Death's Acre: Inside The Legendary Forensic Lab The Body Farm by Bill Bass (essential books to read txt) 📕

kept it to himself until years later, when he told the story to the writer George Plimpton, who was doing a biography of Capote.

Although neither of us knew it at the time, Harold would eventually help inspire the creation of the Body Farm. One spring day back in 1964, he called with an unusual question: Could I examine a skeleton and estimate the time since death? This particular skeleton, it turned out, belonged to a cow; occasionally cattle rustlers or vandals leave dead, mutilated cattle out on the prairie. And since there are more cows than people in Kansas, the KBI spent a fair amount of time investigating cattle rustling. In this instance, rather than rustling the cattle, the thieves simply killed and field-dressed the cows, taking the meat and leaving the bones.

A few days after his call, after double-checking with the university’s paleontologist, I sent Harold a letter. “We do not know of any method by which you could tell the length of time since the cow has been killed,” I wrote. “I can tell you the age of the cow at death; however, I cannot tell you how long it has been since the cow was killed.”

But his request had set me to thinking. “I do have a suggestion.” I continued:

As you can imagine, there has been no work done on this that we are aware of. If you have some interested farmer who would be willing to kill a cow and let it lie, we could run an experiment on how long it would take for the flesh to decay and begin to build up some information in this area. However, the rate of decomposition is not the same in the summer as it is in the winter and I am afraid that we would have to sacrifice at least two or more cows before we could get complete data . . .

Harold never followed up on my suggestion; I guess it was the scientific equivalent of Truman Capote answering the door in a woman’s negligee—maybe just a little too unusual for his tastes. But then again, I didn’t rush to pursue it, either. The fact is, I forgot all about it for nearly forty years; recently I came across that letter in a dusty file, tucked behind a crackly X ray.

But even though I’d filed and forgotten that brief scientific suggestion, somewhere in my subconscious, a seed had been planted—a seed that would germinate some fifteen years later and bear scientific fruit, arising not from dead cows but from human corpses: corpses at the Body Farm.

But I’m getting ahead of my story. The Body Farm was still far in the future; this was December of 1970, and a detective from the nearby town of Olathe, twenty-five miles southeast of Lawrence, entered my office carrying a cardboard evidence box. Inside was a small, sad set of skeletal remains. I could tell at a glance they were the bones of a small child, probably no more than two or three years old. The sheriff’s deputy, Detective Jerry Foote, told me they had been found a week before by quail hunters out on the prairie. Most of the bones were missing, which I suspected was due to scattering or consumption by animals; fortunately, the skull was relatively complete, except for the absence of most of the teeth.

I did an initial exam there in my office, explaining what I observed to Detective Foote. I’d learned early on that most police officers are eager to learn all they can about investigative techniques; they appreciate hearing what I have to say as I examine a body or a skeleton, even at the early stages.

As I studied this small skull, I could tell by how weathered it was that it had been outdoors for months. In addition, I noticed that the left side was bleached nearly white, suggesting that it had lain on its right side, exposing the left to the brunt of the sun and the rain. On the right side I found a few strands of fine blond hair stuck to the forehead, as well as some at the base of the skull and the cervical vertebrae. The hair confirmed what I had thought immediately from the shape of the skull: this child was probably Caucasian.

Most of the teeth had fallen out, but it was clear that the child had a nearly complete set, including the first molars, which were still attached; that told me the child was probably at least twenty-four months old. The roots of the canines, however, had not yet formed completely, which meant the age was less than thirty-six months. Three years old: For most children, it’s the age of nursery rhymes, stuffed animals, hide-and-seek, crayons. For this child, it was the age of death, and possibly murder.

Was it a boy or a girl? By adolescence the sex of an unidentified skeleton can be determined fairly easily, mainly from the pelvis: Females have a wider pelvic structure and a markedly longer pubic bone, to allow for childbirth. In early childhood, though, there’s virtually no difference between a male’s pelvis and a female’s. At any specific age, young girls tend to be a bit smaller than boys, but unless you know the age for sure—which means you probably know the identity already—you have no basis for gauging the sex.

Detective Foote told me he was fairly sure he knew the child’s identity. Eight months before, Lisa Elaine Silvers, aged two and a half, had been reported missing. Her twenty-one-year-old uncle, Gerald Silvers, was baby-sitting Lisa and her baby sister on April 22, 1970, while her parents went to a movie. Gerald fell asleep, he told police, and when he awoke from his nap, Lisa was gone. A search by police and neighbors failed to find any trace of the child.

After his questioning, Gerald left Kansas and went to California—on short notice and in a police car. While doing a routine background check after Lisa disappeared, Detective Foote learned that young Gerald was