Death's Acre Summary

Introduction

“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.

Key Idea 1

Dr. Bass's Body Farm is a small patch of land that is located near the University of Tennessee Medical Center. This place was where bodies were locked in the trunks of cars, submerged in water, concealed under concrete slabs, and buried in shallow graves. All of these things were done to the bodies because

Dr. Bass wanted to teach his colleagues about anthropology and how long it takes a body to decompose in any kind of situation. The body farm is the only research facility that is devoted to studying dead bodies.
Key Idea 2
Dr.

Bass's first official anthroplogy case was the result of an early morning traffic accident that happened outside of Frankfort, Kentucky, in the winter of 1954. The two trucks collided and when the fire was out, three bodies were found. The identities of the two drivers were identified but the third body was a mystery. Dr. Charles E. Snow, an anthropology professor at the University of Kentucky, was requested to identify the third body. He agreed to examine the remains. At the same time Dr. Bass was taking a class that Dr. Snow was teaching. Dr. Snow wanted Dr. Bass to tag along with him so he could have a hand's on experience of anthropology. The police already had a really good idea of whose body this was, because they looked at a list of missing people and found a match. Dr. Snow's job was to confirm that this was the right body. They had to dig the body up because it had been buried, so they drove to the cemetery. They matched the identity of the woman and Dr. Snow gave Dr. Bass five dollars for driving them to the cemetery. From that day on, Dr. Bass was hooked on anthropology and he went to college at the University of Pennsylvania to study anthropology. He chose this college because he wanted to learn from Dr. Krogman. Dr. Bass developed a strong relationship with Dr. Krogman because when Krogman fell down the stairs and broke his leg, Dr. Bass would drive him to and from the college. During this time, Dr. Krogman would assign readings and teach to Dr. Bass while

he was driving. Dr. Krogman would also test Dr. Bass by letting him make observations of bones and seeing his analysis.

Key Idea 3
Dr. Bass was eventually faced with a race against time in his career. He had to dig up the bodies of Indians in South Dakota before they were flooded by the Missouri River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were going to flood the Missouri River. Archaeologists were in a race with the rising waters because they trying to find the indians’ remains and treasures. Scientists are able to find out the history, culture, lifestyle, and diet of the native Americans from bodies that are found. The Army Corps of Engineers had built the largest man-made dam in the U.S. on the Missouri River. It was 250 feet high and it stretched nearly 20 miles. It was called the Oahe Dam, it was named that because of the Sioux council lodge. As the Corps of Engineers piled up earth to hold back the river, a small army of archaeologists and indentured servants began excavating in the area that was to be flooded. At an excavation site called the Sully site, there were a bunch of artifacts that were found and taken to the Smithsonian, however, they were not finding the bodies that they were hoping to find and they were frustrated because they had to find the bodies before the summer ended and the river flooded over the sites. They finally found the Indian cemetery that they were looking for and they began to dig up the bodies.
Key Idea 4
Dr. Bass went to Knoxville in Tennessee to become head of the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee. He was named Tennessee’s first state forensic anthropologist. Dr. Bass bought an acre of land beside the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He and his students began working and cleaning up the place. They cleared trees, laid a gravel driveway, ran power and water to a shed that would be used to store tools, and the put up a fence around it. They got their first body in May of 1981. The body was a 73 year old male who died of alcoholism, emphysema, and heart disease. For the sake of confidentiality, they gave him an ID number. His number was 1-81 because of the year 1981. Dr. Bass and his students set 1-81 on a concrete slab and let the body decompose and be used for study and experimenting.
Key Idea 5

This book can relate to this last semester in a few ways.

For example, we learned about the skin of a human body and this book can relate to that in some way. We also learned about bones and that is basically what this whole book is about, the importance of bones and how people can use bones to put together crime cases and to study history. This book is anatomy-based because it talks about some things that we learned this past sumester.

Conclusion

In this book, Dr. Bass takes us behing the scenes of the Body Farm. An engaging storyteller, he reveals his hardest and best cases. While this book tells about Bass’s life, it is centered around the Body Farm itself because it tells of how it was started. This book is very informative and it tells you that even though it is a dead body, it can still tell many tales and it can mean a lot to history, This book shows just how the dead can come to

life.