Text Excerpt 15: Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum When Did They Die? [Note to readers: Many of the official autopsy reports of the Branch Davidians, autopsy photographs, and official diagrams showing the locations of body recoveries are available for viewing at the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum website. Unfortunately, this documentation cannot be included in a text excerpt.] "Estimating the time of death is one of the most important responsibilities of the person conducting the autopsy." (Scientific Crime Investigation, by Jenny Tesar, pg. 51.) The Autopsy Reports of the Branch Davidians contain no estimate of the time of death. The omission is stunning, considering that much of the work of forensic anthropologists and medical examiners is directed to answering this very question. "One of the first questions the police ask a forensic anthropologists is how long a subject has been dead. It is also one of the most difficult to answer." (Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, curator of anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, top consultant to the FBI, quoted from his book "Bones--A Forensic Detective's Casebook, pg. 108.) Surely the concrete room was the crime scene of the century. Here we had just witnessed the biggest, best publicized US military attack on US citizens in history. This attack was excused in large part by charges that David Koresh had been abusing children in the Mt. Carmel Center. FBI spokesmen called Koresh a madman at almost every daily press briefing. The FBI said the Davidians had started the fire and murdered each other on the final day. Arguably, David Koresh could have been killing children one at a time over a long period, with the help of the Davidians who survived the fire. We would expect the expert evidence handlers from the Smithsonian and the FBI to give A-1 handling to these remains so that the dead could speak, tell their stories, and convict the murderers. Let's look at what happened instead. Time of Death and Decomposition A corpse decomposes over time--the longer the time since death, the more decomposed the corpse. Because time since death questions are so important, decomposition of corpses over time is studied by forensic experts. The studies are conducted in the field and under controlled conditions. Dr. Ubelaker describes field studies of the impact on decomposition of such factors as rain and snow, sunlight, plant growth, summer heat and winter cold, water, insects and insect larvae, corrosives and solvents. As victims' bodies are found at various recovery sites, forensic scientists note the state of decomposition and environmental factors associated with recovery. Dr. Ubelaker says that the recovery of bodies from thousands of field locations comprise much of "the collective wisdom from which we have developed our forensic standards." (Ubelaker, pg. 108.) A close associate of Dr. Ubelaker, Dr. Bill Bass, conducts controlled studies of the decomposition of human remains. Dr. Bass, director of the Anthropological Research Facility at Knoxville, Tennessee, runs an open-air ("al fresco") mortuary. Unclaimed or unidentified bodies from the city morgue are donated to Dr. Bass's project, and allowed to rot under a variety of conditions in a wooded area at his facility. The process of decay is recorded. The bodies, rotting with the interplay of the natural conditions of sunlight, rain, and insects, are photographed at regular intervals. Bodies buried in shallow graves are exhumed periodically and examined. Changes in vegetation and the composition of the soil are also noted and recorded precisely as a guide to the recovery of bodies in the field. (Ubelaker, pg. 110.) Importance of Speedy Recovery of Remains Discussing time of death estimates, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Michael M. Baden, MD says "The sooner we get to the body, the more accurate we are." Dr. Baden says heat, cold, and the presence of drugs in the body can hasten or slow the process of decay and confuse the time and cause of death. (Unnatural Death--Confessions of a Medical Examiner," by Michael M. Baden, pg. 37.) Climate, Warmth, and Decomposition Climate plays an important role in the rate of decomposition. All other things being equal, the hotter the weather, the faster a corpse decomposes (Ubelaker, pg. 215). When the body of a victim is found, all efforts are made to refrigerate the remains at once, so that the process of decay does not confuse investigation into the time and cause of death. That is why refrigerated trucks are among the first things to arrive at the scene of a mass disaster. Many of the corpses found in the concrete room were severely decomposed. But a review of the photos of the ruins