New Science for the Murder Victim Search

摘要

Right behind employee parking for the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, a line of bushes all but hides a gray privacy fence. More than 7 feet tall and topped with razor wire, the fence's wooden slats shield the public from the world's only human decay research station, which readers of this magazine have glimpsed more than once. So morbid-seeming are the experiments that unfold here that Patricia Cornwell, the doyenne of gruesome murder mysteries, once said of her visit, "Every cell in my body cried out against the place." Me, I could hardly wait to get back to the site, where I have tagged along as some of the world's most unusual forensic scientists explored their research.