# Read the first page of Beyond the Body Farm by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson Read the opening of Beyond the Body Farm by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson free, no signup. A forensic anthropologist investigates deaths through bones, scenes, and evidence. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/beyond-the-body-farm-bill-bass-and-jon-jefferson - Genre: Forensic science - Year: 2007 - ISBN: 9780060875282 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780060875282&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780060875282 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780060875282 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ INTRODUCTION: A HALF CENTURY OF FORENSIC EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION One April morning fifty-one years ago, Charlie Snow, my anthropology professor at the University of Kentucky, walked into the bone lab as I was hunched over a tray of bones, and asked if I would like to come along on a human identification case. In that one moment, Dr. Snow changed the course of my life and my work forever. Dr. Snow had been asked by a lawyer whether he could determine the identity of some burned human remains found in a truck outside Lexington—remains found in the charred cab alongside those of the driver. Both the driver and his passenger (believed to be his common-law wife) had been killed when an A&P grocery truck crossed the highway centerline, causing a fiery collision that killed all three people in the vehicles. Dr. Snow told the lawyer that, yes, he could certainly tell whether the burned remains were indeed those of the driver’s common-law wife, provided the woman’s dental records could be found. It wasn’t an idle boast; as director of the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory, Dr. Snow had spent years, during and after World War II, identifying the decomposed, fragmented, and incinerated remains of American soldiers. Snow was in the vanguard of a specialty that decades later would come to be called “forensic anthropology”: using the knowledge and techniques of physical anthropology, which traditionally focuses on the study of ancient human bones, to help solve crimes, especially by identifying unknown murder victims and determining how they were killed. Even if it’s not possible to identify a victim by name—and I have a shelfful of skeletons where that wasn’t possible—a forensic anthropologist can still help by giving the police details about the victim’s race, sex, stature, handedness (muscle attachment points tend to be bigger in a right-handed person’s right arm, not surprisingly), and manner of death: was the victim stabbed, shot, strangled, bludgeoned, or killed in some other manner that left telltale marks on the bone? One reason Dr. Snow invited me to accompany him on that life-changing identification case was because I had a car and he did not, though I like to believe the car was far less a factor than my budding brilliance with bones. At any rate, I drove us to the rural church cemetery where the passenger had been buried. The remains inside the waterlogged coffin were slimy and smelly—a far cry from the lustrous ivory-colored bones I’d been studying in the lab the day before. In fact, when the coffin’s lid was opened, the sight and the smell were so overpowering that I promptly threw up. That was fifty-one years and hundreds of forensic cases ago. I’m happy to report that over the intervening years, I have never again thrown up during a forensic case. I’m also happy to report that over those same years, the forensic sciences—the crime-solving versions of anthropology, entomology, odontology (dentistry), genetics, and other sciences that help catch and convict killers—have made quantum leaps, advancing in ways I could not have imagined as I doubled over in that muddy Kentucky cemetery beside Dr. Snow. I don’t mean to imply that forensic science, or forensic scientists, were primitive or backward in the 1950s. After studying with Dr. Snow at Kentucky, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, where I did my Ph.D. studies under Dr. Wilton Krogman, who was internationally renowned as a “bone detective.” Krogman wasn’t called a forensic anthropologist—that term hadn’t been coined yet—but I’ve never seen anyone better, before or since, at finding clues in human bones: at listening to the secrets the dead can whisper to reveal who they once were and how they were killed. Krogman’s particular area of expertise was the skeletal growth and development of children, especially their teeth. For this reason, he tended to have dozens of orthodontists studying under him at any given time. During my years at Penn I was virtually the only forensic anthropologist he taught, and although I didn’t have formal training in dentistry or orthodontics, I absorbed a wealth of knowledge about human teeth, especially how they could shed light on a murder victim’s age and identity. ## Books with a similar feel - [Deadly Innocence by Scott Burnside & Alan Cairns](https://uncovered.ink/read/deadly-innocence-scott-burnside-and-alan-cairns.md) - [Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe](https://uncovered.ink/read/empire-of-pain-patrick-radden-keefe.md) - [The Last Victim by Jason Moss & Jeffrey Kottler](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-last-victim-jason-moss-and-jeffrey-kottler.md) - [Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall & Lisa Pulitzer](https://uncovered.ink/read/stolen-innocence-elissa-wall-and-lisa-pulitzer.md) - [Influence by Robert B. Cialdini](https://uncovered.ink/read/influence-robert-b-cialdini.md) - [Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson](https://uncovered.ink/read/rework-jason-fried-and-david-heinemeier-hansson.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.