of the Mt. Carmel Center show persons on the scene wearing jackets and long pants (figure 5, Time, May 5, 1993, pgs. 30-31, figure 7, Time, July 24, 1995, figure 10, courtesy Linda Thompson, and figure 11, donated to Museum by unofficial source). This was April and the weather was not hot. Thus, the advanced decomposition of so many of the bodies in the concrete room can not be explained by warm weather. Placement of Remains After Death Dr. William R. Maples, another renowned forensic anthropologist and colleague of Dr. Ubelaker, points out that decomposition rates also depend on where the body is stored after death. "The general rule of thumb for the rate of decomposition is: one week in the open air equals two weeks in water, equals eight weeks underground." (Dead Men Do Tell Tales, by William R. Maples, Ph. D., and Michael Browning, pg. 47-48.) Bodies of Mothers and Children Allowed To Rot The inferno at the Mt. Carmel Center was largely burned out by 1:00 pm, April 19. The methods for handling the remains of victims of such disaster have been established for decades (see Museum exhibits "How the Pros Handle Mass Disasters Scenes.") They should have been recovered almost immediately. Yet, if we are to believe Dr. Peerwani, the first set of bodies was not recovered from the concrete room until April 22-23, and the second set were left rotting in the elements until April 27-29. The excuse given for the delay, as we have seen from Dr. Peerwani's testimony (Transcript, pg. 5970) was that roof of the "collapsed bunker" needed to be shored up for the safety of the recovery workers. This excuse does not work. First, we have already seen that Sgt. Coffman worked in the concrete room under the damaged roof day after day. The laws of physics would have been the same for Sgt. Coffman as for Dr. Ubelaker or Dr. Peerwani. If the damaged roof of the concrete room was not appreciably endangering Sgt. Coffman, why would it to pose a danger to our forensic experts? Second, as Sgt. Coffman's testimony shows, the roof was never shored up. This fact is verified again by the Dallas Morning News (Saturday, May 1, 1993 pg. 24A): "Also Friday [April 31], authorities bulldozed the concrete bunker that was the compound's last standing remnant. 'We had determined that it was structurally unsound because of a support beam in the middle of it had become detached,' [sic] said DPS [Department of Public Safety] spokeswoman Lauren Chernow." Third, had the recovery team considered the evidence important, the roof could have been shored up hours after the fire, before the first bodies were recovered. Recall that 33 to 43 bodies were found in the room (Transcript, pgs. 953, 948, 958), and nine on the roof--the roof was an important part of the crime scene. Recall that there were 250 lawmen on the site (Transcript, pg. 1090). Some of those 250 could have been spared, and armed with plywood and beams, they could have shored up the roof. If that task was too complex for the Texas Rangers, the FBI, the ATF, and the US Army, the Smithsonian Institution anthropologists were on hand. If the task was too complex for them, they surely could have called the Smithsonian Institution and asked to speak to a staff archaeologist who had been on archeology digs . . . No, Dr. Peerwani's excuse holds no water. If the recovery dates that Dr. Peerwani cites are accurate, there is no excuse for the bodies to have been mishandled in this manner. What was the result of the delay? Why, the further decomposition of the bodies, and the greater the interplay of nature's forces on the remains, the greater obfuscation of the time of death. As the corpses rotted, the flesh on the faces rotted, so the delay also accomplished the blurring of identities. When world-class evidence handlers like our Smithsonian experts are advising on recovery of bodies, and the bodies are abused in such a fashion as to destroy or degrade the evidence they contain, what must a reasonable person conclude? Recall that Texas Ranger Raymond Coffman, who was in charge of the crime scene in the concrete room, testified that the concrete room was completely cleared out by April 25 (Transcript, pg. 903). His testimony obviously conflicts with Dr. Peerwani's who said the last remains were collected on April 29; if all corpses were removed by April 25, the rate of decomposition is all the more remarkable. Next: Excerpt 16, They Died At Different Times ------------------------------------------------------- Entire set of text excerpts from the Museum available with anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.public-action.com/wm2-0txt.zip Excerpted by Carol Valentine. Images omitted. Visit the Museum at http://www.holocausts.org/waco. 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