Dr. William Bass was head of the University of Tennessee's Department of Anthropology in Knoxville from 1971 to 1992. Not long after arriving at UT, Bass approached the dean and asked for a place outdoors to put decomposing bodies for study. He was given an unused area that had been part of a pig farm.
On that wooded acreage, bodies (unclaimed from the M.E's office or willed to the facility) decompose in open graves, car trunks, ponds, and under bushes. Students track the effects of weather, temperature, insect activity, and decay. This information has been used to help death investigators better determine time of death.
Bass retired from the university in '99 but is a professor emeritus and still heads the Forensic Anthropology Center, does research, gives lectures, and offers consulting services to law enforcement agencies. Last fall I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Bass speak to a group of investigators in Atlanta. The topic: maggot trails.
I do pretty well at these conferences, which often feature graphic photos of crime scenes. The subject matter is fascinating and the techniques different agencies use to solve them are intriguing. However, I confess that Bass's photos of blowfly larvae feasting made me a little squeamish. Okay, a lot.
He discussed the life cycle of this particular insect and described how one could determine the time frame of death based on how many generations of flies had hatched on the body. Icky but oh-so-cool, too. Who'd have thought pests had forensic value?
Entomology has never really been a field of interest for me: Scurrying critters make me nervous. Yet Bass's lecture demonstrated how promising that area of study is. My research found that most forensic entomologists are consultants based at universities and museums.
Want to know how it works? Here is a very simplified description.
There are two ways insects can be used to determine time since death: maggot age and development, and order of visiting insects.
Maggot age and development is useful within the first few weeks after a death. Blowfly larvae lay their eggs on fresh bodies and their development follows a predictable pattern of three stages that take a specific amount of time.
By observing the development of the maggots on a body, the time of death can be narrowed to a day or range of days.
Go To Page: 1 2
