Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What is a body farm?

Transcript

What is a body farm? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
0:08
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Chuck Bryant's here. That's right, Chuck.
0:21
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I am well, how are you right? Chuck?
0:24
Speaker 1: Let's go for a little walk, shall we? Okay, So
0:28
Speaker 1: Chuck and I are here at the University of Tennessee
0:32
Speaker 1: campus in beautiful Knoxville, Tennessee, and we're kind of on
0:36
Speaker 1: the outside of campus. Um, we are in the woods basically. Yeah,
0:40
Speaker 1: it's a little creepy out here, it is, Chuck, and
0:43
Speaker 1: you're about to find out what actually, Chuck, watch out
0:45
Speaker 1: what don't? Oh? Chuck? Wow, you just stepped in a corpse. Yes,
0:50
Speaker 1: in a corpse. Yeah. That that thing really opened up
0:53
Speaker 1: a lot more than I thought it would. Kind of
0:55
Speaker 1: like a right cannamelon. Yeah, but it went right through.
0:57
Speaker 1: That's gross. Yeah, I'm not sure what the cannon melon is,
1:00
Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound like that. It's a lot nicer
1:03
Speaker 1: than that. So okay, well, I guess we can get
1:07
Speaker 1: out of Knoxville before anybody says anything, right, what is
1:09
Speaker 1: this place? I'll tell you. Let's just get out of here, okay,
1:12
Speaker 1: all right, okay, chuckers Wow, and I'm really glad you
1:18
Speaker 1: washed your foot off back to the students through your
1:20
Speaker 1: shoe away, got ready to jeans. It's a good thing
1:23
Speaker 1: you weren't wearing shorts. That was groups I was up
1:26
Speaker 1: to my ankle and body, so Chuck, I know that
1:29
Speaker 1: was patently unnecessary that we went all the way to
1:32
Speaker 1: Knoxville for that, but um, what we were just at
1:35
Speaker 1: is called the body farm, right, that's the best setup
1:39
Speaker 1: we've ever had. I know it's just for that. I'm
1:42
Speaker 1: taking my shirt off for the rest of the podcast.
1:44
Speaker 1: Do that. Oh dude, Okay, Chuck, I can't do that.
1:49
Speaker 1: Yes you can. Let's talk about death baby. There's yeah,
1:53
Speaker 1: you kid. I can't Chuck, settle it. No, he's really
1:57
Speaker 1: gonna mess me up. Okay, all right, I'll put my
1:59
Speaker 1: shirt back on. Hold on. Wow, we've reached new new
2:02
Speaker 1: bows here. Okay, are you better now, big baby? I
2:06
Speaker 1: think you can't do a podcast with a shirtless Josh.
2:09
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. All right, Well, let's let's get back to
2:11
Speaker 1: the to the issue at hand, body farms. Okay, Okay,
2:15
Speaker 1: so Chuck, do you know me? I'm all about like death, Like, well,
2:18
Speaker 1: I'm gonna die someday. I can't wait to find out
2:20
Speaker 1: what happens. Right, So this is right up my alley. Yeah,
2:23
Speaker 1: I thought it's a cool article. So you liked it
2:24
Speaker 1: as well? Yeah? Written by your boyfriend Tom? Uh huh
2:27
Speaker 1: long long time boyfriend time. Uh yeah it was good
2:31
Speaker 1: body farms, very gruesome but necessary, cool, interesting topic. Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: you just won't kick this one off of you. Well,
2:39
Speaker 1: what do you want me to do? No, let's talk
2:41
Speaker 1: about death first. So what the whole point of a
2:45
Speaker 1: body farm? Is a study decomposition? Right right? That people
2:48
Speaker 1: might not even know what one is. It's where you
2:50
Speaker 1: study a dying or a corpse in a state of decay,
2:55
Speaker 1: so you can learn things from that. Well, put, I
2:59
Speaker 1: think that's right out of there. Was Actually, so there's
3:01
Speaker 1: actually three body farms around the country, right, There's one
3:05
Speaker 1: at Western North Carolina University, go, um some things. Uh.
3:10
Speaker 1: There is a University of Tennessee at their main campus
3:13
Speaker 1: at Knoxville, where we just words you're kind of volunteers.
