
To plot my next murder, I went to the Body Farm - 80mph
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/books/review/body-farm-lisa-gardner.html
======
mb_72
Anecdotally, my dear old Mum (now in her mid-70s) worked as a forensics
investigator on the Snowtown murders (aka the "Bodies in the barrels" case) in
the final stages of her career. She took some samples to the FBI in the USA as
part of her work, and snagged me a cool FBI hoodie and t-shirt (well, I
thought so anyway). Quite a morbid and disturbing business to be in, but I
feel fortunate to have a parent is such a good role model; she completed her
PhD around the age of 50, and had another whole career in scientific research
and forensics after that. As I'm heading towards the same age it gives me some
hope I can also make a sea-change.

I also learned, after asking some questions about the case, that sometimes you
are better off being ignorant of the details. And that some people are really
capable of terrible, terrible acts against others. :( Fortunately she had
quite the grim sense of humour to help her deal with the cases she worked on.

~~~
pmjordan
_Fortunately she had quite the grim sense of humour to help her deal with the
cases she worked on._

Unfortunately, even a sense of humour doesn't protect you from PTSD when
dealing with this sort of stuff, particularly on a daily basis. I recently
listened to the audio book version of Dr Richard Shepherd's "Unnatural Causes"
[1]. It's all very fascinating, and he's clearly passionate about his work
while also providing a great service to society as a whole but as becomes
clear, it has also affected his mental health and family life.

[1] [https://amzn.to/2LBaOF4](https://amzn.to/2LBaOF4) \- (The audio book is
excellently narrated by the author himself; that doesn't always work out well,
but it does in this case.)

~~~
mb_72
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely grab a copy.

------
Hansenq
Great article! I learned a lot about human decomposition, and I'm glad there's
a facility out there doing this kind of research.

One nitpick: The author mentions a recent study claiming that cell phone use
can cause bone spurs on an individual's head as an example of how quickly our
bodies can change while we're still alive (vs what happens over generations
and while decomposing):

> Changes in DNA can take generations to occur. By contrast, our skeletons can
> show widespread changes in as short as 10 years — from the bony protrusions
> now increasingly common on the back of our skulls (“text necks,” some are
> calling them) to our increasingly low bone density as we transition from
> manual labor to office work.

There have been serious deficiencies identified in the original study, from
not actually measuring and providing data to back up their claims, studying
the wrong thing, and did not have a random, representative sample. This
doesn't detract from the main point of the article, but goes to show how
easily an inaccurate study can permeate the societal knowledge without being
corrected.

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smartphones-arent-
makin...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smartphones-arent-making-
millennials-grow-horns-heres-how-to-spot-a-bad-study)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/questions-
raised-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/questions-raised-about-
study-linking-phones-bone-spurs-skull-n1021706)

------
firefoxd
I recently read _A Dog 's heart_, by Mikhail Bulgakov. There is a part where
he describes the operation on the dog. When I read that part, i told myself
there is absolutely no way he could come up with such a vivid description if
he had never operated on a live body.

Turns out, the author had been a doctor in world war 2 and had witnessed some
terrible things. And they made their way into the book.

~~~
Wiles_7
His semi-autobiographical A Country Doctor's Notebook is well worth a read.

Also it was WWI not two.

~~~
Tade0
The Netflix series based on it with Daniel Radcliffe as the doctor was a joy
to watch.

------
azhenley
I always pretend this body farm doesn’t exist. I think the research is very
important, but I don’t like knowing it is a few miles from my office!

I’m a professor at UTK, where the farm is located.

~~~
RickJWagner
Yeah, when the zombie apocalypse starts you're in a bad spot.

------
atombender
For anyone who liked this article, I can recommend Mary Roach's "Stiff: The
Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" (2003) [1]. A fantastic book about what
happens to human bodies after death. Part of the book is about visiting a body
farm. She's a funny, very talented writer.

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32145.Stiff](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32145.Stiff)

------
mirimir
This is interesting stuff, for sure.

But a key word doesn't appear in TFA: "motive".

No matter how well you hide/burn/dissolve/etc the remains of anyone with whom
you have a relationship, you'll be a suspect. You can try to fake an alibi,
and obscuring the time of death does help with that. However, any evidence for
that having been done may implicate those with motives, because a random
serial killer likely wouldn't bother.

That's why most unsolved murders involve ~random selection of victims.

~~~
cadlin
Only 60% of murders in the US are solved. The police are not as diligent as
you'd think.

[https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-
clearanc...](https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-clearance-
fbi-report)

~~~
mirimir
Sure. But what's the murder clearance rate among general HN readers? I bet
that it's substantially greater than 60%. As either victim or killer.

------
t0astbread
That's a well-placed cliffhanger at the end

~~~
DoctorOetker
it's weird, it's almost advertisement for murderers to buy the book...

~~~
progval
So you just have to track who bought the book (eg. ask Amazon) to find
potential suspects!

It reminds of [https://www.marianne.net/societe/attentat-colis-piege-
lyon-a...](https://www.marianne.net/societe/attentat-colis-piege-lyon-amazon)
: someone built a bomb using Amazon Basics batteries and acetone bought on
Amazon

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "I finally hit on a possible scenario during my last afternoon. I ran
my idea by Jantz. She told me she thought it was deeply disturbing but also
brutally effective. I went home and got to work."

Yeah, everybody whom watched Breaking Bad knows it too. It involves 2 barrels
of plastic and acid.

~~~
magic_beans
Who watched, not whom watched. "Whom" is only applicable for the object of a
clause.

~~~
remarkEon
Completely unrelated, but I only recently learned and became comfortable with
this distinction (despite somehow intuiting it in my use of the word) after
getting further in my German and French classes. We seem to do a poor job of
actually teaching English grammar in this country, and then we stumble upon
these rules when learning _other_ languages!

~~~
magic_beans
I only really learned English grammar properly when I studied Latin in high
school.

------
DonHopkins
You're right about the need for hard evidence to back up unsubstantiated
medical claims. Sometimes crooked doctors actually make fake diagnoses of bone
spurs as favors to their draft-dodging patients.

[https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/12/27/trump-
vietnam-war-bone-spur-diagnosis/2420475002/)

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20490344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20490344)
and marked it off-topic.

