Megan's Death Acre Essay

Forensic science and murder investigations are among the most interesting topics of our time. As one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists, Dr. Bill Bass is the leader throughout the majestic topic. In the book, “Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead do Tell Tales,” by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson, the field of Forensic pathology is revealed and explored.
The lab like Dr. Bass's works his cases is truly one of a kind. His lab or work lies on a hillside in Tennessee where the human bodies decompose in the open air. At the Body Farm life takes its course with corpses buried in shallow graves, submerged in water, and locked in trunks of cars. For thirty years, Dr. Bass's research has molded the field of forensic science, particularly by pinpointing time since death in murder cases. In his riveting tale, he investigates real cases and leads readers on an unprecedented journey behind the locked gates of the Body Farm. A master scientist and engaging storyteller, he is able to share his most intriguing cases, such as his revisit of the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder fifty years later, the mystery of a headless corpse, whose identity astonished police, and the telltale bugs that finally sent a murderous grandfather to death row and many more.
An interesting factor within the work of this scientist is how he is willing to admit to mistakes, because that’s in fact how the whole thing began. He illustrates how learning from his errors, some of which still haunt him, was the original inspiration for the plot of land at University of Tennessee at Knoxville. After he miscalculated a time of death by 113 years, he describes how he was able to reason with the university administration to allow him to conduct his anthropology experiments. During Bass’s stint as an anthropologist in Kansas, he had examined many human remains in skeletal form, but when he went to Tennessee in 1971, he was invited to serve as the forensic anthropologist for the state medical examiner's office. The police informed him to tell them how long the remains had been there. "I didn't know anything about maggot-covered bodies," Bass said once in an interview, "so I looked at the literature and found that there wasn't much there."
The field of forensic pathology is very intriguing and requires a lot of knowledge and thought in order to be successful in the field. Dr. Bill Bass is considered by many as the “founding father” of this particular field due to his excellence in deciphering the time and place of death. In his book “Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead do Tell Tales,” he reveals his stories and conquests proved interesting to all readers.