Morbid - Episode 57: The Body Farm Solo Mini Morbid

Episode Date: April 6, 2019

It's all Alaina today guys and she is giving you the dirty details about what happens when we die, how corpses are identified in various states of decomposition and what makes Dr. Bill Bass' Body Farm so unbelievably fascinating. Hope you like maggots, weirdos. Because...they are going to eat you someday. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's W-O-N-D-E-R-Y-P-O-D. Audible.com slash wondery pod or text wondery pod to 500-500 to try audible for free for 30 days. Angie has made it easier than ever to connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well. Whether it's routine maintenance and emergency repair or a dream project, Angie lets you browse home on her reviews, compare quotes from multiple local pros, and even book a service instantly. So the next time you have a home project, just Angie that and start getting the most out

of your home. Download the free Angie mobile app today or visit Angie.com. That's ANGI.com. Hey weirdos, I'm Elena and this is a solo mini morbid. Mini, mini, mini, mini, mini, mini, morbid, mini, morbid, mini, morbid, mini, morbid, many more but many more but many more bad! Yes, you heard that right. I am by myself today. Ash had a prior engagement that would not allow her any time to record. So instead of depriving our listeners of the three episodes we promised this week, we decided that I should just put two more many episodes out myself and Ash will join us this coming week for her

Kirk Cobain extravaganza. So you're stuck with me just Elena. So we're gonna see how this goes. For those of you who hate our banter and hate when we get off track, that won't be a problem in this episode because I'm alone. So I can only go so far off of our topic. So this is a mini episode. So I'm gonna shout out the Patreons on our next episode. So hang tight. Again, sorry, this is like a weird week. Perkobain is coming next week. We just wanted to do that one right. So instead of depriving you of episodes this week, we just figured this was the best way to do it because we promise content. We're going to give content. So there's really not

a whole lot of business that I want to get to on this mini episode because it's kind of weird to be by myself. So I just got to jump into the story. So today I am going to be covering the body farm. Some of you may have gotten hint that I left on our Instagram and our social media. I left the book by Dr. Bill Bass with a forward bi-perture-shakorn while death's acre. He's the founder, creator, brainchild, behind the first body farm. So he's pretty amazing.

And his book basically explains how this came to be, how he thought of this, his career before it, his career during and after. It's a really good read. It's actually one of my favorite books. I think I mentioned that. When I mentioned that everybody should go read it, but definitely go find it Deaths Acre. It's a great book. So I think what we're going to do here is I'm going to give you just a little insight on what actually happens when you die.

So you have an idea of why this is so important, this research. And a lot of people don't know exactly what happens when you die. We'll go over it kind of generally. I'm not going to go into crazy detail, but we're going to go over, you know, what happens when you die. Maybe talk about how remains can be identified, you know, sex, gender, age, body type. And then we're going to talk about the body farm and I'm going to let you know exactly what that is, how it came to be. any of the obstacles that it has faced in its creation which it has faced a few, and basically what, why we need it. So here we go.

So what happens when you die? I mean, I mean physically, like we have no idea what happens, you know, metaphysically or anything like that. But a lot happens physically. And most of it, if not all of it, is gross as fuck. Like, there isn't a point where you look great. It's all bad, but it's all pretty fascinating too. Body farms allow scientists to study

decay of the human body in a natural setting, as well as being able to set up different settings to watch how a decomposing body changes when the environment around it changes. You know, this can be climate, it can just be the situation that the body was placed into. It can be a number of things. And one of the most interesting things is the

entomology of a decaying body because entire insect populations can actually be, you know, come into creation because of the presence of a corpse or it can completely wipe out a whole insect population just because of its presence. And I mean decaying bodies also affect vegetation surrounding it. It affects the flora and the fauna because digestive enzymes are going to leak out of a dead body, unfortunately. And that can actually kill part of the ecosystem around it

or it can make it flourish. So pretty interesting. Now, let's just talk about it right at the time of death. As soon as your heart stops, your body loses oxygen, which isn't no good, no bueno. That means all your cells and tissues just stop getting that oxygen and that's death. That's cell death, that's body death.

