Teasing Secrets From The Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes.

TEASING SECRETS FROM THE DEAD: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes EMILY CRAIG

With all the crime shows on television, you might think that there would be hundreds of forensic anthropologists such as Craig on the job. Yet she is one of only 60 board-certified U.S. practitioners in her field and the only one employed full-time by a state government--Kentucky's. After Craig lets readers in on the gritty details of her maggot infested world, it's easy to grasp why she has so few professional peers. In this autobiography, she explains that she didn't set out to become a forensic anthropologist. Midway through her career as a medical illustrator, she went back to school to study forensic anthropology, and then found her way onto the scenes of some of the most horrific and high-profile crimes of recent times, among them the 1993 massacre of cult members in Waco, Texas. There Craig helped prove that many of the deceased Branch Dravidians had shot themselves or had been shot to death by fellow cult members before the FBI rushed the compound, leading to the fire that consumed the cult's complex of buildings. She also tells how she used an unidentified dismembered leg from the site of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City to help convict Timothy McVeigh of the bombing of that building. Turning to her own state, she describes eking evidence from items such as eyeglass frames and bone fragments to convict murderers who have dumped bodies in rural areas. She relays these and other experiences in sometimes-gruesome detail but never without respect for the dead and a desire to find justice. Crown. 2004. 284 p., hardcover, $24.95.