>>[narration] You're watching National Geographic Channel Presents.
There's a place so ghastly and grotesque that most people recoil in horror,
but these acres, filled with decaying human flesh actually save lives.
This is a training ground for forensic specialists,
solving murders one corpse at a time, unlocking the secrets of the body farm.
[dog barking]
>>[Steve Sims] It's pretty dark out here.
>>[narration] A skeleton uncovered in Memphis.
>>[Sims] Maybe we can find a grease spot where the actual body is decomposed.
>>[narration] A family, murdered in Mississippi,
a body stashed in a Las Vegas locker.
Real crimes, with real consquences.
>>[Sims] We got a rib, we got a right scapula.
>>[narration] What's the connection between these grisly discoveries?
Real CSI. Scientists, turned crime scene investigators,
dramatized on a hit TV series, but what do they really do?
>>[Sims] Did the skull look small to you too?
>>[woman] Ready? Let's get him to the ground.
>>[narration] And where do they learn their trade?
Welcome to ground zero in the field of forensic anthropology,
a unique outdoor classroom, where the subject is death,
and more than half the CSI units working in the US today have been trained.
Founded by Dr. Bill Bass of the University of Tennessee more than 25 years ago,
research conducted within these few wooded acres in Knoxville
has redefined the frontiers of forensic science.
>>[Dr. Bill Bass] The anthropology research facility,
what most people call the "body farm," is a research facility that I set up
to begin to look at the decay and the rates of decay in human bodies.
Like many anthropologists, Bass started out studying ancient bones.
His expertise eventually led to his helping the police with modern day murder victims.
>>[Bass] You know, we kill our friends and neighbors by many different means,
and a lot of people are shot or bludgeoned or stabbed.
My orientation was what happens to a body when it decays and how long does it take?
>>[narration] He learned to read bones for signs of trauma,
knife marks in ribs, unusual fractures in skulls.
Drawing on unclaimed bodies from county morgues,
he built an extensive collection of skeletons,
but early in his career, Bass realized that bones weren't the only source of clues.
Decomposing flesh had secrets to reveal as well.
>>[Bass] I got a call one afternoon, it was between Christmas and New Years--
it was cold-- from the Williamson County Sherriff's office,
telling me that they had a grave that had been disturbed, would I come and help?
So I get over there. This is a family cemetery, back of a home.
>>[narration] Someone had broken into the earth, near a headstone.
Just beneath the surface, a headless male corpse. The remains looked fairly fresh.
Police needed to know how fresh. Had a new body been added to an old grave?
Dr. Bass agreed the body was in good shape, pink flesh still clung to the bones.
>>[Bass] I looked at it, I said you have a 24 to 28 year old white male
who's been dead about a year.
>>[narration] But something didn't add up. Bass kept digging,
ultimately identifying the body as Colonel William Shy,
a rebel officer killed in the Civil War, buried in an air-tight cast iron coffin,
the corpse had been incredibly well-preserved.
Bass's original assessment had been off by more than a century.
>>[Bass] People wonder why I started a body farm.
It's because of a couple of experiences like that,
that make you realize that, you know, you really don't know much about decay rates,
and we need to do something about that.
>>[narration] By now, more than four hundred human corpses
have decomposed at the body farm,
every phase documented under a wide range of conditions.
Some critics say letting corpses decay here is irreverent,
but the scientists insist the dead are held in the highest respect.
>>[Dr. Murray Marks] It's important to remember that the anthropology department,
the forensics center doesn't own these bodies.
They're a gift to us to study decomposition, but if the day comes
and families ever decide that they want them, they belong to them.
>>[Robin Miller] I always try and take a minute and say thank you,
because without them, we wouldn't be able to do
any of this research and this place would not exist.
>>[narration] There's no doubt that the work done here is incredibly valuable,
resulting in the convictions of countless violent criminals
who may have otherwise walked free.
And those bodies, so generously donated,
are put to good use in earnest efforts to protect the living.