3:17
Speaker 1: Yeah I won't say go valls though, and you know why? Um.
3:21
Speaker 1: And then there's another one at Texas State University, San Marcos.
3:25
Speaker 1: That's it. Three body farms in the entire country. Are
3:30
Speaker 1: they are really churning out the information? Right? And now?
3:34
Speaker 1: One of the researchers pointed out that they think it
3:36
Speaker 1: would be nice one day if there was a body
3:38
Speaker 1: farm in each state because it's so geographically specific that
3:41
Speaker 1: it would help to know these kind of things. Yeah, yeah,
3:44
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah. I think Tennessee's got much of the
3:47
Speaker 1: southeast covered because it's just wet and sticky down here everywhere,
3:50
Speaker 1: and it's it's muggy and uh yeah, so any information
3:54
Speaker 1: coming out of Tennessee probably applies to much of the
3:56
Speaker 1: South Texas. Probably you cover the sand in the rocks
3:59
Speaker 1: of the of the West. I would imagine what I mean,
4:02
Speaker 1: in the sun, what happens if you die in Idaho?
4:05
Speaker 1: Well exactly. You know, maybe it should open one in
4:08
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. Okay, suggestion, I agree? I agree? Um, alright,
4:12
Speaker 1: so Chuck, what we're talking about his body farms. Basically, essentially,
4:17
Speaker 1: it's just a an area attractive land. I think, um,
4:21
Speaker 1: Knoxville's is like three hundred acres or something like that. Yeah,
4:26
Speaker 1: it's a big one. Yeah, and then Texas is even
4:29
Speaker 1: I think it's about ten times the size that I
4:31
Speaker 1: think it's three thousand acres. Uh and they have um
4:33
Speaker 1: dead bodies scattered across it. Uh. And I know Tennessee
4:37
Speaker 1: was the first one to ever open this up, and
4:40
Speaker 1: it was there was a guy named Dr. Bill Bass,
4:43
Speaker 1: who you sent me a video that was awesome, Such
4:46
Speaker 1: an affable man, I should say, Joshua. The Tennessee one
4:49
Speaker 1: is three acre inside of a three acre area, so
4:54
Speaker 1: the farming is actually smaller, which is one of the
4:57
Speaker 1: reasons the residents signed off on it, because they were
4:59
Speaker 1: a little uh skeptical. Yeah, and I can understand, I
5:02
Speaker 1: can understand how someone would be sure. Yeah. Um, back
5:05
Speaker 1: to bas Yeah, so Bass opened this uh the first
5:08
Speaker 1: one in one at the University of Tennessee. And he
5:11
Speaker 1: did it because the cops kept coming to him and
5:14
Speaker 1: asking him, you know, if they could, um, if he
5:17
Speaker 1: could help you know with this, uh some murder investigations
5:20
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And um, he finally realized that
5:25
Speaker 1: we don't know nearly enough about um decomposition as far
5:30
Speaker 1: as it pertains to criminal investigations. So he took it
5:34
Speaker 1: upon himself to start collecting corpses, and actually the first
5:36
Speaker 1: ones he got were unclaimed corpses from local morgues. And
5:42
Speaker 1: he just took him out to the body farm, which
5:44
Speaker 1: is actually the technical name for it is the University
5:47
Speaker 1: of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility UM. And he just started
5:51
Speaker 1: scattering him around the place and study studying them and
5:54
Speaker 1: taking journals and logs and photos and uh noting the
5:58
Speaker 1: rate of decay that kind of thing. Yeah, so let's
6:00
Speaker 1: talk about the rated decay. Let's talk about decompetition. We
6:03
Speaker 1: already handled rigor mortists and liver mortis and uh what
6:07
Speaker 1: is alger mortis um in our rigor mortis podcast? We
6:11
Speaker 1: want need to talk about that. We already talked about
6:13
Speaker 1: idle auto licens too, but there's some other stuff too,
6:16
Speaker 1: like the putrification process and the effects that has in
6:19
Speaker 1: the body. Let's talk about that because it's gnarly. Okay, Okay, yeah,
6:23
Speaker 1: it sounds good. Now you're talking about the flies and
6:26
Speaker 1: the maggots. Sure, okay, we'll start there. One one way
