by Emily Craig
Someone snapped a few switches and all the lights came on as the huge exhaust fans roared into gear. Autopsy technicians-sometimes called “deaners” for no reason that I could ever tell-began wheeling gurneys into the room. Unlike the gurneys I'd seen in hospitals, these were asymmetrical, one end slightly higher than the other. On each gurney rode a black body bag with a large red number spray-painted on it. “MC- 23,” for example, was the twenty-third bag of remains recovered at Mount Carmel. The spray paint was an efficient-and waterproof-way to mark the bag boldly.
Each autopsy workstation was about ten feet long and three feet deep, with a large stainless steel sink flanked on both sides by elevated countertops. Each sink had three spigots connecting to a spray nozzle, a rubber hose, and a gooseneck faucet, giving us the maximum range of options for washing away the blood and gore. The whole unit rose to meet a three-foot-high backsplash equipped with lights, while the sink itself opened into the maw of a huge garbage disposal unit.
Two large steel rings in front of each sink lined up perfectly with the two large hooks at the end of each gurney. As the technicians wheeled the gurneys up to the sinks, they slipped the hooks into the rings and then used their feet to flip the locks at each of the gurney's four wheels. Now the gurney was part of our workstation. Each gurney had a two-inch hole in its lower end, sealed with a big black rubber stopper. This end now extended well over the lip of the sink, allowing us to uncork the gurney and drain fluids or rinse water down into the sink. The body bags were often simply left on the gurneys, so that we could roll them to another part of the lab without ever disturbing the remains.
Bill joined Dr. Gary Sissler, Theresa went to work with Dr. Peerwani, and I became a part of Dr. Charles Harvey's team. Dr. Harvey appeared to be in his fifties, a little shorter than I, but better nourished. He moved quickly and with purpose, immediately handing me a rectangular blue pan that looked for all the world like my own kitchen dishpan, though this one was filled with bloody remains. I immediately recognized them as pieces of burned skull mixed into a grapefruit-sized wad of baked blood and brains.
“Something just isn't right here,” Dr. Harvey said, looking over my shoulder into the pan. “We originally thought all these people died from the fire. But this woman doesn't seem to have been burned all that badly. Her body was relatively intact and there was no soot in her airway.”
I nodded. Usually, fire victims die from a rapid buildup of carbon monoxide while choking on the smoke. But this one had died before she'd had a chance to inhale anything harmful. Why?
“There's another thing,” Dr. Harvey went on. “Investigators didn't see any evidence that any building debris had fallen on top of her-and yet her skull was in pieces. If it didn't get smashed in the crash or burned by the fire, what broke it?”
I looked down uncertainly at the charred remains. They held a secret that I had suddenly become responsible for discovering.
“I'll be anxious to see what you can do with this,” Dr. Harvey said brusquely, and he went quickly back to his own new victim.
I stood uncertainly for a moment in the midst of the morgue traffic. Everyone seemed to be moving purposefully to his or her assigned task, but where was I supposed to work? Dr. Harvey's autopsy area was already filled to capacity with technicians, and stacks of instruments covered every horizontal surface. Finally I took the bucket over to a somewhat isolated white porcelain sink tucked into one corner of the morgue, checking to make sure it wasn't a “clean” sink-one of those closely guarded by safety watchdogs and reserved for hand-washing-before gingerly lifting out some of the pieces. I'd done this before, but never in this lab, surrounded with strangers, burdened by the knowledge that I was now part of a history-making event. I took a deep breath, forcing my mind to focus on the evidence I held and, as so often happens, my hands took on a life of their own, moving instinctively to tease the bone away from the brain.
It was the bones that caught my interest. The brain and other soft tissue had been essentially destroyed by the fire and the past week's process of decomposition. But the sturdy bones held secrets that I might decipher if I could just get the “squishy stuff” out of the way.