>>[Bass] We've looked at decaying bodies in various scenarios:
clothing, no clothing, sun, shade, buried, not buried, water, trunks of cars.
We've been able to establish a sequence of events
that occurs under all of these conditions.
>>[Robin Miller] You can see all through here,
where it's all decayed, and we've got some more bugs.
>>[Marks] Forensic anthropology and forensic entomology
really take off from right here where we're walking.
I mean this is, in a sense, ground zero where this particular research takes place.
>>[Robin Miller] It's interesting, because they say okay... [fades out]
>>[narration] Dr. Murray Marks is one of the thousands who have studied at the facility.
Now he's on the faculty, guiding the research
of a new generation of scientists.
>>[Dr. Murray Marks] When I see remains like this, I'm always reminded that this
is such a unique laboratory, because where else can we study
this whole process of decomposition?
We're there to speak for the victim, for the people that don't have a voice.
By doing that, we get ever closer to the truth,
and ever closer to making someone pay for their crime.
>>[narration] The body farm's many successes has
spread the facility's influence far and wide.
A new program called the National Forensic Academy
allows police and lab technicians from throughout the United States
to hone their skills amid a cornucopia of fresh bodies,
decomposing corpses, and overgrown skeletons.
>>[Dr. Lee Jantz] If at any time you have a problem, I strongly recommend
you turn around and take a deep breath. Okay?
It is not a pleasant thing. It is something that you have to face
at some point in your careers.
>>[narration] In a wooded corner of the facility, the scientists have scattered
a mixture of human bones, animal bones, bullet casings,
and other simulated evidence.
Stained by time, soil, and weather, and hidden by leaves,
the scattered bones are difficult to find,
just as they would be at an actual crime scene.
Sorting through human remains can be an unsettling task, even for professionals.
>>[Robin Miller] Sometimes that whiff is just too much.
>>[narration] Next: how to find a murder victim when the body
is already buried six feet under.
National Geographic Channel Presents will be right back.
Now, back to National Geographic Channel Presents.
The secrets of the body farm aren't reserved solely for human students.
Most cadaver dogs are trained to find corpses
with synthetic samples that smell like decay.
Here, dogs are able to practice on multiple human bodies,
in varying states of decomposition.
>>[dog handler] What you got? You find something?
>>[narration] They're taught to lie down or bark when they find human remains.
>>[dog handler] Oh, good girl. What you got? Show me.
Good girl. Ready? Want to find some more?
>>[narration] Finding corpses on the surface is just a warm-up.
>>[dog handler] Out here.
>>[narration] The dogs move on to a series of concrete slabs for the graduate course.
Under the yellow arrows, a researcher has buried corpses and other debris.
[dog barks]
>>[dog handler] Very good!
>>[narration] Success is rewarded immediately, to reinforce
every dog's complete attention to the task.
Jane Survey is in the early stages of training her dog to indicate a discovery.
>>[Jane Survey] While there's such overwhelming scents,
we want them to concentrate and indicate on every one they find.
What can happen, especially in early stages of training in something like this,
is that they would go from one source, to another source,
to another source without indicating.
This is a great opportunity because it tells them every single one,
indicate immediately, then go on to the next.
>>[to dog] You did very good, you're a smart dog!
Find it.
[dog barks]
If you saw her head-- Flora, show me.
[dog barks] No, you show me. Yes, good dog!
When she got over here, her breathing changes,
and if you watch them very closely you can tell that.
It's almost like they inhale and then they stop breathing,
because they're processing the scent.
Good dog! Are you the smartest girl?
>>[narration] Even the best cadaver dogs can have a difficult time locating some corpses.
The body farm is the perfect lab for developing new technologies
that can help locate human remains.
>>[Bass] We have a problem in the United States of the husband and wife,
one of them gets mad, kills the other one,
they take them out in the backyard and bury them.
Then they pour a concrete slab over them and it's hard to find.
