issues.
As long as you put it down there that this is what you want.
People around you know that this is what you want.
They won't have a problem. So with that, I think this about wraps up my quote unquote mini-sode. about body farms and the art of decomposition.
We'll call it. So I hope you guys enjoyed this.
It was kind of weird just to talk to myself, but, you know.
It happens. I'm glad I could still do this.
Personally, I would love to visit a body farm, do research at a body farm.
Hell, I want to open the one in Massachusetts.
So we'll see. But yeah, I'll post some photos and definitely go check out Death's Acre. and anything that Dr. Bill Bass does, because he really is a fascinating human being.
And Patricia Cornwell is an amazing author.
So definitely go check her out if you haven't already, which I'm sure a lot of you already know about her.
But... Hope you guys dug it. If you want to find us on social media, You can find us on Instagram at morbidpodcast, on Twitter at amorbidpodcast, Facebook, morbid colon, a true crime podcast and definitely join the group because it's a blast in there now.
I love it. And our Patreon is patreon.com slash morbidpodcast, only if you feel so inclined. or visit our website at morbidpodcast.com.
So we hope you, this is real weird guys.
This is a real word to say by myself. I hope you keep listening and I hope you keep it weird.
I can't do the thing that Ash does. I'll leave that up to her.
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