Re-hydrating Fingers at the Morgue

A lot of people believe that victims are identified by family or friends. We've all seen the movie scene where the mother, brother, or husband looks through the glass window and declares the identity of the deceased. In truth, we don't discount family identifications but we usually don't rely on them either, unless we have no other options.  In order to legally prove a person's identity we typically need more than just some person's word.  This is especially true when the condition of the body may preclude an accurate identification.

Shriveled fingers

Bodies in various stages of decomposition can be very difficult to identify. The pathologist may take x-rays of dentition or other areas. They may search for serialized medical devices like pacemakers, breast implants, or stabilizing plates. Of course the best method for identification is the fingerprint. Fingerprints are unique and permanent (meaning the patterns don't change during life unless seriously injured). making them ideal for identification. Most people in the United States have been fingerprinted to some degree. The most common fingerprint record is the single fingerprint  found associated with the driver's license. CSIs can also search for fingerprints on the victim's belongings (in their home, office, or vehicle).

But what do you do when the fingers have become shriveled or dried out during decomposition? Fingers can become shriveled in a day or two depending on the environmental conditions. The skin is still intact but it contracts and becomes rigid. This condition makes it almost impossible to get good quality impressions. The best way I can describe it is the difference between a raisin and a grape. So the real question becomes...how do you turn a raisin back into a grape? One method is the use of Photo-flo 200.

Photo-flo is a Kodak product used in rinsing photographic film during the development process. It's kind of like a really powerful soap. I'm sure the engineers at Kodak never envisioned how CSIs would someday use the solution. CSIs love to come up with new uses for products we have easy access to and this is no exception. To star the process we have to sever the finger or fingers we want to restore. The fingers are then soaked in the Photo-flo for anywhere from 24 hours to a week depending on how bad their condition is. The main objective is to get the tissue pliable again.

Once the tissue is pliable we have to inject a gel called "tissue builder". This is a semi-clear viscous material resembling epoxy (although not sticky). The tissue builder is injected under the skin using a syringe. The material expands the pliable skin, stretching it out to it's "normal" condition. Once this is done the finger can be rolled just like it would be in life. It only takes one good finger to make an identification so we have to check their records to see which ones might be the best to use. Once that is done it is a simple matter of comparing the fingerprint patterns and ridge detail to make an identification.

Tracking Scent vs. A Decomp Search...What's The Difference?

By Tom Adair; author of The Scent of Fear
I get a lot of questions from folks regarding dog searches so I figured today would be a good day to address one big difference between search methods. There are two basic types of "people" dogs can search for; living or dead. The training is different for both. That's because the "evidence" or scent the dog is searching for is different between living and dead victims. NecroSearch International and it's dog handlers have been investigating this issue for 25 years and other handlers have been going much longer. Dog tracking is an old "art" and we've learned a lot over the years. The one things we don't know with certainty is the exact molecules the dogs rely on most. That's for one simple reason. Dogs can't talk. That's okay though because we still learn a lot from working with well trained dogs and handlers.Each handler trains their dog to give a specific "alert" when they find the scent they are looking for. One famous handler I have known over the years trains his dogs to stop and sit.

When searching for living persons the dog is tracking their unique "scent".  Millions of skin cells are sloughed off every day in our various activities and a well trained dog (like a bloodhound) can tell the difference between each person's "scent". To begin these searches the dog handler will introduce something from the victim (like an article of clothing) for the dog to acquire the scent. This item is called a scent article. A well trained dog may then follow that scent trail (sometimes many miles) to the source or until it becomes too degraded or diffused in the environment. The key aspect of this search is that the dog is searching for a unique "scent" given off only by the one person being searched for.

Searching for a deceased body is an entirely different process. When searching for a deceased person the dog is looking for "decomposing human scent", not the scent given off by a living person. Put simply, this is because the cells are breaking down and decomposing (not vital). This means that knowledgeable investigators would never use a scent article to acclimate the dog. There are several challenges to this type of search. The main problem is that the dog is looking for any decomposing human scent. This means that a dog will alert on any human decomposition fluid or tissue. So in addition to dead bodies they will also alert on things like urination spots, feces, and baby diapers. This is a huge concern in rural areas and trash dumps because investigators may have dozens of "alert" areas to investigate. The scent can persist for months or even years in some cases.

Another very interesting phenomenon is that dogs can not differentiate between the decomposing scent of humans and that of pigs.  Pigs have been used for years as human surrogates in a variety of scientific studies. Pigs have a very similar biochemistry, skin to tissue ratio, and are large (relatively hairless) mammals like people. So if a body is believed to have been buried at a pig farm we have to use other methods to detect the body. This conflict isn't very common but it happens and police need to be aware of the issues surrounding these searches.

If you are writing a scene of a dog search it would be wise to understand the basic difference between these searches. The easiest way to remember is that living persons can be searched for specifically. In those searches your character will need some kind of scent article like a piece of clothing, hairbrush, or bedding (if they sleep alone). If your characters are looking for a dead body they will likely find a lot of red herring alerts. These are frustrating because the dog will give a "positive" hit but excavation of the soil may not reveal anything (such as in the case of public urination). You may be able to use that to your advantage in the story so think of how dozens of these "false hits" may affect morale. There is only so many baby diapers you can dig up before questioning the wisdom of getting out of bed that morning :).