>>[narration] This is an experimental ground-penetrating radar system, GPRS.
On loan from the US government, it's one of only two units
of this GPR model in the world.
It's been developed to locate dinosaur bones, find unexploded artillery shells,
and reveal hidden bodies.
The system is about the size and weight of a weedwhacker,
but it's packed with powerful electronics.
Beneath these concrete paths at the anthropology research facility,
lie seven human bodies.
Michelle Miller buried the bodies at depths ranging from one foot to six feet.
What would a body look like at each depth? Could the radar see through cement?
And would a body under cement look different from a body under dirt?
>>[Michelle Miller] I want to see the difference between cement and actual-- just the clay.
The head of one individual is right here,
and the head of the other individual is right there,
and hopefully I'll be able to see the definite difference of the GPR
shooting through the cement versus the non cement.
>>[narration] Miller didn't stop there, she added other variables.
Could the system distinguish between a fresh corpse and a bare skeleton?
Or between a body and rubble?
>>[Michelle Miller] I want to see if it could really differentiate, you know,
between a definite individual and not.
What I did is I buried one individual on this side of the pad.
On the other side of the pad, I actually made a mock-up.
I used plastic buckets, metal buckets, two-by-fours, and metal tubing,
and actually built a body.
>>[Bass] What we're trying to do is to match a situation like you're getting
in terrorist attacks now, where you get not only the people being blown up,
but you get all of the building or the surroundings filled in with them.
Can you distinguish a body under all of that, what you may call "noise,"
if you want to say that, or something is confusing the picture.
>>[narration] The system's field display shows little detail,
just a series of swirls and squiggles, representing different densities.
Miller wants to know if those patterns can be read as bodies.
Back at the lab, the data is downloaded into a more sophisticated computer
to enhance the display.
The display shows a cross-section cutaway of the earth.
A red band across the top shows the concrete,
dense, but transparent as a windowpane to the GPRS.
Beneath that, disturbed soil, which yields uniform signals of green.
Then, two feet down, the signals go crazy,
matching the size and shape of the body hidden there.
Once a body's been found, the detective work truly begins.
The one piece of evidence everyone wants? Time since death.
>>[Bass] The police don't ask you "Who is that?"
They ask you "How long have they been there?"
Now I didn't have any experience with maggots,
so I looked in the literature, and there was very little in the literature.
So I decided this was an area that we needed to do research on.
We need to find out what happens in the decay stages of human individuals.
>>[narration] In the 1980s, Bass and a graduate student began
charting the order and the timing of insect activity in corpses.
Most numerous were blow flies.
Iridescent flies that could sniff out a body within seconds.
Each female blow fly laid eggs by the hundreds,
usually in natural body openings or bloody wounds.
In summertime, the eggs could hatch in just two hours,
the resulting larvae, maggots soon formed a writhing, flesh-eating mass.
The maggots were nourished to maturity by the proteins and lipids in the flesh.
Some two weeks later, they formed pupa casings, or cocoons.
A few days later, a new generation of adult flies emerged
from those pupa casings, and the cycle began anew.
Other insects joined the post-mortem food chain.
Yellow jackets fed on blow fly eggs, and beetles nibbled cartilage off bones.
But the key players were blow flies and their maggots.
>>[Neal Haskell] Then we can go to the proper charts... [fades out]
>>[narration] The studies provided crucial data to scientists like Neal Haskell,
a forensic entomologist, who teaches at St. Joseph's College in Indiana.
He also testifies in murder trials.
Coming up: a brutal and mysterious murder of a young family.
Could insect activity crack the case?
Find out when Secrets of the Body Farm continues.
You're watching National Geographic Channel Presents.
The expert testimony of forensic entomologist Neal Haskell,
trained at the body farm, proved crucial as a grisly case
unfolded in Las Vegas, Nevada.
People renting storage space in a mini warehouse had noticed a nasty smell.
