Death's Acre Quotes

“I'm sure the makers of Downy would be pleased to know that their product makes even mummified human skin soft and fragrant. ”
― Bill Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“We’re organisms; we’re conceived, we’re born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria.”
― Bill Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Polio has been virtually forgotten by now, but in the first half of the twentieth century, it was a plague of almost biblical proportions. Tens of thousands of innocent children and young adults were killed, crippled, or paralyzed. Polio, a powerful form of viral meningitis, cut a wide and ruthless swath through an entire generation of Americans. Carol”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“And at that pivotal moment, the University of Tennessee came calling. So did forensic anthropology. My career as “Indian grave-robber number one” was over. My true vocation—as a forensic scientist—was about to begin.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“I can't give people back their loved ones. I can't restore their happiness or innocence, can't give back their lives the way they were. But I can give them the truth. Then they will be free to grieve for the dead, and then free to start living again. Truth like that can be a humbling and sacred gift for a scientist to give.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Taphonomy—the arrangement or relative position of the human remains, artifacts, and natural elements like earth, leaves, and insect casings—is one of the most crucial sources of information to a forensic anthropologist at a crime scene.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“The body arrived soon enough: an unclaimed corpse from a nearby medical examiner. The guinea pigs? A cinch. Undergraduates will do anything for extra credit.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Sitting just a foot or two away from a bloody body, Bill would soon find even himself overrun with flies, seeking any moist bodily fluids to feed on, any dark, damp orifices (including Bill’s nostrils) to lay their eggs in. He quickly learned to wrap netting around his head to keep the flies out of his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“(There are two kinds of observers in science: splitters and lumpers. I’ve never been much of a splitter; in my heart of hearts, I’m a lumper.) In”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“If there isn’t, the skull can literally burst, fracturing the cranium into numerous pieces, each about the size of a quarter.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“It pains me to admit it, but I am somewhat less brilliant than TV supersleuths—and, with all due respect, so are many of my forensic colleagues. We’re not geniuses, and our gadgets can’t answer every question or pinpoint every perpetrator. But even though TV sometimes creates unrealistic expectations about the swiftness and certainty of murder investigations, some shows have done a great service by spotlighting the role forensic scientists—even ordinary, real-life ones—can play in bringing killers to justice. And these shows do get a lot dead right: Crime scene investigation is absolutely crucial to solving a crime. Surprisingly,”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Colonel Shy—ably assisted by a few newspaper reporters and my own big mouth—had revealed both the depths of my own ignorance and the huge gap in forensic knowledge. Personally, I was embarrassed; scientifically, I was intrigued; above all, I was determined to do something about it. From”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“What matters, though, is not the space you’re put in to work; what matters is the work you do in it. The Manhattan Project, the World War II race to develop the atomic bomb, also started out under a football stadium. Beneath the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi built a crude fission reactor, brought its uranium fuel to critical mass, and set off a chain reaction that changed the world. We”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“But before you can tell who someone was and how they died—and you won’t always be able to tell—you start with the Big Four: sex, race, age, and stature. Whenever”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“If possible, you also want to determine the cause of death (technically, only medical examiners can determine cause of death; we anthropologists call things like stab wounds and gunshots “manner of death”). But”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Flesh decays; bone endures. Flesh forgets and forgives ancient injuries; bone heals, but it always remembers: a childhood fall, a barroom brawl; the smash of a pistol butt to the temple, the quick sting of a blade between the ribs. The bones capture such moments, preserve a record of them, and reveal them to anyone with eyes trained to see the rich visual record, to hear the faint whispers rising from the dead. I”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Second, I was helping the modern Sioux settle their score with the ancient Arikara: helping them “count final coup,” as they call it. But”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“It was there that Lewis and Clark encountered and scrapped with the Arikara. It was there that unscrupulous agents of fur companies waged biological warfare on them, bringing blankets from Saint Louis—blankets deliberately contaminated with smallpox, to which the Indians’ unsuspecting immune systems fell easy prey. And it was there, on August 9, 1823, that Colonel Henry Leavenworth and a force of nearly three hundred U.S. Army soldiers, Missouri militiamen, and Sioux warriors attacked the villages with rifles, bows, clubs, and gunboats. During the night of August 14, the remaining Arikara slipped away from their battered villages. BY”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“The prairie is notorious for the suddenness and violence of its weather changes, and that’s especially true in summer. All that grass gives off a tremendous amount of moisture. As the sun beats down, the water vapor rises until it condenses, sometimes as puffy, cotton-candy clouds, and sometimes as black thunderheads towering four miles high. Four”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“It’s hot as blazes in South Dakota in August, and the prairie is a mighty big place to search. To do the job swiftly, we’d need a small army of workers. What we had, it turns out, was a very large army of very small workers: the ants burrowing into the prairie by the billions. The”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Every one of these lessons would serve me well in the years ahead as I began applying the secrets I learned from the long-dead to understanding the stories of the recently murdered. BY”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Six miles upstream of Pierre (pronounced “pee-AIR” by the French but “peer” by South Dakotans), they began piling up a ridge of earth nearly 250 feet high and almost two miles long. The Oahe Dam, named for a Sioux council lodge, was the largest earth-fill dam in the United States when it was begun in 1948. It still is. The”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“When the Corps of Discovery dropped anchor at a Mandan village in 1804, they were met by blond-haired, blue-eyed Mandans—the offspring of native women and French explorers or trappers. On”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Flesh decays; bone endures. Flesh forgets and forgives ancient injuries; bone heals, but it always remembers: a childhood fall, a barroom brawl; the smash of a pistol butt to the temple, the quick sting of a blade between the ribs. The bones capture such moments, preserve a record of them, and reveal them to anyone with eyes trained to see the rich visual record, to hear the faint whispers rising from the dead.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“I certainly didn't set out to create something famous there. I just set out to find some answers to questions that were nagging me. As in life, so in science: One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you find yourself someplace you never imagined going.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“All you can do is look at the evidence and listen to the bones. The bones don't always tell you the whole story, but when they do, the tale can be both horrifying and hypnotizing.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Anthropologists and insects can reveal the truth about a crime, but they can't force the wheels of bureaucracy to turn, and they can't guarantee that justice will be done. All they can do is serve as a voice for victims, and hope that voice is heard.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“The single thing that does the most to destroy forensic evidence at a fire scene is not the fire itself; it is an untrained, overzealous investigator armed with a rake.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Perhaps I'm trying to prove my bravery even now, across the gulf of years and mortality that separates us. Or perhaps when I grasp the bones of the dead, I'm somehow trying to grasp him, the one dead man who remains forever elusive.”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“Art soaked it in alcohol to toughen it up and draw out the water. (If he’d had the opposite problem—if the skin had been dry and stiff—he’d have soaked it in Downy fabric softener; I’m sure the makers of Downy would be pleased to know that their product makes even mummified human skin soft and fragrant.)”
― William M. Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales