All the Time in the World

0:00Phoebe Judge:Support for Criminal comes from Squarespace. If you're a business owner, you know that it matters how you present your business online. Squarespace has the tools you need to customize your website and advertise all the kinds of services you provide. Plus, you can choose the colors and fonts you like. Go to squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. Support for Criminal comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over$1 ,000.

0:37Phoebe Judge:Fetch Pet Insurance can help. Fetch is a complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. You get paid back up to 90 % of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. This week, we wanted to share one of our very favorite episodes. We released it back in 2017, and people still write to us about it all the time. And I still think about the day we recorded it.

1:22Phoebe Judge:What is that you're holding? This is a mandible, the jawbone. Oh.

1:31Let's see. And that skull is in half. Yeah, this person was autopsied. So this is an autopsy cut. Interesting. So that they can examine the brain.

1:46There's a little bag here that says hands and feet. Do those usually get separated because it's... It's just there. lots of little small bones, so we put them in a separate bag just so that they don't get scattered out throughout the box. It's easier to keep them together. This is Dr. Daniel Westcott, the director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin. We met with him in a nondescript building, a warehouse, really, so plain we drove right past it twice. But when you get out of the car and walk to the door, you see a small paper sign with a vulture and a skull.

2:29And you know you found it. There are very few places in the world that do what they do here. While you would think that we would know a lot about how bodies decompose, it actually turns out that we really know very little about what's going on. So the work that's done here is pretty vital to that. At Dr. Westcott's center, they deliberately set out human bodies to decompose in nature. Most of the bodies are lying on the ground, face up, with their arms at their sides. But researchers also place bodies in trunks of cars, wrap them in tarps, and bury them in shallow graves. As a culture, in some ways, we actually are kind of scared of death.

3:13And, you know, we embalm bodies so that they don't decompose as fast. And we don't want to see that process going on, but that process does go on. And we need to be able to understand how it works. How big is the facility and how many bodies are here? The facility is 26 acres and it sits on a 4 ,200 acre ranch. and we get about 70 donations a year. And then the bodies are usually left to decompose for about six months to several years, depending on the research protocol. And then the skeletons come back here and so we add about 70 skeletons per year to the collection. So if you had to guess how many bodies are in some state of decomposition here right now, do you know?

4:03Probably about 60. The bodies are donated. They're called gifted bodies, and the people who plan to donate themselves to the research when they die are called living donors. You know, if they want to do something like put me in the trunk of a car to see what happens there, or under a tarp or a slab of concrete, I've got no problem with that. This is Grady Early, a retired computer science professor who decided long ago that he wanted his body to go to the Forensic Anthropology Center. Why did you decide to become a donor? I think that everyone should be useful in life. And if you can be useful after death as well, so much the better.

4:52After all, which would you rather do? Wind up in a box in the ground just wasting real estate or be in a box in the lab and at least potentially useful to a researcher sometime in future. Grady Early remembers when the facility was getting established more than 10 years ago, and the university was struggling to find the right location. They needed enough space, but they also needed a place that wouldn't freak people out. We looked at a site out at the airport. Some of the neighbors didn't like the idea, And they said, well, it's going to attract vultures, so we'll have birds interfering with the aircraft.

5:34Sied over behind the outlet mall, and there were some people that were unhappy with that idea. There's always NIMBYs around. He's given money to the facility and become fascinated by what he describes as, quote, helping bones tell their story. When his body eventually becomes part of the research, he'll be joining his mother. She's already there. It was an astonishing thing, although in retrospect, I suppose it shouldn't have been. When I told my mother what I was planning on doing, she, being a fairly practical woman, said, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Sign me up. So I did. She died at 102.

6:26Grady says he doesn't really care what happens to him when he goes into the field. Some bodies are placed in the open with the vultures and coyotes, and some are protected by long, low cages. Some are clothed, and some aren't. It all depends on the nature of the experiment. It's odd to think that if all goes as planned, Grady Early will one day return to the very building where he sat and talked to us. packed in cardboard with the bones of his hands and feet in a small paper bag. What I would really like to do is have my skeleton articulated and hung up somewhere in the facility so I can keep my eye on what's going on.