>>[Neal Haskell] Adjacent neighbors that had their storage in there,
they're complaining to the management, "Something really stinks around here,
and it's time to get to the bottom of it." Well, they got a warrant to investigate,
and then opened the storage unit up, found the garbage can in there,
popped it open, and here is an absolutely disgustingly decomposing individual.
>>[narration] The body, mostly liquified, was an elderly woman.
Her daughter had rented the storage unit two years before.
The daughter told police her mother had died unexpectedly.
Grief-stricken, she stored the body while pondering funeral arrangements.
But Haskell learned a different story from the bugs,
specifically from the coffin flies.
They're tiny, about the size of gnats, but they boldly go where other flies can't:
deep underground.
It's a highly-evolved survival strategy.
Underground, they have a feast to themselves.
>>[Haskell] Coffin Flies got their name by their very tenacious ability to identify
where humans were buried in the wooden coffins.
They can burrow up to four to five feet in the soil,
access the coffins, and then lay their eggs, and they do their lifecycle there.
>>[narration] It didn't surprise Haskell to find coffin flies in the container.
What surprised him was not finding blow flies, death's quickest opportunists.
>>[Haskell] Blow flies can come in within the first seconds to minutes,
and if the temperatures are warm enough,
you'll see them laying eggs within the first hour.
>>[narration] But Haskell found no traces of blow flies.
No flies, no eggs, no blow fly maggots. The blow flies hadn't gotten to the body.
Haskell wondered why. Then it hit him: there wasn't time.
>>[Haskell] Mom wasn't left laying around for a number of days.
Mom was processed very, very quickly, placed in that garbage can,
and put in that storage area.
>>[narration] The evidence convinced the jury that the defendant killed her mother
and moved swiftly to hide the body. The sentence: life in prison, no parole.
Since its inception, the body farm has conclusively connected insect activity
with body decomposition, allowing prosecutors
to bring countless criminals to justice.
Just as an archaeologist can tell how long ago a civilization ended
by sifting through generations of rubble, a forensic entomologist can estimate
how long ago a life ended by combing through generations of insects.
>>[Bass] One of the ways of determining the length of time is to gather the maggots.
You want to gather the largest maggots, because that indicates the first hatch,
and it would be a better indication of how long that individual has been dead.
Up to about 14 to 21 days, depending on the temperature and environmental
situation in which the death occurred.
>>[narration] Recently, Mississippi prosecutors asked Dr. Bass
to help pinpoint time since death in a brutal murder case.
Someone had murdered a young family, a husband, wife, and their young daughter.
The chief suspect, a relative of the victims,
held a quarter million dollar life insurance policy on the child.
But Bass was told the man had an alibi for the two weeks before the bodies were found.
The suspect also claimed that he tried to visit the family twice,
once in mid-November, and again in late-November.
So he admitted to being at the crime scene,
but he claimed on each occasion, no one was home.
Pinpointing the time since death was crucial.
>>[Bass] I asked them to send me pictures of the crime scene,
to send me photographs of the bodies.
>>[narration] Bass looked for signs of insect activity, taking into account
the fact that the bodies were indoors, not outside.
>>[Bass] The blow flies are outside of the house,
it takes them a few days to realize, "Hey, there's a dead body or bodies
in that house. How can I get in there?" you see.
>>[narration] Finally, Bass spotted a key piece of photographic evidence,
the discarded shells that maggots leave behind as they turn into flies.
These pupa casings proved that once the flies finally reached the murder victims,
the insects underwent a complete 14 day lifecycle and then some.
Bass's report concluded that the family was killed in November,
the date matching one of the defendant's admitted visits to the cabin.
The blow flies helped prove opportunity, the insurance policy provided the motive.
The suspect was convicted of murder.
>>[Bass] It does make you feel good that you are able to look at the scientific data,
which is there, and that's what I did. I didn't know any of the people
involved in this at all, and from the scientific data, able to make
an analysis that corresponds exactly to the events that occurred in this case.