6:29
Speaker 1: that uh, insects actually give a lot of insight into
6:33
Speaker 1: how long a body may have been lying there in
6:35
Speaker 1: a state of decay. Um. I think they said flies
6:38
Speaker 1: will go in through the orifices like the nose and
6:41
Speaker 1: the ears. And in one of those videos that you
6:43
Speaker 1: sent me, it shows flies going into a nose and
6:46
Speaker 1: the the eyeball liss eye sockets. It's awesome. Yeah. So
6:51
Speaker 1: they'll do this um within like a day of the
6:54
Speaker 1: body dying if they have access to it. Give the
6:57
Speaker 1: bodies outside because the body the flies and then the
7:02
Speaker 1: lay eggs and then in twenty four hours the eggs
7:05
Speaker 1: are hatched into larva. Yes, which a k a. Maggots, Right,
7:10
Speaker 1: and these maggots are decaying flesh eating machines. Actually apparently
7:15
Speaker 1: they can consume sixt of human corpse within ten days
7:19
Speaker 1: from the inside out. And actually no, they start from
7:22
Speaker 1: the outside in because it's laid on the fly legs,
7:27
Speaker 1: the eggs on the skin, and then they start burrowing
7:29
Speaker 1: in and eating and eating and eating. Well, dude, I'm
7:32
Speaker 1: very wrong then, so um and they actually grow about
7:36
Speaker 1: ten times in five days because they eat so much
7:39
Speaker 1: and they're built for it too, right, right, they have
7:42
Speaker 1: like a mouth hook what is it called. Yeah, that
7:44
Speaker 1: that's a mouth hook that that scoops the the goo
7:48
Speaker 1: into their mouths and then I think they're their mouth
7:51
Speaker 1: is on one end, and they're breathing apparatus is on
7:53
Speaker 1: the other end, so that they're just a little eating
7:55
Speaker 1: machines and don't have to stop to breathe there. They
7:57
Speaker 1: can just keep going literally built for it. So back
8:00
Speaker 1: to what I was saying about the rate of decay.
8:03
Speaker 1: They can take a look at the size of the
8:05
Speaker 1: maggots and determine it. While if a maggot is this long,
8:08
Speaker 1: then it's been in the human body growing for this
8:11
Speaker 1: many days and it was probably hatched on this day,
8:14
Speaker 1: so the body has been there for X number of
8:16
Speaker 1: days or weeks. And that's just one type of fly.
8:18
Speaker 1: And and this this is actually um they're called corpse fauna. No, yeah,
8:24
Speaker 1: corpse fauna um, and just just the I think the
8:27
Speaker 1: common house flies, the one that Tom's talking about in
8:30
Speaker 1: this article, possibly the bottle fly. But it turns out
8:33
Speaker 1: there is a whole ecosystem of flies that start to
8:39
Speaker 1: come in at different stages of the decomposition process. So
8:42
Speaker 1: some really love to pick you know, the little remnants
8:45
Speaker 1: off a skeleton. Um. Others you know, start the whole
8:49
Speaker 1: decomposition process and aid others like to show up when
8:52
Speaker 1: you know, with the bodies really starting to turn to goo.
8:54
Speaker 1: And but yeah, they study the flies and they can
8:58
Speaker 1: figure out how long the body has been out there,
9:00
Speaker 1: which is a big one. Yeah, this is a big
9:01
Speaker 1: indicator for helping cops kind of figure out not motive,
9:05
Speaker 1: but time of death stuff like that. And also, Um,
9:09
Speaker 1: from this article, I found out that c s I
9:11
Speaker 1: is a bunch of liars. Yeah, they never do that stuff. No,
9:15
Speaker 1: I didn't know that blood blood stained pattern analysis, that's
9:19
Speaker 1: not forensic. No. Um, handwriting analysis, Nope. Shooting guns into
9:23
Speaker 1: that gel, yeah, that's all. That's not true theirs. Yeah,
9:28
Speaker 1: which irks me to no end. Yeah, but you know
9:30
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before. TV always sensationalizes, is that
9:33
Speaker 1: just get over it. It wouldn't be very entertaining if
9:36
Speaker 1: they just came by and said, well, the maggots are
9:38
Speaker 1: twenty millimeters long. Case closed. I gotta tell you that
9:42
Speaker 1: those videos you sent me were pretty entertaining and gruesome. Yeah.