7:09In his work at Texas State, Dr. Westcott is following in the footsteps of his professor, the biggest name in this field, Dr. Bill Bass.

7:19Phoebe Judge:Dr. Bass opened the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility in 1981. It was the first of these so-called body farms, although we learned no scientists call them that. And he pioneered the idea that we needed a death database. If too much time has passed when law enforcement encounters a body, they have no way to tell when the person died, much less who they were or what happened. And the only way to answer these questions is to put a body outside and watch it decompose. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

8:07Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

8:16Thank you.

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10:31Here's what happens when you die. After your heart stops beating, your muscles start to stiffen, and rigor mortis sets in. Over the next few days, the bacteria that's already in your body just starts to take over. And so, as they do, they start to produce gases. And these gases initially will just kind of work their way through the arteries and veins, stuff like that, and you get what's called marbling. And then it also, then the next kind of step to this is that that gas starts to build up and causes the bodies to go through what's called a bloat stage. So they'll actually kind of puff up. How long after death does that happen?

11:15It depends on the time of year, but it can range from three or four days to a few weeks. Usually here, probably within about five days, they're going into bloat. Once that happens, then the other thing that's happening is that you're also getting flies that are attracted to the body. and those flies are laying eggs, and they tend to lay eggs in natural orifices, so they like the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, stuff like that. And then they, so those maggots will hatch, and there again depends on the species and the temperature. It depends on how long it takes, but usually a few days to a week or so, and they start feeding on the body as well.

12:07So you've got that process going on, and then you've got the internal organs are decomposing, and so those internal organs are kind of liquefying. And with the gas that's building up, that liquid gets pushed out, and that's what we call the purge phase, so you get what's called purge fluid. And so it's just a dark fluid. Dark? Yeah. What is it? It's not blood. What does it mean? No, it's just a combination of all the internal organs that have decomposed.

12:50Phoebe Judge:This is a big place. It is a big place. All right, so we turn between the first two telephones. The bodies are placed on Freeman Ranch, which sits off a small highway just a few miles from the lab. Once you pass through the gates, you see what I only imagine you might see on any number of ranches in Texas. Cactus, tall green grass, and cows. We just kept driving down a dirt road, taking a left or right, whenever we were told to. And then we arrived. Oh boy, did I let you out? There you go.

13:27The only difference between this part of the ranch and any other was the giant fence and locked gate.

13:40So our first stop will be at the shed there to put on booties. Okay. And in reality, what the booties are for is so that in case you actually step in something, you don't drag it back to your car. Wow. Are you kidding? That's exactly why. Everybody thinks it's so that it's like protecting the scene, but it's actually so that you don't drag home decomp fluid on your shoes. The purge fluid. Right. Back into the minivan. Right.

14:13All right. Let's see. We'll start this way.

14:20So typically the way that this works is the way the bodies are placed depends on what research protocol they're being used in. But typically they're left uncaged on the surface, caged on the surface, buried, or wrapped in something. So this is one that's left on the surface. Only a few feet from the gate sits the first body. It was hard to pick out at first because of the tall grass around it. And this individual was originally clothed. And then the scattering is from the different scavengers that have come. So we can see a pair of sneakers and a pair of pants and a sock, but then the bones are all kind of broken apart.

15:05Yeah, they're kind of pulled apart at different places. What animal did this? Well, mostly it started out with vultures, and then probably you've had some raccoons and other things come since then. But most of this is vulture activity. I had no idea what to expect when we walked into that field. I was nervous about a lot of things, wondering whether I'd be able to get these images out of my head that night when I went to sleep, trying to figure out how I would carry on an interview while not breathing through my nose, regretting not bringing a change of clothes. But this actually seemed okay. That first body hadn't been that bad.

