In the early 19th century, two serial killers, William Burke and William Hare, set up an illustrious business by killing 16 people in Edinburgh, selling the bodies to anatomists since there was a shortage of cadavers. With Edinburgh being a leading European centre of anatomical study, Scottish law prescribed that corpses used for medical research could only come from those who had died in prison, suicide victims, or from foundlings and orphans. Body snatchers raided cemeteries at night, leading to inventive methods for the affluent to prevent their kin from begin “resurrected.” But Burke and Hare provided a fresh supply of bodies to anatomists who bought them at £7 each.
The Greeks believed their gods were immortal, and the souls of the dead may either dwell in the Underworld, ruled by Hades or if they had led an exceptionally exemplary good life, favoured by the gods, they could enjoy the utopian setting of the Elysian Fields. Yet, wherever the soul may find itself after death, the human body is doomed to decay. The science of decaying flesh is called taphonomy, and on a so-called ‘body-farm’, the body still has a meaningful “life”, at least for a while.
During my time in the South African Police, we had a brilliant member on our team, Inspector Vivian Bieldt. In the 1990’s we did not have the luxury of a variety of forensic experts to assist on our crime scenes and at the rate that we were finding and processing bodies, especially during the Moses Sithole, Atteridgeville serial killer investigation, we needed expertise. As I have mentioned before, the progression of Moses Sithole’s modus operandi only surfaced once we placed the crime scene photographs in order of death, not in order of when they were found. Despite what is depicted in tv-series, it is not that easy for pathologists to determine time and date of death, especially when a body is decomposed.
Inspector Vivian Bieldt, first attached to the Criminal Record Centre and a crime scene analyst taught himself the science of entomology and victim identification and forged cooperation with academics in these fields. Vivian was later attached to the Forensic Science Laboratory. He was an invaluable asset. I remember quite often on a crime scene I would sit next to Vivian, collecting flies, larvae and maggots and other little beetles from the body, with Vaseline rubbed under our noses and wearing medical face masks to try and subdue of the putrid smell of decomposing flesh. I always carried surgical gloves in my handbag as well as paper bags and little plastic containers in case we needed them on a crime scene.
The concept of a body-farm was first developed by Professor William Bass in 1977, when he made a peculiar discovery. Asked to attend to a fresh body in a grave, he noticed that the flesh around the bullet wound in the skull was rosy pink, but the body was dressed in the uniform of a Confederate soldier. It turned out the soldier had been killed at the Battle of Nashville in 1864. He was buried in a cast iron casket that was originally airtight. Grave robbers opened it, found nothing of value and reburied the body on top of the casket. Professor Bass knew the technology regarding the influence of the environment and certain circumstances would have on a body, was severely lacking and thus he founded the first ‘body-farm’ officially known as the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility. High fences and No-Entry notices keep the macabre curious out. This is a research centre for scientists. More ‘body-farms’ have popped up all over the world, including in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands
A ’body-farm’ is an outdoor research laboratory where the decomposition process of bodies under different circumstances, are observed and noted. The research data is valuable for determining the time of death of the victim, identifying the victim, determining the cause of death and what happened to the body after death, for example was it transported, frozen, drowned or burnt? More accurate conclusions can be drawn from bodies found in circumstances similar to those in the simulated scenes on the body farm, supporting testimony in court.
Time of death did not only serve me well in composing the profile of the Atteridgeville serial killer, but it can also be compared to a suspect’s alibi, especially when only a few hours are at stake. Some perpetrators try to conceal the time of death by spraying the body with chemicals, or keeping it in a freezer until it is safe to dispose of it.
I remember a case where we found a body of an elderly male in a bath and the warm water was still running. The body had been stabbed with a pair of scissors multiple times. The murder was clearly anger motivated and executed while the victim was in a vulnerable position in the bath. The victim’s married lover arrived a little later that morning, shocked to find him already dead, and realized he would be a suspect if he was noticed on the premises at that time of the morning and his wife would find out about his affair. So, he turned on the taps to confuse the time of death and left the scene. We traced and questioned him, determined he was not the killer although he did tamper with the evidence and eventually we arrested the real killer, who had been killing several gay older men, to whom he had provided sexual services. That explained the anger motivation.