>>[narration] Bass's work proved that in cases where corpses were decomposed,
forensic anthropologists could make an important contribution
to a murder investigation.
Still to come: when the blood's been washed away and evidence is scarce,
one investigator finds the answer is in the bones.
National Geographic Channel Presents now continues.
The chronology of decomposing flesh provides CSI units with useful evidence,
but Steve Sims, one of the body farm's most renowned graduates,
focuses on what's left behind after the bugs have picked the bones clean.
>>[Sims] Here, we do find a scatter five feet from somebody's foundation of their house,
and I found the thoracic vertebrae, which are human.
Over here there's a skull, and over here is an arm.
Already, dogs have destroyed a lot of the ends of the bones.
>>[narration] Originally, Sims planned for a career in archaeology.
After one class at the forensic facility, he left archaeology in the dust.
>>[Sims] This is the right tenth rib. Right here, and right here.
You see some trauma. Indicative of shot trauma or a knife stab wound.
>>[narration] Today, he's taking bone trauma analysis to a new level.
>>[Bass] One of the ways of killing an individual and trying to
mask the identity of that individual is to saw the body up.
Saw the arms off, saw the head off.
>>[narration] Sims's speciality is reading signatures,
the tell-tale signs that saws leave behind
when a killer cuts up a corpse.
>>[Sims] I've seen everything used from knives to axes to
serrated knives being used as a saw.
I've seen power tools used.
I've seen a bandsaw to cut up a body.
I've seen circular saws used numerous times.
>>[narration] Bone is an engineering marvel.
It's a composite material, a flexible matrix of collogen fibers
infused with calcium phosphate for stiffness and load-bearing.
It's like steel-reinforced concrete, but lighter and stronger.
It's a durable material, so the marks a saw leaves as it cuts up a body
can endure for years.
Sims took up his grisly specialty after a detective asked him to
identify a notch in a bone.
>>[Sims] I said "It's a saw mark on an arm bone."
And when I said, "It's a saw mark," I thought I was proud to give him some information.
Well, he looked at me, he said, "But, I already know it's a saw mark."
"You're the bone doc, what kinda saw is this?"
And I didn't know.
>>[narration] Sims needed to know.
It was his third dismemberment case in just one month.
He set out to fill this gruesome gap in forensic knowledge.
It would take him 15 years of research.
To the naked eye, all sawmarks look alike.
[beeping, then camera flash sound]
>>[Sims] It turns out that's not true.
Every tooth leaves another mark, and the reciprocating action
of these teeth, or continuous motion of these teeth
leaves lots of indicators of toolmarks,
lots of characteristics, and with enough characteristics, many times I can get,
for example, the number of teeth per inch in a tool used to dimember a body.
>>[narration] Now Sims can read a sawmark the way a handwritting expert can dissect a signature.
He can even spot false starts, or skips in the stroke.
And he can tell police what kind of saw to search for in a dismemberment case.
You want to know more than "a saw," you want to know what kind of saw,
how wide that saw is, how wide the blade is,
how wide the tooth is, the minimum kerf width,
the number of teeth per inch, and how that saw was used to dismember a victim.
All saws look similar or look identical, they really aren't.
>>[narration] A killer may think that washing blood off a blade is enough to cover his tracks.
But, not if Sims is on the case.
>>[Bass] If you listed five people in the world who were
the world leaders in this, Steve would be one of those five.
>>[narration] Like fingerprints, footprints, and tire tracks,
tool marks can crack a case, even years after the crime.
>>[Sims] Bone trauma is a moment frozen in time.
All the soft tissues, and so on, disappear or change
or deterioriate with time.
Bone doesn't change or deterioriate, we just clean it up.
It's there, it's good evidence, it's evidence you can take to court.
>>[narration] The process of normal body decomposition and bone trauma
are well-documented at the body farm.
But, some killers try to cover their tracks with fire.
Not long ago, burned bones marked a dead end.
Fingerprints, faces, wounds: all gone, burned away.