9:45
Speaker 1: Did you see that one guy with a big distended belly. Yes.
9:48
Speaker 1: And actually one of the things that happens to a
9:52
Speaker 1: corpse as well is the skin black ends right, Yeah,
9:55
Speaker 1: and that video did point that out that certain parts
9:57
Speaker 1: turn black. And I know when the blood collect in
10:00
Speaker 1: certain parts. We talked about that before, certain parts of
10:02
Speaker 1: the body will be darker and some will be more pale. Yeah, lividity.
10:05
Speaker 1: Can we talk about deep gloving? I can't wait. I
10:07
Speaker 1: think you should talk all about it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
10:10
Speaker 1: We learned this from the video as well. When um,
10:13
Speaker 1: let's say you look at a human hand that's been
10:15
Speaker 1: lying in the woods over the period of the days
10:17
Speaker 1: of decay, it'll start to look really raising e like
10:21
Speaker 1: it's been in dishwater, you know. Yeah, and then it
10:23
Speaker 1: starts to literally you see, it starts to kind of
10:26
Speaker 1: gather up and slide off the hand, and the epidermis
10:29
Speaker 1: literally comes off of the hand. And they call it
10:32
Speaker 1: d gloving. Yeah, and they actually figured out that, um,
10:35
Speaker 1: you can take this glove, this d glove skin, so
10:39
Speaker 1: that's kind of laying nearby the hand if you can
10:42
Speaker 1: get to it before an animal comes up and it's
10:43
Speaker 1: like hey yeah glove, Um you can. You can take
10:48
Speaker 1: it into the lab, put a rubber glove on and
10:52
Speaker 1: then put this human skin on like a glove and
10:56
Speaker 1: then fingerprint that way. Because you know, once the one
11:00
Speaker 1: the epidermis comes off, there goes the fingerprints, and and
11:02
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists like Dr Bass at the Body Farm have
11:06
Speaker 1: figured out that you can do this. I mean, how
11:08
Speaker 1: many just figuring that out? How many crimes have been
11:12
Speaker 1: solved because somebody figured out you could do that? I
11:15
Speaker 1: don't know, probably a bunch that pays for itself as
11:17
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, because before that they just had
11:20
Speaker 1: no fingerprints. They lost the finger They're like, oh well,
11:23
Speaker 1: and now they do the buffalo bill thing and it's
11:24
Speaker 1: all good, yeah, good bye. It puts a lotion in
11:30
Speaker 1: the basket. That was very good. That was pretty pretty good. Okay,
11:34
Speaker 1: So um yeah, that's dead body stuff. I'm sure we'll
11:38
Speaker 1: get to more of it in a few um, but really,
11:41
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists come in most handy when there is no
11:46
Speaker 1: flesh any longer. Yeah, but it's just bones, right because
11:51
Speaker 1: think about it, you've you've lost any uh, any visual
11:56
Speaker 1: identification of even you know, whether it was a man
11:58
Speaker 1: or a woman, ethnicity, yeah, um age anything like that.
12:03
Speaker 1: You can't just look at it like you can, you know,
12:06
Speaker 1: like that time we found that drifter in the woods,
12:08
Speaker 1: that one time, he was pretty new you could tell,
12:11
Speaker 1: and we knew it was like a white probably mid thirties. Uh,
12:16
Speaker 1: you know, male and you know, we just walked along
12:18
Speaker 1: and minded our own business. Whatever happened to that guy?