The first cells to die are brain cells. That's usually within three to seven minutes. Interestingly, bone and skin cells can actually survive for several days after your body has died. So that's pretty creepy and cool. Now after this blood begins draining from the capillaries and it will pool in the lower parts of your body thanks to gravity. This wonderful thing is called liver mortis. I'm sure some of you may have heard of it, maybe watching CSI or in your own research. Basically liver mortis looks like big red or purple splotches that will settle in various parts of the body. It always settles in the lowest parts of the body. With the rest of the body, you know, remaining pale or turning that

fun green, bluey color. So liver mortis will tell us where the body, where the body laid close to death. So it can tell you whether a body has been moved post mortem and when it was moved post mortem, which is really interesting, because just by looking at those things, if a body is laying on its face, and there's big splotches of liver mortis all over its backside, you know that body was dumped there afterwards, because that body was definitely laying on its back for a while. So what's interesting about our bodies is we can give a lot of way. Like murderers, sure, murders are very cunning and can get away with a lot of stuff, but they can't trick medical examiners when it comes to how our body naturally decays.

So, everyone also probably knows the term rigor mortis. That's probably the one that everybody's most familiar with. Riger mortis is the stiffening of the joints and muscles, basically. It sets in about three hours after death, and it's going to last about one to four days really depending on environmental factors and such. You know cold, hot, wet, not wet. It's it all kind of can have an effect on it. After rigor mortis and again rigor mortis can be broken. We've had to break rigor mortis during an autopsy before it's basically just a big crunch and you have to really put some elbow grease into it but it can be done. The next stage after that is algor mortis. That basically is just what happens when the body loses all its internal heat. That's when the body becomes cold. That's going to happen within 24 hours because everybody knows that bodies are cold but that

doesn't happen right away. A lot of people think you die, all of a sudden you're this ice cold corpse. You're seeing a lot of movies you see like, oh no, the body is cold, and it happened like four minutes ago. No. Within 24 hours, you're gonna get pretty cold. So as all the cells are dying,

something else is going on. Bacteria within the body begins breaking them down. So enzymes in the pancreas are actually the craziest ones because they'll actually cause the organ to digest itself. Like that's happening inside of your body as you die. The pancreas is just so metal. I can't even handle it. The microbes in the intestine also start eating you up as well

and they will also start eating up the bacteria in the soil. So this is when you really start to look the part of dead. You know, we've all seen that. Before that, you're just kind of at the dress rehearsal, but now is when you really shine. This is when you start to look gruesome as hell and you go start to smell. You see, gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide

are gonna start to emit from you. That gas is gonna cause your body to bloat. And I don't mean like bloat, like I had six pieces of pizza and a bag of chips, bloat. I mean like nasty, there's a ton of gas in you bloat. Your eyes are gonna start to bulge out of their sockets. And because of all this gas and bloat and pressure and just delicious, you know, symphony of physiology

going on inside of you, your tongue is gonna start to swell and it's gonna start to protrude from your mouth. So honey, you're gonna look great because you know what you do next? You turn colors. So that's fun. First you're gonna be green, then you're gonna be purple, and then you're gonna turn straight up black. So this is when, after you've turned all these colors, this is when your lungs are gonna start to explode, expel fluid through your mouth and nose as well. So you're going through it at this point. You really are.

I don't really know what else to say. It's just a lot going on. At this point, because you're so delicious, insects and animals are now starting to notice you. All of a sudden all these heads are turned and they're like, who is this snack over here? Because there's just a lot of delicious, putrifying going on and they'll just come running. But they're going to come running in shifts. They don't all just bombard.

They don't want to overwhelm you with their affection. So they're going to come in shifts. Now the first type of insect to arrive at a dead body is usually the blow fly. I believe the, you know, fancy Latin name is the califora day, but we're going to call it a blow fly because we're simple. They're attracted to body fluids and gases, which, who isn't, you know what I mean? They're going to lay eggs within two days after your death and it's going to go through the developmental stages of egg,

larval stage, pre-pupil, and then pupil stage. And then they're going to be grown-ass bullflaws. Now, when they look at what stage of development a blowfly is at on a dead body, this can help investigators, friends of anthropologists, determine how long that corpse has been lying undetected. So again, it's not just you physically that's helping investigators tell your story. It's going to be your really gross friends that show up after you die too, they're going to help you out. So that's nice. So be nice to flies. Different environmental conditions are going to affect how soon after death the blow flies arrive. So that can, you

