most people just call it the Facility. It is barely two acres, but it is the current resting place for 188 corpses. Some of them are buried; others lie on the grass or in the woods, decaying. Since 1981, the Facility has studied hundreds of corpses to determine what happens to the human body after it dies. The farm not only helps law-enforcement agencies close previously unsolvable murders, but it also provides testimony for the dead, telling their story when they are no longer able to tell it themselves.
The first facility of its kind, the farm revolutionized forensic anthropology—translating the maggots, putrefaction and other horror shows into a matter-of-fact timetable of death. At the Facility, researchers have also learned to cull evidence from bodies that have been burned, dismembered or blown up. And somewhere along the way, as America developed a fascination with forensics, the Facility won a degree of celebrity. It was the focus of Patricia Cornwell’s 1994 novel “The Body Farm” and has often been referred to on “CSI.” As this brainchild of Dr. William Bass approaches 30, however, body farms are taking root at forensic-anthropology departments all over the United States. One is soon to open at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C., and others are planned for Kansas, Texas and Florida.
Not everyone is thrilled about living next to an open-air cemetery. In Texas, protests about falling property values and buzzards that disturb flight patterns have forced a search for a new plot of land. Western Carolina University went to great lengths to make sure the residents near its Human Identification Lab approved.
Those residents would be happy to know that the ur-Facility, which is located behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center and surrounded by acres of parking lots, is rather like a quiet, well-kept cemetery—or, more aptly, a quiet, well-kept lab.
And an important one. Until the body farm began its work, there was no hard science on the stages of decomposition. Even the simplest questions could not be answered: When do blowflies show up on a body? How long does it take for a corpse to become a skeleton? Determining time of death was an inexact science mostly dependent on a forensic anthropologist’s skill and experience.
Many of the bodies at the farm are covered in plastic when they are not being actively studied, a gesture that seems to reassure a corpse’s survivors that their decaying loved one is being treated with a measure of dignity. There are no names, only numbers. The majority of the “donations” willed themselves, or were donated by families looking for an alternative to the traditional burial route. The rest are unclaimed bodies from the county morgue. Only corpses that are HIV-positive, or have hepatitis or an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, are turned away. The Facility will, however, take anyone’s bones.
Bass was inspired to build his life’s work after he got the time of death wrong on a case by almost 113 years. (A grave robber had pulled a Civil War veteran from his grave, but between the embalming and the waterproof casket, Colonel Shy’s body looked recently deceased and was mistakenly labeled a homicide.) Such errors were commonplace when those enforcing the law were unaware of the circumstances that slowed or hastened decomposition. The Facility has also studied what happens to a body stashed in the trunk of a car (it decomposes fast, especially in the summer) or submerged in water (it can float to the surface, and the water slows decay). And it has contributed to identification and repatriation of remains from looted Native American cemeteries.
Many of the Facility’s findings are astounding, and a little grim. Maggots can disturb clothing, leaving a body with suspiciously disarrayed garments. They also have a tendency to swarm around wounds (they love blood), so a forensic anthropologist can focus a search for cause of death based on that. Raccoons will hang around a dead body, not to eat it but to snack on the bugs—hence scattering bones all over the place and potentially misleading investigators. And long after the rest of the skeleton has been lost, skulls can still be found because animals have trouble dragging them away (no thumbs). The Facility has also shown that decompositional fluids destroy all vegetation for more than a year and leave the ground stained black. Also, if a corpse is wearing tight jeans, bugs simply can’t get in between the denim and flesh, so the legs decompose much more slowly than the rest of the body.
All the data about decomposition might lead you to disregard the skeleton that remains. But for forensic anthropologists, the bones are crucial and can reveal race, sex, height and age. Teeth can provide identifying markers, as can scars, anomalies or injuries to a bone.
As the Facility’s reputation has grown, so has its waiting list of people who would like to donate themselves to it. The list now tops 1,200. The current head of the Facility, Dr. Richard Jantz, is perfecting software known as Fordisc 3.0 that allows a person to enter bone measurements and get back an approximate sex, race, height and age. Other current projects include calculating how long DNA lasts in tissue, hair and bone before it degrades, and how bones from the nuclear age are different from those of people who died before Hiroshima. The Facility also serves as a training ground for the National Forensic Academy.
Then there’s the competition. Nearly 120 miles to the east, Western Carolina’s forensic-anthropology department is waiting for approval from the North Carolina Health Department to begin accepting corpses for its Human Identification Lab. The director, Dr. John Williams, founded the new lab to investigate how a different environment affects a body’s decomposition. As soon as they receive their first donations, Williams and his forensic-anthropology department will train cadaver dogs and also try to figure out where birds fit into the decomposition timeline. Ah, spring.