12:21
Speaker 1: I have no idea anyway. Um, if you if it's
12:25
Speaker 1: just a skeleton, if that dead drifter had just been
12:27
Speaker 1: a skeleton, then we wouldn't have been able to say
12:30
Speaker 1: any of those things with any kind of certainty. So
12:32
Speaker 1: when just a skeleton is found, Uh, they call in
12:36
Speaker 1: a forensic anthropologist and they go to town. Chuck, Right,
12:39
Speaker 1: they can still learn some of these things, Josh, as
12:41
Speaker 1: you know, they can look at I guess the easiest
12:44
Speaker 1: thing they can do to determine gender is to look
12:46
Speaker 1: at the size of the bones, because typically men's bones
12:49
Speaker 1: are larger where it attaches to the muscle. Not a
12:52
Speaker 1: dead giveaway, no pun intended, but a good one. And
12:55
Speaker 1: there's differences in the pelvic bone apparently. Uh. The forehead
13:00
Speaker 1: is also a big tail tale sign and gender and race. Well,
13:03
Speaker 1: men's foreheads tend to slope backwards and women's are more rounded. Yeah,
13:10
Speaker 1: and looking at you, you have a very sloped rear forehead.
13:14
Speaker 1: You can tell that's not your forehead, dude, that's your
13:17
Speaker 1: the top of your head. And females chins usually come
13:22
Speaker 1: to a point where a man's chin is a little
13:23
Speaker 1: more squared off. How's my chin? It's uh beautiful, Josh,
13:27
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. Ribs apparently can help determine age a lot
13:32
Speaker 1: more ragged in our age they get ragged out. Yeah. Um.
13:37
Speaker 1: And also with with men and women, and giveaway is
13:41
Speaker 1: especially post adolescent men and women. Um is a the pelvis, Yes,
13:47
Speaker 1: the pelvic inlet is much wider in women. Basically, the
13:50
Speaker 1: hole in your pelvic pelvic bone is is much bigger
13:54
Speaker 1: in women than it is in men, to allow for
13:56
Speaker 1: easier childbirth. You got it. You don't want to pass
13:59
Speaker 1: a kid through the pelvic inlet of a man. No,
14:02
Speaker 1: that would be painful, Like it's not painful enough already. Um.
14:06
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to the race, they don't
14:09
Speaker 1: get too specific. They kind of want to say African,
14:13
Speaker 1: Asian or European. They try to get you know, stay
14:15
Speaker 1: pretty broad there, well, at least at first. And then
14:17
Speaker 1: apparently there's some other signs that you can you can
14:20
Speaker 1: kind of narrow it down even further. But those are
14:23
Speaker 1: the first three categories they lump them in, right. Actually,
14:25
Speaker 1: I thought it was an interesting fact. Tom hadn't here
14:27
Speaker 1: that there were more differences within each racial group than
14:30
Speaker 1: there are between each group as a whole, which I
14:34
Speaker 1: don't thought it was kind of cool. Yeah, that is interesting.
14:36
Speaker 1: And so those are bones, right, yeah, those are bones,
14:40
Speaker 1: dem bones, dem bones. Yeah, Josh, you want to talk
14:43
Speaker 1: about disease, of course. And then one of the big
14:46
Speaker 1: concerns for residents that live near these body farms is,
14:50
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they just let these bodies. I mean
14:52
Speaker 1: sometimes as many as forty and fifty bodies out there.
14:55
Speaker 1: We're worried about buzzards disease there. They're bad stuff get
15:00
Speaker 1: into the water and shore by creeks, but it doesn't happen.
15:03
Speaker 1: No one wants to drink dead body. Uh do you
15:06
Speaker 1: know why? Why? Because if you have an infectious disease,
15:10
Speaker 1: it's not gonna still be around after your body is decomposing. Yeah,
15:15
Speaker 1: the the um, the infectious disease organisms also decomposed. They
15:21
Speaker 1: don't stick around too long. But just to be certain,
15:24
Speaker 1: any faculty or students who are you know, interacting with
15:27
Speaker 1: these body farms, they're innoculated against all manner of stuff
15:32
Speaker 1: because you know, you don't want to really take a chance. Sure, um,
15:36
Speaker 1: but also they go out of their way. I think
15:37
Speaker 1: the test um all all corpses that are donated to
15:41
Speaker 1: them for any kind of infectious disease diseases beforehand. So
15:45
Speaker 1: you gotta clean, clean, living corpse that you just have
15:49
Speaker 1: out there. That's not really going to cause much problem, right,
15:51
Speaker 1: and it should be noted too. Like you said, people
15:53
Speaker 1: do donate. I think the one in Tennessee said they
15:55
Speaker 1: had a list of either a list of three hundred
15:58
Speaker 1: or they had already had three hundred bodies donated. And
16:01
Speaker 1: you can do that just like your an organ donory.