know, put a little bit of a, that can put a little bit of a wrench in the wheel of trying to figure out how long you've been there. But they can also investigators at forensic anthropologists, they can all take environmental factors into account when they're looking at what stage they're in, so they're pretty good at that. This is also going to change how soon the maggots develop, and maggots are the larva that emerge from the blow-fly eggs. Everybody knows what maggots are. You may not know, they're like very efficient. They're very efficient and very thorough flesh eaters, which may not sound like, you know,

the best title to you, but they take a lot of pride in it and they do a good job. And I appreciate people who are good at what they do. So, good job maggots. So they're gonna start on the outside of the body because that's where they're gonna hatch out of the eggs. And they use mouths that have hooks on them? Yes, maggots have hooks on their mouth,

which is kind of terrifying. And they use those hooks to get ready, because it's gonna get gross here, guys, like hang on, hang on tight. It's an late-nap episode, so you know. These hooks are going to scoop up the fluids that are oozing out of you at this point. And within about a day, maybe 24 hours, the maggots are going to have entered the

second stage of their larval lives, and that's when they're going to start burrowing into you. I've actually read a couple of books where, you know, a corpse kind corpse explodes or some puncture happens and maggots just kind of flow out from them like gumballs. And I want to say I read that in another great book which I'm going to tell you guys to go take a look at. It's called Never Suck a Deadman's Hand, which is the greatest title for a book ever. Curious Adventures of a CSI, and it's by Dana Coleman. That's a great book. It tells her whole life as a CSI investigator, and she has some great stories, which involve maggots. So maggots all move around together.

They're very social nasties, and while they're eating the decaying flush they're going to spread enzymes that will actually help to turn the body into goo. I don't really know how else to explain it. They're going to turn you into goo. So that's going to happen. And another fun little fact about maggots is where they breathe is actually at the other end of its body. So it's got a mouth on one end with hooks that are scooping up all this yummy flesh. And then it's breathing out of its ass. So, what that does is it allows it to continuously eat very efficiently, while also breathing, which is important.

And to be honest, I mean, I'm kind of wondering why humans weren't built that way. I know we have a nose and everything, but I have a deviated septum. I can't really breathe that well. So when I'm eating, I'm not breathing efficiently. And if I could just breathe out of my ass, I think that would be great. I don't know. Maybe I'm alone in this. I'm sitting, I'm not breathing efficiently. And if I could just breathe out of my ass, I think that would be great. I don't know. Maybe I'm alone in this, I'm sitting in a room alone. So let me know, would you want to be able to eat

and simultaneously breathe at the same time, possibly out of your ass? Let me know. Either way, that makes maggots very, exactly how efficient you might be wondering, or you might not be, I don't know. They start this whole thing, the first stage of larvae is about two millimeters long and by the time it goes through the third stage and pieces out of the body as a pre-pupa it's going to be about

ten times that initial size. So it does a lot of eating and they can actually consume up to 60% of a human body in under a week. These things are no joke. Like we should have maggots like as CEOs running companies because they get shit done. So the next stage of insects that are gonna come to the party happens as the body did case because of microbial fermentation.

So now flush flies. Crazy fancy name,cofagaday Call them flesh for that flies. That's actually really hard to say flesh flies. Don't call them flesh fries because they're not So the flesh flies are now going to be attracted to this microbial fermentation that's going on and the microbial fermentation is basically what's going on in the gut and Like I said the maggots are leaving these enzymes that are going to be breaking things down Turning you into that delicious goo and this is what the flesh flies are getting attracted to is this whole Gaseous gooey process that's going on who doesn't that? So after the flesh flies come and they do their thing,

beetles are gonna come because they are interested in the decomposition of body fat. That's when they're like, hmm, hey girl, and they start coming. Now those are the main ones that we're gonna talk about, but there's also a couple of other species that are gonna pop over after those main ones are done. They're referred to as necrophagus species and they're also called carrion feeders. They're flies and beetles basically, and they just eat dead flesh. There's a lot of different species that do eat dead flesh besides the flesh flies and the blow flies. But these ones are going to come later. Now after these ones come, there's a whole other layer to this. It's not just all of these insects feeding on you.

