THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502080529
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PEGGY DEANS EARLE
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES
The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist
WILLIAM R. MAPLES AND MICHAEL BROWNING
Doubleday. 292 pp. $22.95.
WARNING: If you get queasy at the thought of what happens to a human body after death, you should not read Dead Men Do Tell Tales. Nor, for that matter, should you read this review.
If you're still reading, you will be amazed to learn that, contrary to popular conception:
a corpse's hair and nails do not continue to grow after death;
buried bodies are not consumed by maggots, because these larvae cannot live underground;
a body left out of doors can become totally skeletonized in about nine days (give or take); and
in just 12 to 18 hours, the methane gas contained in a dead body can cause it to double or treble in size. This process is called autolysis: Authors William Maples, a forensic anthropologist, and Michael Browning elegantly refer to it as ``a little French revolution of the guts.''
These tidbits are just a sampling of what you can learn in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, the gruesomely entertaining collection of Maples' ``strange and fascinating cases.''
And what, exactly, is a forensic anthropologist? He or she is an expert in the human skeleton, in human bones. Not to be confused with forensic pathologists, such as TV's ``Quincy,'' who have medical degrees and analyze the deceased while there is still ``meat'' left.
Maples' domain is in the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History, which he fondly refers to as a ``fleshless village of the dead.'' There, he has helped solve vicious murders both contemporary and historical. He has scrutinized the remains of Francisco Pizarro, the Tsarist Romanov family, President Zachary Taylor and John Merrick, the ``Elephant Man.''
Maples grew up and attended college in Texas. His acquaintance with corpses dates to an early job as assistant ambulance driver for a funeral home. Later, during his stint as an insurance claims adjuster, he learned something that would serve him well in his future profession: skepticism. To wit, a pathologist once advised him: ``When in doubt, think dirty. You'll be right ninety percent of the time.''
Some of Maples' colleagues were called in to consult on such high-profile cases as the identification of the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele (the Nazi ``Angel of Death'') and of the victims of the 1986 Challenger space-shuttle disaster.
But these cases are no more engrossing than those from Maples' career. Take Don Pizarro of Spain, conqueror of Peru, who was savagely murdered in 1541. For several centuries, mummified remains thought to be his were kept in a Peruvian cathedral. Then, in 1977, workers discovered a hidden niche in which other human bones resided. Maples and a colleague examined the bones, and from an exciting series of clues, they deduced that they were the genuine remains of the bold conquistador.
Then there was the recent exhumation of Zachary Taylor. The 12th president of the United States died in 1850, officially as a result of acute gastroenteritis. A woman working on a biography of Taylor questioned the diagnosis, convinced that he had been poisoned with arsenic. Once again, Maples assisted in the analysis of the remains. Since arsenic can be detected in the bones and hair of a victim, a study would reveal its presence. Arsenic was not found, and the cause of death remained a common instance of food poisoning.
The stories of Maples' involvement in the identification of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, murdered in 1918, and his year and a half-long work on a Florida murder-suicide are as enthralling as any well-spun mystery novel.
Finally, Maples' invaluable assistance in the 1990 Gainesville college-student murder case about which he said he had ``seldom seen crime scene photographs possessed of such sheer depravity,'' brings his career up to date.
Maples' anecdotes go on and on. He discusses how to detect methods of suicide and accidental death and the effects of the various methods of capital punishment. Despite his vast exposure to the horrific results of man's cruelty to man, he maintains that ``we Americans may not yet be sufficiently advanced to abolish the death penalty.''
Maples conveys his abundant enthusiasm for his profession and his respect for the mysteries of nature. To him, the skeleton is ``an object of inexhaustible wonder, a book I shall never finish reading. . . . Patient and silent while we live, our skeletons shout to heaven and posterity after we die.'' MEMO: Peggy Deans Earle is a staff librarian. ILLUSTRATION: Jacket photo by PAM SMITH O'HARA
Jacket design by WHITNEY G. COOKMAN
by CNB