Introduction
In the book “Death's Acre”, By Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson they tell readers how they got to where they are today in their careers and how Dr. Bill Bass became famous for the well known “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. In “Deaths Acre” Bass invites people across the world who are reading to go behind the gates of the body farm where he revolutionized forensic anthropology. Bass takes us on a journey on how he went from not knowing if this is what he wanted to do for a living to being in a career that he would never trade. He tells us about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explored the headless corpse of a person whose identity shocked many people included the police, divulges how the telltale traces and case
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of a murderous grandfather to death row and much more. Key Idea 1: The Start Dr. Bill Bass forensic career began as a result of an early morning traffic accident in winter of 1954 outside Frankfort, Kentucky. On a foggy morning two trucks collided in a awful crash on a two-lane highway. When the fire was out, three bodies burned beyond recognition were found in the vehicles. Both drivers were easily confirmed, but the third was not so easy to identify. Key Idea 2: The Flight In chapter 1 Bass begins to tell us about how he went to college and how he began his journey. He begins to talk about the Charles Lindbergh Case. He refers to this as the case of the century. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh an airmail pilot flew a very small single engine aircraft called the "Spirit of St. Louis," across the Atlantic Ocean. He took this flight on alone by himself with no radio or parachute, this trip lasted 33 hours and he stayed awake the whole time. By the time he reached the coast of France where he was aimed to land, news of him landing had reached Paris and he became a “Star”, by the thousands came out to the airfield to give him a warm welcome. The moment he landed from the 3,600 mile trip, the world changed, and so did his life. His flight brought him fame and many nicknames such as "Lucky Lindy," and "The Lone Eagle," Which reflected his trip and how he flew alone the whole trip. Five years after this flight, Charles and his wife, Anne, were living in a mansion in New Jersey. They had a 20-month-old son named, Charles Jr., but once again because of his father's fame he was nicknamed, “The Eaglet”. Key Idea 3: The Kidnapping “The Trial of the Century” is what many called it but like Bass says in the book, “That label seems to get thrown around quite a lot”.
The Lindbergh child child case was heard all around the world. This happened seven years after the “Monkey Trial” and a half century before the famous O.J Simpson case. When the news of Charles Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping, a media craze broke out and the world was in shock. This case attracted more journalists and reporters than World War I had many years ago. At first demanding $50,000 and then rising up the ante to $70,000 which made front-page headlines and news around the world. There weere many hopes and prayers that the Lindbergh baby was alive and well, But all those hopes, were crushed two months after little Lindbergh was found. Reports say a small child's body was found a few miles from the their mansion. The body was badly decomposed; on the left leg their was nothing below the knee and same for the left hand. The right arm had been chewed off by what seemed to be a pack of dogs or wild …show more content…
animals. Key Idea 4: Who? From the report of the body's size, clothes and a distinctive abnormality in the right foot, three toes that overlapped, the remains were quickly identified as the Lindbergh baby's. The next day Charles Jr. was cremated and a broken-hearted Charles Lindbergh flew out over the Atlantic, once again alone but this time was not a happy flight but to scatter his son's ashes. The police later arrested, Bruno Hauptmann, a German immigrant on charge of kidnapping and murder. Key idea 5: How? Bruno was also a carpenter whose garage rafters had been used to construct a ladder used to reach the second floor of the nursery where baby Lindbergh lied.
He was arrested after police traced a large portion of the ransom money to him. He was charged with kidnapping and murder and the baby's skull had been fractured. After further evidence the injury might actually have resulted from a fall and not from something else, since the ladder broke during the abduction. Despite allegations that some of the evidence against him was suspect, Hauptmann was convicted. In April of 1936 he was put in the electric chair and killed. In June of 1982 nearly 50 years later, Bass was contacted by an attorney representing Bruno Hauptmann's widow, Anna. Many years, Mrs. Hauptmann was still trying to clear her husband's name. Her only chance was a dozen tiny bones that were recovered from the crime scene afterward, they had been carefully preserved ever since by the New Jersey State Police. At the request of Mrs. Hauptmann an attorney, Bass drove to Trenton to see if this handful of scattered bones might show that the body had been incorrectly identified. Let them be the bones of a younger boy, an older boy, a girl of any age, she prayed that it was anyone but the bones of Charles
Jr. Conclusion and Thoughts on the Book In my opinion this was a very good book and an amazing story on how Dr. Bill Bass got to where he is today. In my opinion the most important part of the book was the Lindbergh case and how big of a case that was. Even after many years Bass was contacted by a widow to try to clear her husbands name of thas horrible crime. This book had to do with the parts of the body and how the bodies decomposed at the body farm in Tennessee and we studied about all the body parts this semester!
“Death's Acre” tells about the career of a forensic hero, Dr. Bill Bass, creator of the famous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee-the world's only research facility devoted to studying human decomposition. He tells about his life and how he became an anthropoligist. He tells about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explores the mystery of a headless corpse whose identity surprised police.
The smell of death and decay, emanated inside the trunk of a Pontiac Sunfire. A missing child; only to be reported 31 days after she went missing, found dead in a forest close to her home. And a mother who was accused of murder, who got off with no charges, even with evidence stacking against her. This all started with one 9-1-1 phone call from a concerned grandmother who has not seen her grandchild in a month. Casey Anthony was the main headline in all the newspapers, cable television, and social media. Over more than 140 million people sat and watched as the trial played on, and a verdict was reached. This case was the largest and most polarizing case that America has ever seen.
Scott Peterson was an educated man from California Polytechnic State University where he graduated with a B.A. in Agricultural Business. He was married to his wife Laci Peterson who was also pregnant with their unborn son. In December of 2002 Laci Peterson went missing in the Modesto, California area where she shared a home with Scott. Once the investigation of Scott’s missing wife started authorities began to suspect Scott as a suspect in her disappearance. In April of 2003 a fetus and a female torso that was missing hands, feet, and a head were found on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay area was where Scott was boating the day of Laci’s disappearance. The body was later identified as Laci Peterson and the fetus as Laci and Scott’s unborn son. Scott was also arrested in the month of April shortly after the discovery of Laci and their son’s body and was later sentenced to the death penalty. Over the course of this paper I will cover the whole event of the disappearance of Laci Peterson, relating it to a sociological theory, the impact the event had on our society and how the media had influence over this national event.
Another case is that of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson whose death was initially ruled the result of accidental suffocation. A second autopsy produced a different conclusion, but when the second autopsy was performed, his body had been stuffed with newspaper, and his organs were missing ("Organ Trafficking, Melanin Theory & the Fountain of Youth -," n.d.). The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck (Archer,
Following the scandal involving the kidnapping and subsequent death of his child, Lindbergh had once again been shoved into the American limelight. During the thirties
Sue Grafton once stated: “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right.” This is clearly the thought the Boulder Colorado police conceived in the case of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. As many have observed from the onslaught of media coverage, the day after Christmas 1996, six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found buried under a white blanket, bound, beaten, and strangled to death in the wine cellar of their Boulder home. With such a strikingly rare and glamorous story of a six year old beauty queen dead, who was a part of a “perfect American upper-middle class family”, combined with a lack of a lead and ever mounting suspicion piling up against the parents it was no surprise to find that it was fuel to the media and soon stories sold and became a matter of competition between the press. So, like wildfire, this heart-breaking story spread, stretching across the nation, shattering the souls of the world. News broadcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, and television specials all shaped and molded peoples perceptions of this beautiful child’s murder, especially her parents, John and Pasty Ramsey’s involvement or lack there of. The police and FBI’s merciless quest to connect Jon Benet’s murder to her parents, seemed to cause the them to overlook important evidence, or at the very least dismiss suspicious findings that would otherwise send red flags to investigators. There are many contributors as to why this case remains unsolved including lack of investigative expertise, failure to protect valuable evidence, and focusing too much on the parents as suspects but, ultimately, the over involvement of...
