Paige's Death's Acre Summer Assignment

The book Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson tells the story of Dr. Bill Bass, a forensic scientist who made great strides in the area of forensic crime solving.  Beginning as the protégé of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Bill Bass became interested in forensic science because he wanted to uncover new realms of science, and explore new frontiers.  And explore he did.  As a younger scientist, he explored the gravesites of Native Americans in the Dakotas, along with college students.  As a professor at the University of Tennessee, he was lucky enough to start a facility that came to be known as “The Body Farm.”  Created to further the forensic science field, it led to countless research opportunities, and boundless exploration of the science of the dead.  The Body Farm, begun by Dr. Bass and titled by author Patricia Cornwell, was originally created because forensic scientists – especially those called in to help with crime scenes and dead bodies – truly had limited knowledge about what happens to a body postmortem.  The exploration of the effects of death upon a body hadn’t truly been carried out since a Chinese philosopher wrote a book about decaying bodies – nearly one thousand years ago.  Since then, limited information had been available to forensic scientists – information that could’ve helped solve innumerable crimes, or release innocent convicts from behind bars.  The understanding of dead bodies was so limited, that in fact Dr. Bass even once misdated a body as recently dead, when in fact the body in question was the corpse of a civil war general!  When Dr. Bass realized that offhand comments he made about the estimated time of death of bodies were quoted by newspapers, and sometimes used against him to question his integrity and credibility as a scientist, he resolved to create a science lab that would allow him to explore his realm of science so that he could hardly be questioned in the future.  Thus, the Body Farm was born.  The Body Farm, though, wasn’t created merely for the personal gain of Dr. Bass.  His outdoor research lab, though not well received by the public at first, went on to gain the respect of the community as they came to understand just how valuable such research proved in crime solving.  Eventually, forensic graduate students at the University of Tennessee were able to use the facility to research everything – from coloration of the body postmortem, to the time intervals at which various species of bugs invade the dead body, as well as how a body will float once dead.  All these research topics, though seemingly morbid and bizarre, in fact added much to the field of forensic science, and some graduate thesis papers even went on to help Dr. Bass put criminals behind bars – such as the research paper produced on blowflies, which lay eggs on dead bodies at a specific time, which helps date the time since death on bodies that otherwise are hard to date.  Thus, the Body Farm provided the realm of forensic science, as well as the judicial field of crime solving, with much information, and helped further the two immensely.  It was extremely interesting to hear how little was in fact known about forensic science when Dr. Bass entered the field, and it was also incredible to hear how entire criminal trials could be determined by a single shard of bone, or some small impression on the flesh of a corpse.  Thus, the book Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson was an incredibly interesting and rewarding read, providing readers with endless knowledge about the field of forensic science.  The novel The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell was a page-turner just as much as Death’s Acre, though in a different manner.  Although the basis of The Body Farm’s plot was based on forensic research done by Dr. Bill Bass and his graduate students at the University of Tennessee, the novel was fiction, based upon the story of character Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a criminal investigator in Virginia.  The novel combined both Dr. Scarpetta’s investigation of a missing girl in the hinterlands of the South and her relationship with her niece Lucy (who functioned more as her daughter).  Lucy, an aspiring FBI agent, falls into an emotional relationship with the shady character Carrie, who turns out to be assisting a serial child murderer, and ends up forcing Lucy to reveal confidential FBI information.  Meanwhile, Dr. Scarpetta finds herself infinitely entangled with the murder case, as well as the emotions of the two officers she finds herself working with.  The really interesting parts of The Body Farm had to do with aspects of criminal investigation, and where they intersect with aspects of forensic science.  For example, it was really interesting to learn that sometimes police can have a body exhumed, but only through immense political consideration, and it is even more interesting to learn that forensic scientists can do much with the long-dead bodies, even getting fingerprints, etc. from the decaying hands.  Another really interesting aspect of the criminal investigation in The Body Farm was the fact that the officers were able to figure out where the body had lain after death by noticing a small dark stain on the back of the little girl, which ended up being a spot where the body had lain on top of a coin.  It was also very interesting to learn about the mother of the girl, and how the human psyche sometimes works in ways that require pity to function.