Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by William R. Maples, Michael Browning
Authors: William R. Maples, Michael Browning
Tags: Medical, Forensic Medicine
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less hungry. In such cases, the investigator practically has to elbow his way through a crowd of famished banqueters before he can salvage and examine what is left.
One case that gave me some difficulty was a body found in two pieces, washed ashore in different locations in the Florida Keys. The head and portions of the neck were found in one spot and nearly all the rest—the torso, with legs attached and feet cut partly away—in another. It appeared that sharks had bitten at, but not quite through, the neck. There were clear marks of sharks’ teeth on the remains. But there were also very fine marks on the neck vertebrae still visible, which showed that the head had been sawed off. When I looked at the top vertebra protruding from the torso I saw similar marks which left no doubt: the body had been dismembered before it was thrown into the water. We were dealing with a murder, perhaps committed aboard a ship, and not a shark attack in the open sea.
I concluded that in this case a saw, probably a hacksaw, was used to dismember the body into three pieces, only two of which were ever found. Since both these fragments showed shark damage, I believe a shark got the rest of the corpse. Neither the victim nor his murderer was ever identified in this case, but at least we knew the killer was another human being, not a shark.
The shark, incidentally, is one of the true scavengers of the sea, and from time to time portions of human remains are found in sharks’ bellies, but only if the shark is caught and cut open soon after swallowing them. The stomach acid of the shark’s digestive system is extremely corrosive. It dissolves bone so quickly that the window of opportunity to find remains inside a shark is very small. A tibia I once examined, which had been taken from a shark’s stomach, was reduced to a paper-thin cylinder of bone, with a greatly reduced diameter. It was so eaten away that investigators originally believed it was an ulna, a bone from the arm. I was able to set them straight: it was a tibia, a leg bone, dissolved to a shadow of itself by acid. Of all sharks, tiger sharks are fondest of human flesh. They are the species whose entrails most often yield up human remains.
In March 1990,1 was called back in on a case involving a severed head that had been found in October 1987, in a closed vinyl bucket on the east coast of Florida, in Palm Beach County. For three years the head had been kept at the Palm Beach County medical examiner’s office, awaiting identification or a lucky break in the case. The medical examiner’s patience was finally rewarded. He learned that in 1983, four years before the head came to light, a headless trunk had been found clear across the Florida peninsula, propped against a pasture fence in a field belonging to a former county sheriff. A chain saw had been used to cut the head from the body.
Even though the two pieces were separated by many miles and several years, this case nevertheless resulted in one of the neatest match-ups of any dismemberment in my experience. The head had been cut off just below the hyoid bone, or Adam’s apple. The neck ended just above the thyroid cartilage. By superimposing old x-rays, taken of the torso four years earlier, and new ones taken of the head (which had been very well preserved in its sealed vinyl bucket), we were able to prove they belonged together. The victim was identified as a Jamaican who had reportedly been involved in drug smuggling. In this case we were able to come up with a name for the victim and to take the head and body off the police’s books. But his murderer escaped unpunished. No one was ever charged with this death.
The following month I received a complete body in two portions in the small and large suitcases of a set of matching luggage bought at Sears. The suitcases in this case were of the Hercules brand and were found in two different counties, miles apart: West Palm Beach in Palm Beach County and Fort Pierce in Martin
One case that gave me some difficulty was a body found in two pieces, washed ashore in different locations in the Florida Keys. The head and portions of the neck were found in one spot and nearly all the rest—the torso, with legs attached and feet cut partly away—in another. It appeared that sharks had bitten at, but not quite through, the neck. There were clear marks of sharks’ teeth on the remains. But there were also very fine marks on the neck vertebrae still visible, which showed that the head had been sawed off. When I looked at the top vertebra protruding from the torso I saw similar marks which left no doubt: the body had been dismembered before it was thrown into the water. We were dealing with a murder, perhaps committed aboard a ship, and not a shark attack in the open sea.
I concluded that in this case a saw, probably a hacksaw, was used to dismember the body into three pieces, only two of which were ever found. Since both these fragments showed shark damage, I believe a shark got the rest of the corpse. Neither the victim nor his murderer was ever identified in this case, but at least we knew the killer was another human being, not a shark.
The shark, incidentally, is one of the true scavengers of the sea, and from time to time portions of human remains are found in sharks’ bellies, but only if the shark is caught and cut open soon after swallowing them. The stomach acid of the shark’s digestive system is extremely corrosive. It dissolves bone so quickly that the window of opportunity to find remains inside a shark is very small. A tibia I once examined, which had been taken from a shark’s stomach, was reduced to a paper-thin cylinder of bone, with a greatly reduced diameter. It was so eaten away that investigators originally believed it was an ulna, a bone from the arm. I was able to set them straight: it was a tibia, a leg bone, dissolved to a shadow of itself by acid. Of all sharks, tiger sharks are fondest of human flesh. They are the species whose entrails most often yield up human remains.
In March 1990,1 was called back in on a case involving a severed head that had been found in October 1987, in a closed vinyl bucket on the east coast of Florida, in Palm Beach County. For three years the head had been kept at the Palm Beach County medical examiner’s office, awaiting identification or a lucky break in the case. The medical examiner’s patience was finally rewarded. He learned that in 1983, four years before the head came to light, a headless trunk had been found clear across the Florida peninsula, propped against a pasture fence in a field belonging to a former county sheriff. A chain saw had been used to cut the head from the body.
Even though the two pieces were separated by many miles and several years, this case nevertheless resulted in one of the neatest match-ups of any dismemberment in my experience. The head had been cut off just below the hyoid bone, or Adam’s apple. The neck ended just above the thyroid cartilage. By superimposing old x-rays, taken of the torso four years earlier, and new ones taken of the head (which had been very well preserved in its sealed vinyl bucket), we were able to prove they belonged together. The victim was identified as a Jamaican who had reportedly been involved in drug smuggling. In this case we were able to come up with a name for the victim and to take the head and body off the police’s books. But his murderer escaped unpunished. No one was ever charged with this death.
The following month I received a complete body in two portions in the small and large suitcases of a set of matching luggage bought at Sears. The suitcases in this case were of the Hercules brand and were found in two different counties, miles apart: West Palm Beach in Palm Beach County and Fort Pierce in Martin
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