4/6/05

Contact: K.E. Schwab  -- 724-738-2199;  e-mail: karl.schwab@sru.edu

FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST, FOUNDER OF 'BODY FARM' DR. BILL BASS TO LECTURE AT SRU

          SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. - Forensic anthropologist, founder of the University of Tennessee's "Body Farm" and among the best known forensic scientists in the nation Dr. Bill Bass will detail how science works to solve criminal investigations when he lectures at Slippery Rock University April 26.

          The public session is set for 7 p.m. in Swope Music Hall. Bass will also meet with SRU students at12:30 p.m. in the Spotts World Cultures Building as part of his campus visit.

          His lecture, titled "An Introduction to Forensic Anthropology," will offer detailed information on how forensics helped play a key role in solving hundreds of cases for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He will use the lecture to explain actual crime scenes he has visited and how he uses forensics - and their results.

 Author of "Death's Acre: Inside the Body Farm," Bass has also written and co-authored some 200 other scientific publications. (Details are available at: www.deathsacre.com.)

 "Body Farm" was taken from police slang for the UT's three-acre Anthropology Research Facility which Bass created in 1972 as an outdoor laboratory that now serves as home to hundreds of skeletons enabling students and professional forensic anthropologists to learn more about the human-decomposition process. The facility is second only to the Smithsonian Institution in the number of skeletons.

 By examining hundreds of cases, forensic scientists, including Bass, say bodies speak the "language of the dead" with various stages of decomposition providing exact clues. Others note the "dead are silent helpers of the living" for providing such clues.

 In addition to his work at the University of Tennessee, Bass, a professor emeritus, works with medical examiners' offices worldwide and has identified nearly 1,000 remains of crime and accident victims.

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