Biography of My Dear, Dead Friend 31-01

Guest blog by Jon Jefferson, the writer half of bestselling crime-fiction duo Jefferson Bass

Forensic fans are cut from a different cloth from ordinary folks—specifically, I suspect, from the rubberized fabric of body bags. When ordinary folks find out I write a series called the Body Farm Novels, they look squeamish and quickly change the subject. Forensic fans, on the other hand (and you know who you are, people!) tend to get a gleam in their eyes and say, “Cool. Can I take a tour?!” Unfortunately, the answer is “no,” except to people who have compelling scientific or law-enforcement reasons to go; not enough staff and too many liability concerns.

Eleven years ago, I was lucky enough to go; in fact, I spent two months there at the Body Farm — the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility — with a television crew in tow. I was writing and producing two one-hour documentaries for National Geographic. The plan for the first one, which we titled “Biography of a Corpse,” was to follow a research subject, a donated body, through the entire decomposition process. Once we’d gotten permission — not just from the university, but from the partner of a recently deceased man — we started shooting.

In his old life, our star had had a name; in his new life as a research subject, he took on a new identity, known only by a number: he became “31-01”: the 31st body donated to the Anthropology Department in the year 2001. He was one of four bodies being studied, over the course of a year, by a graduate student who was researching how the presence of clothing changes the decomposition rate of bodies, an important question, since most of the facility’s decomp studies had been conducted with nude bodies.

We began filming 31-01 the moment he came out of the cooler at the morgue at UT Medical Center. The body bag was laid on the ground, unzipped, and carefully tugged from beneath him. He was a white-haired man in his seventies, but he had the body of an athlete, a pentathlete, to be precise. One of the photos his partner gave me showed him hurling a javelin, his arm and shoulder looking as chiseled as a statue’s. Lying on the ground beneath the oaks and maples at the Body Farm, he appeared almost to be napping. But that peaceful appearance would change, and change fast. Within seconds, a blowfly alighted on 31-01’s face. It would be followed, in the minutes, days, and weeks to come, by many thousands more, as nature’s recycling crew began reclaiming him.

The process wasn’t going to be pretty, so why had 31-01’s partner agreed to let us film it, and broadcast it worldwide? “He loved science, he loved the human body, and he loved teaching people about the body,” she told me in an interview. He’d actually made other postmortem plans for himself —he’d arranged to donate his body to a medical school — but the school wasn’t able to take his body, so he’d come to the Body Farm as a way to honor the spirit of his last wishes. And the donation came just in the nick of time for our National Geographic documentary. “I think he would have really liked this,” she added with a sweet, poignant smile.

Besides making frequent visits to 31-01 with the video crew — daily at first, when the changes to his body were most rapid — I also rigged a 35-millimeter camera to take stills of him at regular intervals. By the time he was down to nearly bare bones, I had hundreds of photos. We pieced them together to make a film, eight weeks of decay, compressed into a 30-second movie. There’s no dialogue, and 31-01 doesn’t stir from the spot where he was laid, but there’s plenty of movement: his abdomen swells from bloat in his first week, then collapses, his belly going slack and hollow; insects come and go in waves; his facial features dissolve, and the skull beneath the skin emerges. In my favorite frame of the film, a leaf hangs in darkness above 31-01 for a thirtieth of a second, its fall halted in midair by the camera’s flash: a freeze-frame snapshot of mortality, both corporeal and arboreal.

In the years since 31-01 shuffled off his mortal coil before my eyes — my wondering, watchful, grateful eyes —I’ve seen that 30-second film dozens of times, maybe even hundreds of times. Just now, in fact, I took a minute to watch it again. It always ends the same for 31-01, just as it will end for us all, sooner or later.

But I remember another ending, too: the ending I put on the documentary that chronicled his decay. It was a montage of other photos, taken when he was alive, intact, and vigorous. In these, he seems to be an action verb: he is hurling his javelin; posing in his swimsuit by a canoe, his arms akimbo, muscles flexed; perching atop of his woodpile, his face propped on his hands, a big grin on his face.

Today the bones of 31-01 are tucked beneath Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee, where the Anthropology Department is housed. He dwells in a city of the dead, kept company by nearly 1400 other specimens in the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection. But in my mind, he’s very much alive, and I’m proud to consider him, in some strange and blessed and life-changing way, a friend for life.

Jefferson Bass is the pen name of Jon Jefferson, writer, and Dr. Bill Bass, renowned forensic anthropologist. Dr. Bass, founder of the University of Tennessee's "Body Farm," is an author on more than 200 scientific publications. Jon Jefferson is a veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker; his two National Geographic documentaries on the Body Farm were seen around the world. Jefferson and Bass have collaborated on two nonfiction books and six crime novels; their seventh novel, The Inquisitor's Key, was published yesterday. Read an excerpt.

For more on Jefferson Bass, find them on Facebook, read their blog, and follow along on Twitter. For current book-tour & blog-tour schedules, click here.