Death's+Acre+p.98-110+KS

Chapter 8: A Bug for Research

Bill Rodriguez - lets five flies with orange paint out of a jar ^ Part of an experiment

Dr. Bass moved to Knoxville, and many of the bodies that police officers sent him to investigate dealt with maggots in some way

- smaller than grains of rice
 * Maggots - "small wormlike larvae that hatch from the eggs laid on a body by flies - usually, but not always, the iridescent green insects called blowflies."

Kansas = dry climate so bodies mummify

Flies can smell odor of death incredibly fast and are drawn to the scent of blood

Chinese investigator Sung Ts'u - forensic handbook The Washing Away of Wrongs -1247

1980s - New York entomologist named Murray G. Motter examined 150 bodies that were edhumed when a cemetery was relocated. ^ noticed that bodies had fed and housed numerous species of insects
 * published her findings in Journal of the New York Entomological society

H.B. Reed - entomologist who found that... total number of insects on, in, and around the carcasses was greatest during the summer


 * During winter flies are grounded by the cold; in fact, anytime the temperature drops below 50 degrees flies stop flying.

Bill Rodriguez's study - on a warm day after a few hours bodies were covered by fly eggs - flies weren't the only bugs on the body - yellow jackets and wasps were there too


 * with the marked flies, he let them loose near the body farm and the next day three of the five were back

February 11th, 1982 - Bill presented his findings to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences

August 1984 - Lisa Rinker was killed, and forensic entomologists helped to prove that she was stabbed to death. However, the local prosecutor wouldn't prosecute the suspects so her killer remains at large.