Next we have the rove beetles, which are called fancy name, Staffelindae. And these rove beetles are actually predatory on the carrion feeders. So the carrion feeders like the flies and the beetles that are eating the dead flesh, these rove beetles are actually eating those insects. So this is whole circle of life going on while you lay their dead. Now at the later stages of decomposition, there's going to be more beetles coming and these ones are called the dermis dade, dermis dade. I'm certain some bug expert, let me know. I'm killing these names. And after these guys show up, the hesteridae may also come and these ones are eating the dermis dade. So there's just all these layers of beetles that one beetle comes, that blow flyclums are some kind of fly. They come to eat you. The next set

comes to eat those insects. And then the next ones come to eat you. The next ones come to eat those ones. So it's like this pile up of carnivorous just delight happening on you while you're dying. Or excuse me, while you're dead and decomposing and have no idea about all the fun that's happening outside of you. Now, like we said before, the environment in which a dead body is put is also going to have an effect on its decay. How fast it decomposes, how it decomposes, whether it decomposes it all, like bodies in water decompose, at least twice as fast as those left just out in the open on land. Decomposition is slowest underground, so buried bodies definitely decompose slower. Mostly ones that are left in clay or are really solid, earth,

the kind of thing that prevents any kind of air or oxygen from reaching the body, those ones are gonna stay preserved longer. Because a lot of bacteria requires oxygen to survive. So if no air is coming into that body, there's no oxygen for that bacteria to thrive and start making enzymes Digesting your organs and turning you into goo. Obviously once we've taken away all this fleshy Loveliness and the body turns skeletal

That can complicate things significantly because the normal physical qualities that identify someone have now been decayed away But don't worry because friends because forensic anthropologists are basically magic wizards, and they can determine somebody's age, sex, race, and body type just by looking at a corpse's bones. Now this normally, when it comes to skeletal remains of children who are pre-adolescent. It's pretty hard to identify the sex of that child, because at that point in your development, your skeletal development, there's not a lot of things that separate you two from each other when it comes to just bones, obviously.

The easy and most generalized way to detect the gender of an adult skeleton, however, is just to look at the size of the bones. Males bones just tend to be larger. In the places where muscle attachments and connections are made, tend to also be larger on males as well. A huge difference between men and women's skeletons are definitely their pelvic bones. You're going to see an obvious difference in size of the pelvic inlet,

which is the space inside of the pelvic bone. If you're looking at it, it's kind of that little, it's an inlet. It's exactly what it looks like. That's going to be bigger on women and raise your hand if you know why. It aids in the birthing process. Obviously, we're not all going to use those inlets, but they're there in case we want to. So when it comes to the bones, sure, there's some ways that we can determine between men and women, look at age and all that, but skulls are what are very handy for determining sex and age particularly.

When you look at a skull in profile, so you look from the side of a skull, female skulls are gonna have a rounded forehead. Male skulls are going to have a less rounded and more slopey forehead. It's going to slope backwards at a kind of like a gentler angle. Also the ridge along the brow. So the brow ridge is going to be very prominent in males. Which you can see just by looking at a male face,

just look at the male near you. You've got a male near you, look at him. So that brow ridge in a male is obviously going to be much more prominent than in its females. And females, it tends to be smoother. Obviously, this can, you know, change somewhat, but in general, it's always going to be smoother and females, it's always going to be more prominent in males. This ridge you will sometimes see referred to as the

super orbital ridge because it sits above the eyes, which tend to be called the orbits, the place where those eyes sit. Now females also tend to have, and this is a really interesting difference, because when you see a skull, it's very obvious when you know to look for this. Females do have rounder eye sockets

with sharp edges to the upper corners. And male skulls have square orbits with really blunt upper eye margins. So when you look at two skulls of male and if you are gonna, you'll notice it. Maybe I'm gonna post some skulls on the Instagram page so you guys can kind of see how, like if you know what you're looking for, you can really tell difference because sometimes skulls all look alike, but when you know what you're looking for, you're like,

oh shit, you're right, that is a much rounder eye than a male skull, you know. So, and then there's the other stuff that you might know already. Males have a square jawline for the most part. And the line between the outer edge of the jaw and the ear is vertical. And females jaw is much more pointed and the edge of the jaw slopes towards the ear. When we're looking at young children,

things can get a little wonky, but we're really, friends of anthropologists are really looking for whether or not teeth have come in and which ones have come in. That's going to help them to determine a child's skull. Obviously, that's not going to do anything with older skulls, but it really does. That's the thing they're really looking for in children's skulls because that's really the main marker.

