Alexa's Deaths Acre Essay

Death’s Acre

‘Death’s Acre” by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson shows a whole new perspective on death and forensics. This book shows a variety of different cases and murders. Dr. Bass who is a very intelligent scientist brings us into murder crimes and many other different death stories. On a hillside in Tennessee human bodies decompose in the open air. What adds to the decomposition is the bacteria, insects and birds that normally wouldn’t come in contact with dead bodies if the were in coffins and buried properly. These forensic scientists set up these experiments by putting these bodies in different areas and scenarios outside such as under water, buried underground, etc. This all aids to the science lab. It can also help a great deal with solving murders so forensic scientists can figure out exactly what happens to a body. This is why they run these tests first.
This book brings us into old crimes such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the case of the headless corpse. By all the tests these scientists have ran by letting bodies decompose in the open air it gives scientists and detectives new theories on how previous murder cases happened or give clues to who did it. This book also brings us really into Dr. Bass’s life not only in science but personally. He dedicated himself to forensic science and is a very determined man who knows what he wants to accomplish in life. Bass helps aid the police into solving some of the most famous and gruesome murders of our time. Bill Bass started the body farm in the 1980’s and from then on it has only been a severe help to solving crimes.
In “Death’s Acre” it also shows the reader pictures of different bodies being discovered. This was very attention-grabbing. It makes the reader feel more involved in the book that they can now see some of the things that the book has been talking about. We see pictures of skulls that have been shattered which help forensic scientists come to the conclusion of possible murder by thinking they could have been hit over the head. All of the scientists would find thousands of bones in all different types of graves and debris that they came across. In South Dakota scientists would come across Indian graves and bones. They would even come across a skeleton jaw filled with teeth. The teeth and jaws can tell a lot about an unidentified body. It can be determined the age and race of the individual or even the identity by dental records.
Those people who dedicate their bodies to help with scientific and forensic studies are a superior help to science. The fact that they allow scientists to use their bodies and see how their bodies decompose in different surroundings is helping solve crimes all around the world and it gives forensic scientists much better knowledge about the different situations. All of this wouldn’t be possible it wasn’t for Dr. Bill Bass who started and thought of the body farm all on his own.