15:44And then we turned a corner. All right, so the area that we're getting ready... Oh, look at this. The area we're getting ready is the path, actually, this right here is a researcher actually from New York that's here. So she's got bodies on the surface and bodies that are buried. Oh, this is really something. So, um... There was a field of bodies under cages. And unlike what we had just seen, these bodies seemed kind of new. All were unclothed. I could see one man in a cage out of my right eye. His stomach was so bloated that it almost touched the top of the cage. And his limbs were spread out to the sides.

16:27His skin was a mix of black and brown and purple splotches. I was trying to stay back, but Dr. West got one straight form. You can see the maggots pretty active at this stage. And then, so this person has gone through bloat. You guys alright? Yeah, but this is wild stuff. This is wild stuff. I don't think many people in their lives see stuff like this. So you can see, I was talking about, the skin kind of becomes really dark, associated with the sulfuric gas that's produced by the bacteria and stuff. And then you get the active maggot masses going on. He kept drawing our attention to things that none of us actually wanted to see up close.

17:17So we were trying to stay with him, but also just trying to keep our eyes straight ahead. It was hard to know what to do, and it was hot, over 90 degrees. And then Dr. Westcott took us to a row of bodies under cages, which seemed to be showing a progression. So this is kind of going through time in a sense, and you can see that they've gone through bloat. They're actually starting to dry out. Yep. So this is, we're kind of going through the process here, walking down the line. Yeah. So you can see these are starting to get skeletonized. How long have these guys been out here, do you think? These have been out here probably a little over a year.

18:07But you can see, now you can't even see the cadaver decomposition. As a matter of fact, you can barely see the body anymore because of all that vegetation around it. Purge fluid is so nutrient-rich that it acts like a super fertilizer. And so bodies in the final stages of decomposition are surrounded by bunches of these tall, healthy wildflowers. The flowers are back. The flowers are back, yeah. Dr. Westcott is working on a new project that uses drones and infrared cameras to detect how much organic material is in the soil. If law enforcement is trying to locate a missing person in a huge area, 5 ,000 acres, they can use the drone technology to narrow things down, looking for spots with a lot of organic material.

18:55They're also working with police dogs. Most cadaver dogs are trained with small tissue samples. But it turns out the dogs don't always know how to react when they encounter a whole body. So police bring their dogs to the ranch to get used to finding the real thing. These different experiments are spread around the ranch, and Texas State collaborates with other facilities. Dr. Westcott showed us an experiment where three different centers across the country placed a body on the exact same day to compare regional differences. So the body that we're looking at right there seems to me to be rather new.

19:41This individual was probably placed yesterday. Oh, that's a brand new body. Yes.

19:50Oh, isn't that something?

19:54Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back.

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20:59Phoebe Judge:Code criminal at checkout. When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fatween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico. Our last stop was a clearing with three shallow graves.

21:38On the day we visited, they were in the process of excavating the skeletons. The excavation was being done by more than 20 students, all women. A lot of this work is done by women. Dr. Westcott is the only male director in the country, and almost all of his colleagues and his graduate students are women. Dr. Kate Spradley was in charge of the excavation. It's interesting. I think to do this kind of work to look at all of these dead bodies, basically, and all of these human remains in the lab, I see a skeleton, I see a task at hand I see a job that I have to do particularly with the forensic cases that come in we have a job to help identify those so going in there, analyzing the skeleton, that's what we do for me it's different when I walk out to this the forensic anthropology research facility where people donate their bodies because here when I see remains I see people who donate their bodies this was their last wish, this is what they wanted to do So for me, it's very nice coming out here, seeing them in their final resting place.

22:45And it's very natural. They just return to the earth. Are you a donor? I am a donor. Are other members of your family? No, nobody else wants to do this but me. My husband is pretty uneasy about it, but I've looked at so many skeletons. I've built my career on looking at skeletons, so I think it's only right that I give back.

23:13Just listen to the birds.