Now when we're looking at whether someone is an older, younger person, not necessarily pretty, pretty, pretty, peasant, but if we're looking at an older person, their rib, the ends of an older person's ribs are going to be more ragged at the end, like where they meet the cartilage that connects them to the sternum. So the more ragged the ribs are, the more older that body is going to be. It's just, that's just something that happens with age, which is like, when you really think about it, you're like, awesome. So my ribs just start shredding as I get older. Yeah, pretty much. So that's how they're going to tell a few old. Now, once we figure out the, you know, the sex, the age, you know know all that good stuff

That's when they can look at bone measurements and they can start to figure out somebody's height weight and obviously it's going to be approximate because They're just going off of bones here, but it's amazing how close they can really get which I'm sure people know now that we've talked about What happens when you die? What kind of flying friends come and feast on you when you die, how we can tell, how old you are, what your birth sex is, and what, you know, if you were a bodybuilder or really small, I think we should talk about the body farm now. So the first body farm was, which is officially known as the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility, was opened by Dr. William Bass in 1971.

Now according to that book that I told you guys to go run out and grab Deathsaker, a Tennessee prosecutor actually suggested that they name the body farm, the Bass Anthropology Research Facility. Yes, that acronym is BARF. And for those of us who work with death and dead bodies for our day jobs, that's a big, hardy har-har, and also extraordinarily accurate. So I thought that was like a fun little thing. So Dr. Bass recognized the need for research into human decomposition after police kept

asking for his help analyzing bodies in criminal cases. So he figured there's got to be a way that we can research this to better aid investigators because they're always calling him. He's always running out to these specific scenes. He's always trying to help them out. If he could just do the research on his own, he could already have the answers ready or he could at least have a place that would allow him to run experiments. So he could, because there's just so many variables. Now, it started as a pretty small area of the body farm.

It basically had only one body that they were working on, named 81-1, and it soon turned into a three-acre complex that has the remains of about 40 individuals at any one time inside of it. The facility became famous and gained its name after it inspired Patricia Cornwell's 1995 novel, The Body Farm. That's also a great book, and personally, I love Patricia Cornwell, have all her books, read them all. Totally recommend her if you're into you know, crime fiction, which I tend to be very picky when it comes to fiction books. The other great thing with Patricia Cornwell, she does a lot of research for her books, obviously, which we will go into actually in a minute. She really puts herself in these positions,

so all of her, the medical stuff, all of the criminal stuff is all very, very true to life. She makes sure she gets everything accurate, which I appreciate. So where do the bodies come from that are all laying around the body farm? You might be asking, or you might not be. When Dr. Bass first started the body farm, he just used unclaimed bodies from the Medical Examiner's Office, which I'm telling you guys, you'd be surprised how many bodies go unclaimed, especially at the Medical Examiner's Office at any one time. Sad but true. So they, I mean, they were using those ones because if you're unclaimed, you might as well, you know, aid in scientific research.

Later, people did start donating their bodies to facilities and now that's how it is done. When it first opened, it wasn't like everybody around this body farm was like, wow, what a great place for scientific research, because I don't know if anybody has seen the world today, but not everybody is immediately open to science or scientific research. And especially when it has to do with decomposing bodies laying behind fences just in the open. So in the book Deathsaker, Bass does talk about one protest that

happened really early on in the construction of the body farm. And this group that came to protest were called solutions to issues of concern and of noxvillians. Yes, that is sick for short. They picket it in front of the entrance to the body farm, complete with a giant, huge, banner across the front entrance fence of the facility that red quote, this makes us sick. I'm annoyed because science, but Dr. Bill Bass has like a great sense of humor that outreach is mine apparently, because in his book he said when he pulled up to this protest he said he had to like chuckle at the cleverness of the phrase because I mean you have to kind of give them a little credit for that but I guess what

happened to strike this protest up in the first place was that and this is kind of funny. This young guy was on a survey crew. Now this survey crew was actually in the process of taking half of Bill Bass's land that he thought he had for the body farm, and they were turning it into a parking lot expansion. So this kid who was on the survey crew took a lunch break one day, and he ended up sitting right next to some rotting corpses unintentionally. So he went home, he bitched to his mom, who happened to be a member of SICK and BOOM. So this little bitch causes a protest. Luckily,