But, the Tennessee scientists were confident other evidence could be sifted from the ashes.
>>[Bass] Okay, I bet that fits right there. >>[narration] To know what to look for though,
they'd have to learn precisely what happens when fire meets human flesh and bone.
>>[Elaine Pope] What I'm about to do is,
I'm going to build several little contained systems.
Right now I'm just testing for heat.
>>[narration] Elaine Pope, a PhD student, got these body parts from an
anatomical laboratory to which corpses had been willed or donated for medical research.
Before these limbs were provided to her, they were used by medical students
to practice surgical procedures. She starts with an arm.
>>[Pope] And I'm gonna photograph it before I place it in the fire.
I'm gonna do each element that way and document what it looks like before,
including the size, shape, and position of it.
>>[narration] During daylight, smoke obscures the details,
not so much from the eyes, as from the camera lens.
So, Pope experiments and photographs at night.
As the arm heats, it actually begins to move.
>>[Pope] What I want to do is see how the arm draws up
and how it reacts to heat. When the arms react to heat
they go into the pugilistic posture, which is where the muscles of the arm,
the flexors, pull the arm into flexion like this.
And so I want to observe that process as it occurs.
>>[narration] As muscles burn, their fibers shrivel, and contract.
The stronger muscles (usually the flexors) overpower the weaker ones (the extensors).
In fact, the arms flexing is so consistent that if a body is found with the arms
extended, it could be a sign of foul play.
>>[Sims] The body will assume that pugilistic pose at all costs, unless stopped from doing it.
The muscles are very strong and it pulls you into that pose.
So, if I see something that goes against this post, I'm suspicious.
>>[Pope] If the arm was outstretched, and it wasn't able to assume a
pugilistic posture with the elbow, that would possibly indicate that
the arms had been tied, even if there's an absence of the actual material
(they could have used string or rope which would have burned away).
>>[narration] But, is that movement the same in an accidental house fire,
as it is in an intentional fire made hotter by accelerants like gasoline?
>>[Pope] I'm gonna do the slow burn so that we can watch the gradual
progression of it, and then the other arm, I'm gonna do in a really fast, hot, intense fire.
>>[narration] And will the arm hold its position,
even after all organic matter has burned away?
>>[Pope] As you can see, the arm has reacted as we expected.
It drew into the pugilistic posture with this being the elbow here,
and this being the wrist here,
and these being the hands.
>>[narration] The main torso, despite the separation of its limbs will also yield clues.
Does a dismembered body still seek the pugilistic posture?
>>[Pope] I'm mainly interested in this one
because it still has the portion of the humerus and the femur attached.
And so, I'm wanting to see if it reacts the same way as if the arm
were still attached, to see if it's gonna be drawn up, and if the femur gets kinda drawn up.
>>[narration] Even stumps of limbs still try to assume a fighting stance.
>>[Pope] We're trying to establish normal patterns of burning.
That way we can look for unusual cases.
If a burn pattern is disrupted, it could be indicative of preexisting trauma or dismemberment.
>>[narration] Some researchers, including Pope, have done studies with animal limbs.
But when a murder case hangs in the balance, there's no substitute for the real thing.
>>[Pope] The reason why we use human material
is to accurately simulate house fires and vehicular fires.
For one thing, it stands up, it's more credible in court,
to say, "Yes, we've tested this and we know exactly what happens."
It helps with the medical examiner, their testimony.
>>[narration] There are many variables to explore.
Can decomposing muscles still flex an arm?
At what temperature does flesh ignite?
After burning the specimens, Pope gathers up the charred bones,
cleans them, and studies the patterns.
She notes color changes in transition zones
where protected, unburned bones give way to charred material.
To fully grasp the patterns, she makes detailed drawings.
One clear difference is fracture patterns,
another is calcination: the transformation of dense bone into a light, chalky material.
>>[Pope] I burned these two different tibia
at different temperatures, and different times and durations.