16:03
Speaker 1: You can say I'd like my body to go to
16:04
Speaker 1: a body farm. After that, well, I think you want
16:06
Speaker 1: to contact the body farm first. Hey, here's a fun
16:10
Speaker 1: fact for you, Okay. In two thousand and six, the
16:12
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee had more corpses and skeletons on its
16:17
Speaker 1: campus than it had Asian students enrolled. We're about UM
16:22
Speaker 1: nine hundred in the osteopathological collection, nine skeletons, another seven
16:28
Speaker 1: hundred in two other skeletal collections, and then forty or
16:33
Speaker 1: so bodies on the body farm and there are only
16:35
Speaker 1: six D seventy three Asian students on campus. Isn't that crazy? Yeah? Yeah, crazy.
16:41
Speaker 1: I wonder if they had any Asian bodies. I don't
16:44
Speaker 1: know with that canceled out, okay, or maybe it would
16:48
Speaker 1: count toward the total count both ways though, So we
16:51
Speaker 1: canceled one another out. Okay, sure, But I mean everybody
16:54
Speaker 1: likes to be count so counted. So what else, Josh?
16:58
Speaker 1: Shall we talk about some of the the ways that
17:00
Speaker 1: the body farms have helped out? You mean specifically, yeah,
17:04
Speaker 1: e g. John Wayne Gaycy. Yeah, that's a good one.
17:07
Speaker 1: Go ahead. And I've long been in pursuit of a
17:08
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy um painting. You know, he's a prolific painter,
17:12
Speaker 1: and I found a website finally. Yeah that he wasn't
17:16
Speaker 1: a very good painter, but you know, just to have
17:18
Speaker 1: a John Wayne Gaycy, it's crazy. He also loved them.
17:21
Speaker 1: The Seven Dwarfs were a common theme of his. Really
17:25
Speaker 1: fascinated by the Seven Dwarves for some reason. What a
17:27
Speaker 1: creep he was a creepy dude. Yeah, yeah, Well when
17:30
Speaker 1: Gaycey got popped in what the seventies? Yeah, I guess
17:33
Speaker 1: if for the two of you who don't know who
17:35
Speaker 1: that is, John Wayne Gacy is a famous serial killer
17:37
Speaker 1: he was a serial killer of young men. Yes, he killed. Yeah,
17:41
Speaker 1: he buried twenty nine of them under his house. Uh yeah,
17:45
Speaker 1: I think it's not a good place. Which wasn't even
17:47
Speaker 1: necessarily his house. It was his mother's apartment, which goes
17:50
Speaker 1: a long way in explaining you know, John Wayne gayzy Um.
17:53
Speaker 1: But when he finally got got busted and he started
17:57
Speaker 1: telling the cops about how many people he had killed
18:00
Speaker 1: that he they went out to his mother's apartment complex
18:03
Speaker 1: and use ground penetrating radar and found basically a mass grave.
18:07
Speaker 1: The problem is is like these bodies have been there
18:09
Speaker 1: for a while, They've been killing kids for a real
18:11
Speaker 1: long time, and uh, the the bones have become entangled
18:15
Speaker 1: and they didn't know who was who or anything like that.
