Roger Bagu
Sat, Jul-29-06, 17:17
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060729/ap_on_sc/body_farm
Western Carolina U. plans 'body farm'
By TIM WHITMIRE, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago
The 6.5-horsepower wood chipper sitting in the middle of John
Williams' forensic anthropology lab run is no macabre joke.
Yes, a wood chipper did figure in the bloody climax of the
1996 film "Fargo." And yes, the professor at Western Carolina
University has run human bones through this particular Briggs
& Stratton model.
But Williams, of course, isn't trying to dispose of any dead
bodies. Rather, he's a student of how the human body
decomposes.
He needed the chipper for a study on what the machine does to
bone, a study commissioned by attorneys suing a Georgia
crematorium owner charged with dumping — and chipping — human
remains he had been given for incineration.
Soon, Williams will have a new place to conduct his research —
a well-hidden location near Western Carolina's campus where he
and students studying the science of the human skeleton and
human remains can watch cadavers decompose in the mountainous
environment of western North Carolina.
It will be just the second such "body farm" in the country —
the first was found in 1980 at the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville.
"They'll be involved with the daily observation process. Very
early on, you are examining that body daily, because the
changes initially go very quickly," Williams said. "They'll
learn how to observe as scientists."
How fast a body left in the open breaks down — key to
establishing when a person was killed — depends heavily on
temperature, moisture and other environmental factors,
Williams said. In relatively dry, cold conditions, like those
found in these mountains in the winter, it can take months for
a body to decompose to skeletal remains.
In the warmer, more humid conditions of summertime, when there
are plenty of insects around, that process can speed up
greatly, said Williams, a veteran of body recovery operations
at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and the 1999 EgyptAir crash off the Massachusetts coast.
School officials are keeping the facility's exact location a
secret, to discourage those with a morbid curiosity from
dropping by. Roughly the size of a garage with room for six
bodies, it will be hidden from view by a 9-foot privacy fence
and protected by a second security fence topped with razor
wire. Campus plans daily patrols at the site, which is a
half-mile from the nearest home.
Rick Schwein, head of the FBI office in Asheville, said his
office handles four to six body recoveries each year on
federal lands, including the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky
Mountains National Park, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
reservation and numerous national forests.
"We do have a fair number of body recoveries," Schwein said,
"because of the remote and rural environment and the amount of
publicly accessible remote land."
Most recently, he said, a murder victim from Cleveland County,
in the central part of the state, was found dumped near the
parkway. In a 2001 case, the body of a Wisconsin man was
discovered by hunters in a forest about seven miles from the
Western Carolina campus. The man's son, a former student at
Western Carolina, was eventually convicted of killing his
father in the summer of 1998.
"Any education program that can be utilized as a resource by
local, state and federal law enforcement agencies has got to
be a good thing," Schwein said.
Already, Williams has fielded dozens of calls from law
enforcement officials excited about the research site,
including a trainer who teaches search dogs for nearby Macon
County and has put in a plug for training cadaver-finding
bloodhounds at the site.
The planned Western Carolina facility is 120 miles southeast
of the only other such research site in the country, at the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Professor William M.
Bass III founded his "Anthropology Research Facility" in 1980
and saw it become a sensation after it was featured as "the
body farm" in a Patricia Cornwell novel.
Bass went on to co-author a 2003 book, "Death's Acre: Inside
the Legendary Forensic Lab 'The Body Farm,' Where the Dead Do
Tell Tales."
Western Carolina Chancellor John Bardo, who hired Williams
from the University of North Dakota in 2003, has been
supportive of Williams' effort to build a Top 10 forensic
anthropology program at the school.
Among the ways Williams hopes to set his facility apart from
Tennessee's is by coming up with a moniker other than "body
farm," which he finds both inaccurate and too flippant.
"I'd rather have something more dignified," he said.
That's in keeping with Williams' requirement that students
working in his lab always refer to remains by the first name
of the person from whom they came.
As an example, Williams holds up a leg bone from a man named
Walter, a diabetic who had one leg amputated at the knee. The
femur is from Walter's other leg, which he broke and doctors
had to repair with the metal plate.
"We use their real names to remind people that these are real
people," Williams said.
But Williams does have a sense of humor about his profession.
The screen saver on the lab's computer scrolls a famous line
from the film "The Sixth Sense" — "I see dead people" — while
decorations include a bumper sticker that reads "I Sucked
Bones at Fat Buddies," a local restaurant.
More than anything, Williams said, the new Western Carolina
facility will help students learn whether they literally have
the stomach for a field that many choose based on having
watched the popular "CSI" television shows.
"'CSI' paints this picture of this sterile, perfect world,
where there are no, for example, smells, and even the sights
TV flattens out," Williams said. "One of the first thing I
want our students to be exposed to is the real thing, so
that they don't spend a portion of their life learning this
and then go on their first case and ... realize, 'I can't
handle this.'"
___
On the Net:
Western Carolina Anthropology and Sociology Department:
http://www.wcu.edu/as/anthro_soc/
University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center:
http://web.utk.edu/anthrop/FACresources.html
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The information contained in the AP News report may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the
prior written authority of The Associated Press. Copyright
2006 © Yahoo! Inc. Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Send
Feedback | Help
Western Carolina U. plans 'body farm'
By TIM WHITMIRE, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago
The 6.5-horsepower wood chipper sitting in the middle of John
Williams' forensic anthropology lab run is no macabre joke.
Yes, a wood chipper did figure in the bloody climax of the
1996 film "Fargo." And yes, the professor at Western Carolina
University has run human bones through this particular Briggs
& Stratton model.
But Williams, of course, isn't trying to dispose of any dead
bodies. Rather, he's a student of how the human body
decomposes.
He needed the chipper for a study on what the machine does to
bone, a study commissioned by attorneys suing a Georgia
crematorium owner charged with dumping — and chipping — human
remains he had been given for incineration.
Soon, Williams will have a new place to conduct his research —
a well-hidden location near Western Carolina's campus where he
and students studying the science of the human skeleton and
human remains can watch cadavers decompose in the mountainous
environment of western North Carolina.
It will be just the second such "body farm" in the country —
the first was found in 1980 at the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville.
"They'll be involved with the daily observation process. Very
early on, you are examining that body daily, because the
changes initially go very quickly," Williams said. "They'll
learn how to observe as scientists."
How fast a body left in the open breaks down — key to
establishing when a person was killed — depends heavily on
temperature, moisture and other environmental factors,
Williams said. In relatively dry, cold conditions, like those
found in these mountains in the winter, it can take months for
a body to decompose to skeletal remains.
In the warmer, more humid conditions of summertime, when there
are plenty of insects around, that process can speed up
greatly, said Williams, a veteran of body recovery operations
at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and the 1999 EgyptAir crash off the Massachusetts coast.
School officials are keeping the facility's exact location a
secret, to discourage those with a morbid curiosity from
dropping by. Roughly the size of a garage with room for six
bodies, it will be hidden from view by a 9-foot privacy fence
and protected by a second security fence topped with razor
wire. Campus plans daily patrols at the site, which is a
half-mile from the nearest home.
Rick Schwein, head of the FBI office in Asheville, said his
office handles four to six body recoveries each year on
federal lands, including the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky
Mountains National Park, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
reservation and numerous national forests.
"We do have a fair number of body recoveries," Schwein said,
"because of the remote and rural environment and the amount of
publicly accessible remote land."
Most recently, he said, a murder victim from Cleveland County,
in the central part of the state, was found dumped near the
parkway. In a 2001 case, the body of a Wisconsin man was
discovered by hunters in a forest about seven miles from the
Western Carolina campus. The man's son, a former student at
Western Carolina, was eventually convicted of killing his
father in the summer of 1998.
"Any education program that can be utilized as a resource by
local, state and federal law enforcement agencies has got to
be a good thing," Schwein said.
Already, Williams has fielded dozens of calls from law
enforcement officials excited about the research site,
including a trainer who teaches search dogs for nearby Macon
County and has put in a plug for training cadaver-finding
bloodhounds at the site.
The planned Western Carolina facility is 120 miles southeast
of the only other such research site in the country, at the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Professor William M.
Bass III founded his "Anthropology Research Facility" in 1980
and saw it become a sensation after it was featured as "the
body farm" in a Patricia Cornwell novel.
Bass went on to co-author a 2003 book, "Death's Acre: Inside
the Legendary Forensic Lab 'The Body Farm,' Where the Dead Do
Tell Tales."
Western Carolina Chancellor John Bardo, who hired Williams
from the University of North Dakota in 2003, has been
supportive of Williams' effort to build a Top 10 forensic
anthropology program at the school.
Among the ways Williams hopes to set his facility apart from
Tennessee's is by coming up with a moniker other than "body
farm," which he finds both inaccurate and too flippant.
"I'd rather have something more dignified," he said.
That's in keeping with Williams' requirement that students
working in his lab always refer to remains by the first name
of the person from whom they came.
As an example, Williams holds up a leg bone from a man named
Walter, a diabetic who had one leg amputated at the knee. The
femur is from Walter's other leg, which he broke and doctors
had to repair with the metal plate.
"We use their real names to remind people that these are real
people," Williams said.
But Williams does have a sense of humor about his profession.
The screen saver on the lab's computer scrolls a famous line
from the film "The Sixth Sense" — "I see dead people" — while
decorations include a bumper sticker that reads "I Sucked
Bones at Fat Buddies," a local restaurant.
More than anything, Williams said, the new Western Carolina
facility will help students learn whether they literally have
the stomach for a field that many choose based on having
watched the popular "CSI" television shows.
"'CSI' paints this picture of this sterile, perfect world,
where there are no, for example, smells, and even the sights
TV flattens out," Williams said. "One of the first thing I
want our students to be exposed to is the real thing, so
that they don't spend a portion of their life learning this
and then go on their first case and ... realize, 'I can't
handle this.'"
___
On the Net:
Western Carolina Anthropology and Sociology Department:
http://www.wcu.edu/as/anthro_soc/
University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center:
http://web.utk.edu/anthrop/FACresources.html
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The information contained in the AP News report may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the
prior written authority of The Associated Press. Copyright
2006 © Yahoo! Inc. Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Send
Feedback | Help