Concealing a murder is a very complicated process, wrought with pitfalls. One of the most bizarre that I encountered was the attempt of one of South Africa’s female murderers, who kept the body of her husband in a freezer for a while, then transported it to the country side, chopped it up, burnt it and when she discovered that bodies take a long time to burn to ashes unless they are incinerated, she tried to feed the rest of the remains to the cows in the pasture – but cows are herbivores, so the human remains were discovered and identified. The recent case of Thabo Bester who smuggled the dead body of Katlego Bereng into his prison cell and set it alight, to facilitate his escape, also backfired.
Pathologists can usually give an accurate estimate of time of death when a body is fresh. In the hours after death, they rely on indications of algor mortis (body temperature), rigor mortis (stiffness), and livor mortis, the settling of the blood to determine an approximate time of death.
But once the process of decomposition is in motion or an advanced state, it becomes complicated. In the 1990’s Vivian considered insects to be the best little detectives, who arrived on a crime scene long before we did. He learnt from Dr Mervyn Mansell, extraordinary professor of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the University of Pretoria, who attended some of our crime scenes and provided on the spot training. However, an insect’s life cycle can differ from one location to another. Technology had advanced since Vivian was processing crime scenes and scientists are now focussed on gathering bacteria and studying microbes. Once the body’s immune system shuts down, microorganisms in the gut start multiplying, rapidly consuming nutrients, literally eating the body from the inside out, which causes the gases that make the body bloat. During the first phase of decomposition the body bloats, swells and omits a putrid stench due to build up of gasses. Regarding insect activity, a dead body will initially attract ants. Then the flesh bursts due to the swelling, attracting flies who lay eggs in orifices. Maggots breed and begin to devour the flesh. In the second stage the bodily fluids that have been leaking due to the maggot activity attract another type of fly. Every type of fly tells a different story, just as different types of microbes tell a different story. The last phase of decomposition is total dehydration when only the hair, skeleton and sinews remain. Small beetles infest the body, laying eggs and the larvae completes the decomposition process. There are even fly-larvae who can gnaw through a coffin buried in the ground. Besides collecting insects, we were also taught to collect soil samples.
A body farm is literally a hive of activity, populated by forensic biologists, zoologists, entomologists, chemists, anthropologists, archaeologists and pathologists observing the bodies under simulated death and decaying circumstances. Bodies are kept in freezers, burnt, submerged into dams and lakes, buried in different types of soil, kept in the boots of cars, encased in cement, hanged from trees, thrown into septic tanks, sprayed with chemicals, and kept indoors with air-conditioners on. They are dismembered, naked, clothed or wrapped in plastic. They are exposed to rain, sunshine, humidity, snow and diverse weather conditions. Their temperatures are constantly monitored, photographs and samples are taken and recorded and so a data base is established.
Yet besides the external circumstances a body is subjected to certain internal nuances that cannot be duplicated on a body farm, such as bacteria already in the body, anti-biotics, diabetes or if the person was a vegetarian. According to scientific research at University of Tennessee, cocaine present in the body may speed up maggot activity while barbiturates slow it down. The science is evolving.
It almost sounds like a movie set director is needed to orchestrate the farm, but a body farm is certainly not a movie scene. Legislation and hygiene are applicable. Most countries have legislation that regulate human tissue and the transportation of human bodies. Dr Nandipha Magudumana, as a medical practitioner must have been aware of this when she allegedly assisted in her lover Thabo Bester’s escape, by procuring bodies from hospitals and tried to retrieve the burnt body of Katlego Bereng from the morgue.
Some people donate their bodies to science, for medical students to practice on the cadavers, but would they donate their mortal remains to be experimented upon at a body farm? Legislation allows unclaimed bodies to be used for scientific purposes. Some religious and cultural groups may object and would a community or neighbouring farmers be amenable to a body farm in their vicinity, are ethical questions raised. Yet more than 500 people have donated their bodies to a body farm in Australia and thousands of people are card-carrying members on waiting lists for American body farms.
Ironically, Hare turned King’s evidence against Burke, who was convicted and hanged and his corpse was dissected and his skeleton displayed at the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School where it still remains today.
By Dr Micki Pistorius
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt (1550) (Public Domain)