18:17
Speaker 1: So they brought in forensic anthropologists and I believe they
18:21
Speaker 1: helped to successfully identify uh most, if not all of them, right, Yeah,
18:25
Speaker 1: So you know that's one way the body farms are contributing. Sure,
18:29
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. You know, they'll they'll profile the bones
18:31
Speaker 1: and then they'll match that with data for missing kids,
18:35
Speaker 1: and you know, one kind of leads to the other,
18:38
Speaker 1: and that I know, it's closure somewhat for families. In
18:41
Speaker 1: this kind of situation. Oh yeah, which is what we're
18:44
Speaker 1: going to talk about with the Big Bopper. I think
18:46
Speaker 1: you should talk about the Big Bopper. The Big Bopper
18:48
Speaker 1: was a singer that perished in the plane crash with
18:52
Speaker 1: Richie Valence and Buddy Holly back in the day, and
18:56
Speaker 1: his son, the Big Bopper's son apparently got in touch
18:59
Speaker 1: with Dr bat Ass because the body of the Big
19:03
Speaker 1: Bopper was found. His name was J. P. Richardson was
19:06
Speaker 1: found forty ft from the plane, and the Sun wanted
19:08
Speaker 1: to know, Hey, did my dad actually die in the
19:10
Speaker 1: crash or was he trying to go get help and
19:14
Speaker 1: then died, you know, forty later, because I don't know
19:16
Speaker 1: that would have made a difference in and how he
19:18
Speaker 1: felt about Well, apparently there was a long persisting legend too,
19:22
Speaker 1: and I guess you want to put it a rest,
19:23
Speaker 1: and he did put a dress. Dr Bascott involved exhumed
19:26
Speaker 1: the body and basically said, every bone in this guy's
19:30
Speaker 1: body was crushed and there's no way that he survived
19:34
Speaker 1: the crash and he was thrown from the plane and uh,
19:37
Speaker 1: that's scene of that story. Yeah, so the Sun got
19:40
Speaker 1: that that kind of closure. Can I tell one more.
19:42
Speaker 1: All right, So there's this um this case in n
19:46
Speaker 1: three in San Diego, a little seven year old named
19:49
Speaker 1: Delbert apogean Um was found floating in San Diego Bay uh,
19:54
Speaker 1: and the coroner, I guess, ruled that he had been
19:58
Speaker 1: sodomized and um sexually assaulted in other ways before being murdered.
20:04
Speaker 1: But they never found the killer. And then apparently San
20:07
Speaker 1: Diego got some federal funding uh for opening cold cases,
20:11
Speaker 1: and this was one of the ones they went after.
20:13
Speaker 1: So they hired a forensic anthropologist and showed him, you know,
20:17
Speaker 1: old crime scene photos and notes from the detectives that
20:21
Speaker 1: worked the case. And I imagine it probably took the
20:25
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists an hour or ten minutes to say, no,
20:28
Speaker 1: this kid wasn't sodomized or murdered. Yeah, the thing is
20:32
Speaker 1: back then, no idea, No one was studying this kind
20:35
Speaker 1: of thing. Nowadays, we know that when the body reacts
20:38
Speaker 1: with water, all manner of nasty things happened. Bodies breakdown
20:42
Speaker 1: twice as fast in the water, right, which is why
20:46
Speaker 1: a lot of people dispose of murder victims in in
20:49
Speaker 1: lakes or exact. And I guess why these cops weren't
20:52
Speaker 1: able to really tell much, right, I think, well, not
20:54
Speaker 1: only that they were just misling over the course of
20:57
Speaker 1: these this the decades of study of decomposition, this forensic
21:01
Speaker 1: if the apologist was able to say this kid wasn't murdered,
21:03
Speaker 1: close your cold case, right yeah cool. Yeah. And then
21:06
Speaker 1: one of the researchers I saw from that video at
21:09
Speaker 1: Tennessee is trying to put together a book, like a
21:11
Speaker 1: reference guide for various states of the case. It was
21:15
Speaker 1: really yeah, cops kind of look at this instead of
21:17
Speaker 1: having a truck all the way up to the body
21:19
Speaker 1: farm like we did. Well, yeah, and I got the
21:22
Speaker 1: the idea it was going to be like, Okay, here's
21:23
Speaker 1: a picture of a body that's been underwater for seven days, um,
21:28
Speaker 1: and you know, hold it up against your body, and
21:31
Speaker 1: what doesn't look the same will continue to the next page.
21:34
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess it's going to be like a
21:37
Speaker 1: an illustrated atlas of decomposition, the old guide, right. I
21:41
Speaker 1: would love to get my hands on that one day
21:42
Speaker 1: when it's done. Yeah, I'd love to go to the
21:44
Speaker 1: body farm. I mean again, you know, you mean go
21:48
Speaker 1: back here right right. Yeah. They talked to Tom and
21:50
Speaker 1: I asked him if he had gone, uh, And he
21:53
Speaker 1: was like, no, they don't. They learned a long time
21:55
Speaker 1: ago not to let journalists are weirdos in Yeah. Yeah.
