More than 200 corpses have rotted to skin and bones on the facility since it opened some 30 years ago. There is even a waiting list. Every corpse is tagged to identify it after decomposition, but the details of the bodies other than age, race, sex and cause of death are kept secret to protect their identity. While the notion of bodies decomposing in a field may be disturbing, knowledge gleaned from the farm provides local, state and federal law enforcement agencies with a critical understanding of death and homicide. Bass said as he pointed to a decrepit shell of a man with a fresh layer of snow gently blanketing his sunken features.
Somebody dies and they put a sheet over the body.
The leaching of volatile fatty acids from a body into the ground holds critical clues even if the body itself is missing. The merits of the farm's research have been proved over the years. When the Justice Department investigated the deaths in the Waco standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidian sect, Bass was called in. One of his former students, William Rodriguez, works for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office and collects evidence of war crimes in the Balkans. Bass, considered a pioneer in the field, is responsible for training and nurturing most of the forensic anthropologists practicing today.