Schuyler's Death's Acre Essay

Death's Acre: Inside the Body Farm, chronicles the life of Dr. Bill Bass and his creation of the body farm, an often controversial site where the deceased are studied in different situations and their decomposition is recorded to make important leaps in the field of forensics and police work. Dr. Bass begins his book with a synopsis of his life, and what sparked his love for the field of forensics. It is clear from the beginning of the book that Dr. Bass is a certainly experienced forensic anthropologist, from having traveled to South Dakota to examine ancient Native American graves to having helped nab the killer in a number of cases, if anyone were to be qualified enough to open such a thing as the body farm, it is Dr. Bass.
The Body Farm essentially takes the bodies of people who have donated themselves to science and performs studies on their decomposition process. Testing the effect of insects, water, and the outside environment is just the beginning for those who study at the body farm. Dr. Bass takes budding forensic anthropologists and gives them some of the best experience they could possibly have, one on one time with a body and the opportunity to design an experiment of their pleasing, some of which have even gone on to be published. One of the most interesting and ambitious projects taken up at the body farm was conducted by Steve Symes, who became the hailed “dismemberment expert” as he took hundreds of legs and arms and set about studying the effects of certain saws and the marks that they make on the bone after having been dismembered. Symes laid the crucial groundwork for advances in police work, making it drastically easier for police to locate specific saws that may be tied to the victim, whereas previous to Symes work it was extremely difficult to determine exact what make/type of saw had been used by the killer.
Dismemberment, already a lot to deal with for the squeamish by far not the worst of what Dr. Bass had come by, as chronicled in his book. One case that truly shook me up was that of the “Zoo Man”. The Zoo Man, otherwise known as Thomas Dee Huskey was one of the most gruesome murderers in the book. He would solicit prostitutes, take them to the woods and rape them and then proceeded to strangle them or cut their throats. He received his nickname after prostitutes spread the word that Thomas, who used to work at the zoo, would take working girls there and rape them, thus he got the name and the warning, “Stay away from the zoo man”. This case especially disturbed me because it Thomas Huskey was the only serial killer mentioned in the book, and with Dr. Bass’s horrified narration of body after body being discovered deep in the woods it became more and more clear how truly sick the Zoo Man was. It was scary to think that it was not a crime of passion, a one time thing, an accident, here was a cold blooded killer who had done it again and again and probably wouldn’t have stopped had one of his victims not escaped and subsequently recognized his car while driving with the cops. It hit close to home that people like this aren’t just in movies or TV shows or a Patricia Cornwell book, there are people this sick in real, everyday life.
Another story that Dr. Bass told, one that I had found actually quite amusing was when he misjudged a corpse by 112 years. Dr. Bass was called to a case where it was thought that a recent murder victim had been buried within the grave of a dead confederate officer. The body seemed relatively new and had everything in place except it was missing its head. Dr. Bass had put the time of death at about two months to a year ago, though when he began to take into account what the corpse was wearing and had received no dental care at all he put the pieces together that the corpse was actually the body of the man who was originally in the grave, Colonel Shy who had died 113 years before. Through extensive embalming methods and a cast iron coffin, Colonel Shy had survived the elements and bugs well enough to make it seem as though he had died only months earlier. It was interesting to learn that such big mistakes can be made quite easily and that there is no simple formula when dealing with the deceased.
I really enjoyed reading the Inside Body Farm, and towards the end couldn’t bring myself to put it down, it was interesting to see what a need there is for experimental areas like the body farm, and what a difference they can make in the field of forensics and police work. What I really enjoyed learning, was the answer to a question I had been asking myself for the entirety of the book; would Dr. Bass donate his body to the body farm? He sounded skeptical but never really gave a firm answer, only to say that his wife opinion was, “Absolutely not”.