This one is more calcine, it's burned to a further extent.
And you can see it has a higher frequency of fracture patterns.
Whereas, this one was burned to a lower temperature and less amount of time,
and it took on more of the char of the blackness.
>>[narration] Do fracture patterns change when
a stream of cold water from a fire hose hits hot bone?
What patterns might be left when accelerants are used to heat up a fire
and hide evidence of murder?
There is so much to be learned from bone, even after fire,
but only time and research witll tell just how much evidence can survive.
In the body farm's quest to identify unkown crime victims,
new technologies meet old-fashioned techniques head-on.
Joanna Hughes is a forensic sculptor,
putting clay on skulls, she reconstructs human faces.
Hughes hopes her work can someday help I.D. a murder victim and catch a killer.
The technique employed by Hughes is not only time-consuming,
but it's ultimate success hinges on a high degree of artisic talent.
>>[Joanna Hughes] If you are off by even a millimeter,
then you run the risk of having an incorrect, or an unidentified, individual.
And for every unidentified individual, there is a criminal perpetrator, murderer,
walking the streets.
>>[Bass] To do a good facial reconstruction of an individual,
you have to have a lot of artistic ability.
You have to be able to get the face
so it has some expression on the face, so it looks like a face.
I've done this before and my heads look like clay heads.
>>[narration] This head looks human.
It also looks remarkably like the actual subject:
a man who donated his body to the forensic facility.
Hughes did this reconstruction for practice,
then checked her work against the photos.
>>[Hughes] Ah! It's him!
>>[narration] But, what if she'd guessed wrong about
the size of the nose, or the fleshiness of the jowls?
In a real murder case, the stakes are high and time is precious.
Clay reconstruction yields a single guess about a victim's looks.
One mistake could stall an investigation.
Murray Marks hopes to overcome those short-comings
by bringing facial reconstruction into the computer age.
For help, Mark has joined forces with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The government research lab has supercomputers and imaging experts.
Marks has cranial dimensions from some 1,000 modern skulls,
the largest database of its kind in the world.
But, to build a face from a skull, he needs to know more about
the intimate marriage of skin and bone.
That requires state-of-the-art MRI and CAT scan expertise.
Some of the world's leaders in this field work in the
research imaging center at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
The center's director, Dr. Peter Fox,
is intrigued by the facial reconstruction project.
To provide baseline images from a known individual,
he's offered his scanners and his own flesh and bone.
Fox's MRI maps the surface of his face.
His CAT scan yields a 3D image of the skull beneath the skin.
Now the challenge is to recreate by computer, a face that looks like the living Dr. Fox.
If they can figure out how to do it with a known face,
they're optimistic they can do it with an unknown one.
A wireframe model helps translate the relationship
between Fox's face and his skull into mathematical formulas.
Those formulas can then be used to create a facial mask.
In this case, a mask of Fox's face.
Once the software development is complete,
police or witnesses could easily modify such masks.
>>[Marks] What if they were heavier? What if they were lighter?
Change that hairline, change the eye color.
Or, you know, add a beard, add a mustache, things like this.
>>[narration] The Tennessee scientists are taking promising steps toward
one of the final frontiers in forensic anthropology:
to restore a face and with it, the identity and humanity of a victim.
The conclusion of Secrets of the Body Farm, next.
And now the conclusion of Secrets of the Body Farm.
In the early years, the research conducted at the Anthropology Research Facility
was not widely known, but then,
its unofficial nickname coined by police and FBI agents,
became the title of a best-selling crime novel by Patricia Cornwell.
The body farm hit the mainstream.
More books, movies, and hit TV shows followed,
raising the facility's profile and communicating the importance of its work.
>>[Robin Miller] The drill is that we are going to pull him out of the truck.
>>[Michelle Miller] I'm afraid the upper body's gonna drop.
You have the strength? >>[Robin] Yep.
>>[narration] Here, death marks not an end, but a beginning. The start of an amazing
odyssey, carefully observed and recorded in minute detail by researchers.
