National Geographic Secrets of the Body Farm HD 1080 WEB H264 4000

[Narrator] 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]

>>It's pretty dark out here.

[Narrator] A skeleton
uncovered in Memphis.

>>Maybe we can find a grease spot where
the actual body is decomposed.

[Narrator] A family,
murdered in Mississippi,

a body stashed
in a Las Vegas locker.

Real crimes, with real consquences.

>>We got a rib, we got a right scapula.

[Narrator] 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?

>>Did the skull look small to you too?

>>Ready? [unclear]

[Narrator] 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 many different means,

and a lot of people are shot
or bludgeoned or stabbed.

My orientation was what happens when
a body decays and how long does it take?

[Narrator] 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.

[Narrator] 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.

[Narrator] 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' 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.

[Narrator] 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.

>>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.

>>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.

[Narrator] 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.

>>You can see all through here, where it's
all decayed, and we've got some more bugs.

>>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.

>>It's interesting, because they say okay
[fades out]

[Narrator] 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.

[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.

[Narrator] 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.

>>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.

[Narrator] 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.

>>Sometimes that whiff is just too much.

[Narrator] 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 Trainer] What you got?
You find something?

[Narrator] They're taught to lie down
or bark when they find human remains.

[Dog Trainer] Oh, good girl.
What you got? Show me.

Good girl. Ready?
Want to find some more?

[Narrator] Finding corpses on
the surface is just a warm-up.

[Dog Trainer] Out here.

[Narrator] 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 Trainer] Very good!

[Narrator] 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?

[Narrator] 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.

[Narrator] This is an experimental
ground-penetrating radar system, GPRX.

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?

[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.

[Narrator] 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?

[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.

[Narrator] 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 GPRX.

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.

[Narrator] 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.

[Neil Haskel] Then we can go to the
proper charts [fades out]

[Narrator] The studies provided crucial
data to scientists like Neil Haskel,

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 Neil Haskel,

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.