all it took was the installation of a huge fence around the facility to please them, though. So they were pretty easy to just be like, all right, here we go. You can't see anything, everything's fine. Now some citizens in San Marcos, Texas, where there's another body farm facility, were not psyched either when they learned that Texas State University was planning on having a body farm. The concerns that were raised were basically

regarding smell, what it was gonna look like, and they were worried about like coyotes and other predestined predators, redistributing decaying body parts around town, which sounds like a kind of a valid concern. So when the new site was proposed, the construction was actually halted before it even began because they were worried mainly about buzzards, because people were thinking that the body farm was going to attract buzzards and other birds of prey, vultures, all that good stuff. Texas State University finally made everybody chill because they said the body farm would be located within a 3,000 acre property and would be

at least a mile away from any properties that even come close to bordering the site. And the isolation and privacy was what satisfied everybody. So I mean, as long as these facilities can convince people that they're not going to have decaying body parts on their back lawn and they're not going to smell it, I think people are generally okay. But another really common fear that's associated with body farms is contamination or disease spreading. is contamination or disease spreading, which I mean you can kind of get. It's a valid fear. A lot of people just immediately think dead body, they think dead body is just spread malaria all over the place. But you don't really have a lot

to worry about here either, and I'll tell you why. Body farms don't accept any bodies that test positive for any infectious diseases. These bodies have to be cullin. Also, anyone who is going to be working with the corpses in any way, any proximity with these corpses has to have a round of vaccinations that will prevent them from catching hepatitis, tetanus.

Any of these pathogens that people are commonly worried about. What's funny though is that the bodies themselves actually kind of prevent this whole thing from even being a problem to begin with. Because these bodies, as they putrify, during the putrification process, disease-causing organisms are also decomposing they putrify, during the putrification process, disease-causing organisms are also decomposing and putrifying, which completely kills them. They're totally harmless.

So the whole putrification process and decomposing process actually eliminates the fear of disease being spread. But again, it's a totally valid fear that I understand people who don't have a whole lot of super like intricate knowledge of the decomposition process probably wouldn't know, so it makes sense. What's exciting now is that this started in Tennessee at a university really small one guy doing it with this small research team and now there are body farms all over,

One guy doing it with this small research team, and now there are body farms all over, which is awesome because it's necessary to have them all over because not everywhere has the same climate or environmental conditions. So there's no common set of standards or guidelines that they have to adhere to as a body farm. Really this just security, safety, privacy, all those guidelines they do have to. But the facilities vary in size. Like Western Carolina University's body farm is 59 feet squared. And it's really built to hold about 6 to 10 bodies at a time.

Which, that's still a great facility. But the University of Tennessee, the original one, holds about like we said 40 bodies and covers nearly three acres. And in Texas, of course, as a bigger body farm, the body farm at the University of Texas San Marcos covers about five acres. And it really kind of depends on what kind of facility in land they have available to them. And obviously like we've discussed, you really have to make sure that these body farms are not sitting in the middle of a residential area

or anything they have to be in a place that you can reasonably tell the citizens of that area that they're not going to be affected by it. Now besides just varying in size and varying in how many bodies they can hold at one time, each facility also kind of has a different focus. So the Tennessee, the original body farm, kind of has a really broad range of research that they go into. They do it under all conditions, buried, unburied, submerged in water, out in the open, in

trunks of cars, inside of other parts of cars. I mean, they literally will run the gamut. The body farm at Western Carolina really likes to focus on decomposition in their environment, so in the mountainous region of the Carolinas. So they like to focus on what happens in that atmosphere. Texas' body farm really likes to focus on their regional climate as well. So they're really looking to see what happens in desert-like climates, like forensic anthropologists from states like New Mexico, Arizona, all these kind of places. They look to Texas to tell them what kind of research they have been able to compile about

decomposition and desert climates. And like we said before, the more body farms across the nation, the better because any given environment really gives us more information about every kind of situation that you can find decomposed corps in, which is important because we're not all decomposing in you know Tennessee or in like there's gonna be people everywhere. But when you look at places like Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, there's gonna be specific problems that are arising with people decomposing in those areas that aren't happening over in the Northeast.