Even though the prosecution presented evidence to the court, the only clear-cut hard fact the prosecution had against Anthony was that she failed to file a report for her missing daughter Caylee and that when she finally did a month after her daughter had gone missing, she proceeded to lie profusely to the authorities on the events that took place. The prosecution focused highly on the forensic evidence of decay located in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car. The use of a cadaver dog to search the vehicle led investigators to be able to determine that a decomposing body had been stored in the trunk of the car. The forensics department used an air sampling procedure on the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car, also indicating that human decomposition and traces of chloroform were in-fact present. Multiple witnesses described what they considered to be an overwhelming odor that came from inside the trunk as it where the prosecution believes Caylee’s decomposing body was stowed. Several items of evidence were ruled out to be the source of the odor, as experts were able to rule out the garbage bag and two chlorine containers located in the trunk as the source. The prosecution alleged that Casey Anthony used chloroform to subdue her daughter and then used duct-tape to seal the nose and mouth of Caylee shut, inevitably causing her to suffocate. Based off the
The show portrays that forensic anthropologists are responsible for almost every aspect of the death investigation, which does not correctly depict the role of forensic anthropologists (Wood,2017a). The method of which components of the biological profile, like sex of the remains, is also incorrectly portrayed as Dr. Brennan estimated the sex using a trait that does not accurately indicate sexual dimorphism (Wood, 2017c). Lastly, the complexity of personal identification, which is one of the most important aspects of forensic anthropology casework (Krishan et al, 2016), is not portrayed correctly as Dr. Brennan and her team based the identification of the remains on one trait that has questionable reliability (Charles & Levisetti, 2011). All in all, ‘The feet on the beach’ episode of ‘Bones’ does not accurately portray the forensic anthropology as it is romanticized for entertainment and overly simplified for a lay person to
Buckman, Adam. “Following Footsteps of a Killer.” New York Post (Nov. 2002): 124: Proquest. Web. 28 Feb. 2014
Casey Anthony was accused of killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee, but because of lack of evidence, Anthony was convicted not guilty. John Cloud, from Time magazine, implies, “And yet virtually no one doubts that Anthony was involved in her child’s death. In fact, her lawyer admits that Anthony know how her daughter’s body would be disposed of” (“Few Doubt That Casey Anthony Was Involved in Her Child’s Death. But Fascination With Her Case Has Made It The First Major Murder Trial Of The Social-Media Age”). They found Caylee’s corpse duct taped by Casey’s parent’s house, in Orlando, Florida. The only evidence they found was in the family Pontiac Sunfire. The stench of decomposing flesh overpowered the trunk of the family’s car. “Why did Anthony let 30 days pass between the time Caylee went missing and the day police were notified?” questioned Tresniowski, “And how could she so blithely dan...
Her body had been bathed and thoroughly washed before being placed, it was also completely drained of blood [2]. Two detectives were assigned to the case: Harry Hanson and Finis Brown. When they and the police arrived at the crime scene, it was already swarming with people, gawkers and reporters. The entire situation was out of hand and crowded, everyone trampling all over in hopes of good evidence. One thing they did report finding was a nearby cement block with watery blood on it, tire tracks and a heel print on the ground.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
On the evening of March 1st, 1932, famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh put their 20 month old baby, Charles “Charlie” Augustus Lindbergh Jr to bed on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey. When the child’s nurse, Betty Gow, went to check on Charlie, he was gone. Gow then reported the child’s absence to his parents. The police were contacted immediately and the search for the baby began. While trying to get in touch with the suspect who was leaving handwritten notes, the Lindbergh’s were very close to receiving their precious child. On May 12th, 1932, 72 days after the kidnapping, a decomposed body of a baby was found in the woods near the Lindbergh house. The child was dead and was predicted to have died on the night of the kidnapping as a result of a fractured skull. Charles Lindbergh was able to identify the baby as his own. Now the kidnapping had also become an immoral murder. Bruno Hauptmann is proven guilty through physical evidence, some which is found at the crime scene, his own physical features, and his handwriting. Additionally, his residency and money, specifically gold certificates assist in determining his innocence. Lastly, the testimonies at Hauptmann’s trial lead to one clear statement at last. Through an examination of physical evidence and case details, it can be concluded that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was responsible for the kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh.
results of the forensic anthropology. For instance, if a crime is committed at a certain scene,
Through this research I have found that forensics and forensics anthropology work hand in hand. They seem to be closely related in regards (regards is an emotion, you mean regard) to solving criminal cases. A huge interest for me, while conducting this research is the impact the analysis has on cold cases. Cold cases are very important and require an extensive analysis of one’s life whose life? Mine?. Often victims in a cold case do not have strong family bonds, or persons that they are close to. It is imperative within life to have friends and persons, who will say something if you are not seen in a couple of days or weeks. Knowing where a person may be or what a person is involved is important in the case of a missing person. It is a vital part of forensics in relation to forensic anthropology. Within forensics anthropology you can find out more detailed information on the decomposition process. Steadman (2014) The information (what information?) can be used to identify a victim and maybe lead to clues of the perpetrator. New paragraph The study of a victim may also l...