21:59
Speaker 1: So the guy us describing the smell in the video.
22:01
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting. He said. It was didn't
22:03
Speaker 1: smell like a dead animal, like that familiar smell of
22:06
Speaker 1: that when you smell a dan animal. He said, it's
22:08
Speaker 1: very different. He said it's unmistakable. Yeah. He said it
22:10
Speaker 1: was pungent and sweet. Yeah, well you smell that interesting. Sure,
22:15
Speaker 1: So that's body farms. Um, yeah, anything else, I don't.
22:20
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything else about two. Nope. All right,
22:23
Speaker 1: So I guess let's just go straight to listener mail. Josh,
22:30
Speaker 1: we're going to uh, we're gonna ask our listeners for
22:33
Speaker 1: a little information here. Because I didn't know the answer
22:35
Speaker 1: to this question. We rarely tossed that out. So we
22:38
Speaker 1: had Poloma right in from California. And Poluma said, a
22:43
Speaker 1: longtime listener, I love your podcast. It makes my commute enjoyable.
22:48
Speaker 1: And Josh, you chose Chuck as your partner in crime,
22:50
Speaker 1: and you all have the great chemistry. Blah blah blah.
22:54
Speaker 1: Could we resist each other now? It's destiny? Uh? So
22:58
Speaker 1: she says this. I had a very variants. A few
23:00
Speaker 1: days ago. It was a soupy day, a bit chilly,
23:03
Speaker 1: with a few sprinkles of rain here and there. I
23:05
Speaker 1: was over at my mother's house having a chat inside
23:07
Speaker 1: when suddenly there was an incredibly bright, white and blue
23:11
Speaker 1: flash and a quick zapping sound. I thought a light
23:14
Speaker 1: bulb had burned out in the room or something. My
23:17
Speaker 1: mother said that she saw a white bolt come through
23:19
Speaker 1: the wall, passed just in front of my face, and
23:22
Speaker 1: then go through the opposite wall of the room. We
23:25
Speaker 1: looked everywhere and tried to think of any kind of
23:26
Speaker 1: rational explanation. No bull would gun out, no strobe lights
23:30
Speaker 1: or camera to flash. Thirty seconds after this weird phenomenon happened,
23:34
Speaker 1: we heard thunder rumble very nearby. After calming down, I
23:39
Speaker 1: immediately thought of YouTube. You have answers for everything, so
23:42
Speaker 1: she will think of us when they narrowly escaped death.
23:44
Speaker 1: Where their first thought? So she says, what in the
23:47
Speaker 1: world happened? Do you think it was lightning? Was its
23:49
Speaker 1: static electricity? What's going on here? Has anyone died of
23:52
Speaker 1: static electricity? So I don't know the answer. I did
23:55
Speaker 1: look up and found out that no one can die
23:59
Speaker 1: of statical like tricity that I found that unless unless
24:02
Speaker 1: results in spontaneous human combustion. H And as far as
24:07
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think lightning can pass through
24:09
Speaker 1: the room of a house like that, So so I
24:11
Speaker 1: don't think it goes right in front of your face.
24:13
Speaker 1: I think if it's coming that close to you, goes
24:16
Speaker 1: right into you right and you would know. Well, because
24:17
Speaker 1: we had the other listener mail that I think had
24:20
Speaker 1: the side strike three blocks away he was at. So Paloma,
24:24
Speaker 1: we don't have an answer, but I'm hoping some listeners
24:27
Speaker 1: out there that are smarter than we are might have
24:29
Speaker 1: a clue as to what happened that day. My money's
24:31
Speaker 1: on unicorns, So maybe we'll follow up on this if
24:34
Speaker 1: we get some feedback. Yeah, if you have an answer
24:37
Speaker 1: for Paloma, especially if it's unicorns, you can send us
24:40
Speaker 1: an email solving this mystery to stuff podcasts how stuff
24:46
Speaker 1: works dot Com for more on this and thousands of
24:53
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot Com. Want
24:57
Speaker 1: more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on the
24:59
Speaker 1: how also works dot Com home page. Brought to you
25:04
Speaker 1: by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera it's ready. Are
25:08
Speaker 1: you