It's important to be able to have a set of data that will span this entire nation's environmental conditions. Ideally, they're actually really looking to have a body farm in each state, which would be phenomenal. And I would like to raise my hand and volunteer as tribute, not to be a corpse in the body farm just yet, but I would love to get the one from Massachusetts going. So, hi, pick me, I'm the one. So what happens when a body farm takes in a corpse? Do they just toss it one out into the back, you know, throw it in a car or throw it out into the back of the, whatever, how many acres they have?

So when a facility gets a body, it's obviously refrigerated, placed in a refrigerator, like in a morgue. The body is then assigned an identifying number, just like that. Very first one was 81-1. They all get a number. They are then placed in very specific location in the farm. The location of each of these corpses is logged, it is mapped, they know exactly who is where, and those identifying numbers are very important for that. The researchers and students that work with these corpses and in these farms actually get a really good lesson on how to deal with, you know, chain of custody, chain of

evidence, because they really have to make sure that they know who is where and what is going on and what conditions go with each body. Just like it's in a criminal case, it's really important for investigators to keep a chain of evidence. We've talked about that on many of our cases that not maintaining a chain of evidence in anything like this can be catastrophic. It can totally change the way that everything goes. And in research, it's even more imperative, I feel, because it can change the research completely. So each of these bodies that they put in the farm, logged, located, mapped, all that good stuff, they're all allowed to decompose for a varied amount of time

in a varied amount of ways like we've talked about. That's when the students and researchers get a lot of practice locating remains, collecting evidence from the scene, and removing the remains from the area safely. Once they are removed, once they've gone through their proper decomposing scenario that they are made for, they are then, the remains are taken to the lab. Everything is kind of analyzed there, like further, from anything they couldn't analyze

in the field, they analyze in the lab. And when that is done, the corpse, which is likely a skeleton by now, it might be returned to the family for burial, but that's only if it's requested. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes they don't really, they don't need the remains back. They're happy to donate completely to science. And if that is the case, then the remains will stay with the department's collection of skeletons. Because even years later, they can use these remains to solve cases. So if you're donating to science, you're really...

You have a lasting legacy. In fact, at the University of Tennessee, I keep saying it, but the original body farm. It has a collection of skeletal remains in its care of more than 700 people. So 700 people completely donated themselves to science in Tennessee. That's pretty awesome. That gives me like so much hope for the future. So you might be wondering, the bodies that are laid out in the open, what happens to them in respect of, you know, scavengers? Sure, they have long, really tall fences, but what about birds and shit that can scale those fences? I know, I was worried, I was like, what the hell do they do with that? Because I know sometimes that maybe they will have scenarios where they're looking to see what scavengers will do to a body.

But if they're not looking for that and they're looking for a more clean way, they will cover some of the bodies with like wire cages if they're leaving them out in the open, and that stops animals from, you know, doing things to the body that will kind of skew the natural decomposition process that they're looking for. This actually takes care of the problem that the people in Texas were so worried about with like Acre and that she actually used the term body farm for her novel, the body farm, which is a great novel. So in the summer of 1993 when she was beginning to write this novel she contacted Dr. Baths to ask about decomposition,

which at this point in 1993, he was very used to this. Like I said, a lot of investigations were coming to him for help, for decomposition questions. So Patricia Cornwell came to him because, I mentioned earlier, she likes to get things really right. So she came to him to ask about decomph because she had a decomposing corpse in her story.

In her story, she was having her killer move a body from a basement somewhere else. And she needed to know what kind of changes to Decomp this move might cause. So this actually was the thing that set Dr. Bass into researching more various types of situation when it came to death and decomposition. Because initially, like I said,

they only had a few bodies in the original body farm. And I think they were mostly doing natural decomposition. They weren't throwing people into cars or anything like that, or doing very situational things. They were just kind of really looking at the natural decom. But this kind of made him think and be like, huh, what would happen if a killer left a body in a basement on concrete and then moved it outside? And it

kind of got him rolling on these more traumatic death situations and how to look at them from an anthropological point of view. So in the fall of that same year, 1993, Dr. Best took her around the farm himself view. So in the fall of that same year, 1993, Dr. Best took her around the farm himself to show her in the flesh, so to speak, exactly how Decom happened in the various stages that she was interested in putting in her book. So he took her there and said,

you can look right at it. So this is the best way to describe Decom is to look at it yourself. Then they did an exact replication of the scene she was looking to write for her book and gave her the research. So him and his team literally set up the situation props and all because I think she had the person like laying on a coin and had like a key in there. So I'm like there was various things this person was laying on that was like evidence and they actually put these things under this corpse and actually did the whole