>>[Robin] Alright, here's good. >>[narration] Robin Miller is
studying a specific component in human decomposition.
>>[Robin] Okay. >>[narration] A possible linkage
between clothing and the rate of decay.
>>[Robin] Lift his legs up. And put one leg at a time
in through here, and then hold his legs up while someone else pulls it over his... [trails off]
Half of all cases that we work on in the United States
are people that we have found with clothing on them.
My research hopes to answer the question:
Can we use that data in order to determine a time since death?
>>[narration] This corpse, donated by family per the dead man's wishes,
will prove invaluable in Miller's research.
To protect his identity, he is now known simply as Corpse 3101.
But, anonymity can't diminish his generous nature, or his willingness to help others,
even after his death. His contribution reaches far beyond pure science.
It may influence real-world murder cases and help bring killers to justice.
Drawing on prior research, Miller has divided decomposition into four stages:
Stage one spans the first day or so after death.
>>[Robin] Stage one is where-- is what we call the "fresh stage."
Where there is no maggot activity, we just have the basic
rigor, algor, and liver mortis.
>>[narration] Stage one is marked by stiffening, discoloration, then relaxation.
>>[Robin] As we get out of stage one, into stage two,
is when the blow flies come in and start to lay their eggs.
And their eggs will, of course, hatch into maggots.
The maggots will take over and start consuming the body.
>>[narration] Stage two includes a flurry of insect activity:
yellowjackets, blow flies, and maggots.
>>[Robin] The eggs that were laid a couple days ago in the nose, have hatched.
So, we have a maggot mass that's going to work around his nostrils.
And in his right ear, and near his right eye.
They've eaten away on the inside of the mouth.
I can see some eggs that have been laid on the tongue
and in the left cheek area.
>>[narration] The proteins and fats in human cells
are a near perfect food for maggots.
The swarm of insects is a gruesome reminder of mortality,
as is the smell of decomposition.
Inside the body, the bacteria are starting to work on the internal organs.
>>[Robin] As that happens, gases are also released inside the body,
there's a process called "autolysis," where the cells inside burst,
because the pH level is disrupted.
>>[narration] Some of the gases escape the corpse
through natural body openings, creating putrid smells.
Gases that are trapped within distend the veins in the body,
a process called "marbling."
Sometimes the gases build up enough to burst a corpse's abdomen.
Stage three is the longest phase of decomposition,
and is greatly influenced by the changing seasons.
>>[Robin] We definitely have a decrease in maggot activity and fly activity
because the larvae and the eggs can't live below a certain temperature.
So the cold weather is having an effect on the decomposition here.
>>[narration] But the cycle does continue.
Fifty-two days after the start of the experiment,
3101 enters stage four of decomposition. He is essentially mummified.
Any remaining skin has the texture of leather,
and nearly all of the soft tissue is gone.
Already it appears that clothing may have slowed the rate of decay,
but confirming that assumption will require a scientific review
of the data in the weeks ahead.
A gentle hillside in Tennessee, unique in all the world,
a singular place set aside for gleaning knowledge and truth from flesh and bone.
>>[Haskell] The anthropological research facility here in Knoxville
is absolutely critical in research, when it comes to assessing human death.
>>[Bass] There's a lot of really cutting-edge research going on
at the body farm right now, it's the only research essentially,
of this type in the world.
>>[narration] Lee Jantz believes the work is so important,
she's made an extraordinary commitment, in spite of her discomfort
with what she knows will follow.
>>[Lee Jantz] I am a donor. When I die, I expect my family to honor my wishes
and donate me to the anthropological research facility
in the department of anthropology. It is not a pleasant thought.
I don't like to think of what my body will go through, but it's gonna happen.
>>[narration] The dead remain the focus of scientific scrutiny at the body farm,
but the reason for the research, the motivation and the inspiration
will always remain the living.
[up-tempo closing music]