thing so they could tell her exactly what it would look like. And then they gave her the full research on the end. In return, this is when she told him that she was naming the book, the body firm. He said, quote, you could have knocked me over with a feather. It's not just authors that are interested in Dr. Bass's creation and not even just local law enforcement agencies. The FBI has really started to become really interested in this. Because the University of Tennessee, like I said before, does reproductions of crime scenes and crime scene scenarios using bodies. They are actually starting to do it with bodies designated specifically for FBI training and research. FBI teams, every now and then, will perform excavations at the body farm just to sharpen their skills when it comes to corpse identifying and bone identifying

all these skills that they're going to need. The FBI has also raised the possibility of testing ground penetrating radar at the facility and that would help them find bodies that were buried under concrete, which is something that was just in the news actually and it's interesting. I know you guys knew about the Moramurri, you know, Supreme Slap in the face this week where investigators, FBI, were all in that particular house and they were using ground-pen trading radar to see if there was remains under the concrete. It ended up being nothing.

Unfortunately, trust me, we have all grieved to that because I really thought it was going to be it. But it's just interesting that was the technology that they were using at the body farm as well. So just a really interesting way that the body farm has aided in some pretty legendary crime scenes and deaths. So I think everybody probably knows, at least a little bit, about the death of the big bopper, the musician. He died in a plane crash with Richie Valens and Buddy Holly. The day the music died.

Now, in that scenario, the distance of Richardson's body from the plane, which was 40 feet, had people wondering whether or not he had actually survived the plane crash and died like trying to go get help, which is horrific to think of. But Richardson's son actually contacted Dr. Bass to try to figure this out, like Watson for all. Dr. Bass agreed to examine the body, which had to be exhumed for something else anyways. So he said, while it's already being exhumed, I will take a look at it.

He took a look at the body. Now, this was 48 years later. And according to reports, they said it was very well preserved and still very recognizable as the Big Bopper. He, Dr. Bass, determined that there was absolutely no way that Richardson survived that crash. Nearly every bone in his body was broken and they said what happened was he was probably 40 feet away from the plane because his body had been literally launched from the plane. I mean, every bone in his body was broken. So there's a perfect example of Dr. Bill Bass and his body farm and the research

that's done there. I mean, solving a not a cold case, but solving a mystery that was part of one of the most legendary, you know, scenes of death that we all of us at least know something about. And it gave his family a little bit of closure that they know now that he didn't survive the initial impact and try to get away. He died on impact. So I think we have presented enough evidence that body farms are necessary. They're amazing research opportunities. And they've honestly done nothing but positive things for the study of forensic anthropology, decomposition, and identifying bodies.

But for them to exist, they still need bodies. And if you want to be one of them, hey, you are absolutely welcome to. I mean, like, finish living in the bag of flesh that you currently inhabit first and then you know go there. But if you want to donate your body after you pass on to a forensic anthropology facility, you basically just make arrangements with the body farm of your choice before you go. What's important too is you should also let your family members and attorney, all the important people know about your decision so that the body farm can be one notified of your death and they can also

you know take your donation without many issues as long as you put it down there that this is what you want People around you know that this is what you want. They won't have a problem. So with that, I think this about wraps up my quote-unquote mini-sode about body farms in the art of decomposition. We'll call it. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. It was kind of weird just to talk to myself, but you know, it happens. I'm glad I could still do this. Personally, I would love to visit a body farm, do research at a body farm. Hell, I want to open the one in Massachusetts. So we'll see. But yeah, I'll post some photos and definitely go check out Deaths Acre and anything that Dr. Bill Bass does because he really is a fascinating

human being. And Patricia Cornwell is an amazing author. So definitely go check her out if you haven't already, which I'm sure a lot of you already know about her. But hope you guys dug it. If you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Instagram at Morbid Podcast Facebook morbid colon a true crime podcast and definitely join the group because it's a blast in there now I love it. And our patreon is patreon.com slash morbid podcast only if you feel so inclined or visit our website at morbidpodcast.com. So we hope you this is real weird guys. This is real weird to say by myself, I hope you keep listening and I hope you keep it weird. I can't do the thing that Ash does all the time. Bye. Thank you. Hey, Prime Members!

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