It was simple at first to grasp the largest pieces of the broken skull and pull them away from what was left of the brain. After I had scraped away the last of the baked blood and soft tissue from these large pieces, I washed them in a pan of hot soapy water, then set them aside on a blue towel to dry. The whole process was a little like doing the dishes after a particularly messy meal.
My goal was to reassemble the skull-only then could I read the story of the young woman's death-but in order to recover every single bone fragment, I had to pull the brain apart piece by piece, as if I were breaking off chunks of bread dough, my double-gloved fingers carefully probing the bloody tissue, seeking the bits of bone that were embedded within. As I extracted and then washed the smaller pieces, blood and dirty water splashed onto my chest and face shield and, to make matters worse, the occasional fly would land on me and crawl around. I soon discovered that if I tried to flick off the insect with my messy rubber gloves, I would spread more blood and gore to the spot where, before, only a little fly had left its tracks. So I did my best to ignore the flies and blood spatter that now covered not only my body but my face shield as well, a pockmarked pattern of black and red that left me feeling like I was looking through an insect-spattered windshield-without the wipers.
Then I began to discern the pattern that was gradually emerging in the skull fragments, and suddenly my discomfort vanished. Even at this early stage, I could see that these fractures were caused by something other than the fire, just as Dr. Harvey had suggested. But because of my anthropological training, I was able to see something in the bones that I recognized, though I could hardly believe my eyes. There was only one explanation for the way this woman's skull had shattered-but nothing I had heard in any of the news coverage or at this morning's briefing supported what I thought I saw.
My first impulse was to run over to Dr. Harvey and share my suspicions with him. But common sense and a sense of self-preservation prevailed. I'd had one too many run-ins with grad-school professors who'd taken me to task for “theorizing ahead of the facts.” No, I'd gather every scrap of evidence I could before presenting Dr. Harvey with what I intuitively knew to be the truth.
So I removed the last morsel of goo from the skull bones before starting to dry each one with a paper towel. I knew that the next step was to glue the skull pieces together-that way, we could see the skull as it had been in life, and what I had discovered would be fully revealed. But the edges of the bones had to be entirely dry before the glue would stick and they were still soaking wet from their bath. I looked at them impatiently-maybe if I toweled them off?
One of the autopsy technicians must have seen me clumsily rubbing a few scraps of paper towel over the bones, because she suddenly tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see that she was holding a hair dryer in her gloved hand. She, too, was wearing a protective surgical mask, but I could tell by the crinkle at the corners of her eyes that she was smiling broadly underneath. I'm sure my eyes crinkled too as I smiled and took the dryer. In just a few minutes, I started gluing my bones back together.
Here is where Bill Bass's relentless pursuit of perfection paid off. Any other teacher might have allowed me to leave his class unsure of how to identify and reposition tiny random fragments. But thanks to Dr. Bass's insistence on detail, I could read the subtle variations in the contour of the bone and discern the delicate three-dimensional pattern of veins imprinted on some inside surfaces of the skull-clues that showed me at a glance which bones went where. As I had already done in my Tennessee murder cases, I started to glue the broken pieces together, edge to edge, just the way you'd piece together a broken vase.
Before too long the original shape of the woman's skull emerged: first her forehead, then her eye sockets, then the holes for the hearing mechanism and spinal cord. And then, as I placed t
wo large matching pieces together, I saw exactly what I had expected to see, the evidence that I was longing to share with Dr. Harvey: a neat round hole with beveled edges in a place where the bone should have been smooth and solid. The hole's outside edge was surrounded by a ring by of black soot, also a significant clue. Dr. Harvey's first guess had been right. Neither the fire nor the falling walls had shattered this woman's skull. She died because someone had held a gun up to her head and pulled the trigger.
The black soot told me how close the gun had been. You only get that sort of “gunpowder tattoo” when the gun's muzzle is close to the victim's head. I could see where the bullet had pierced the skull, too, breaking out a plug of bone as it forced its way through the skull's three primary layers-the smooth outer ectocranium, the inner endocranium, and the spongy bone sandwiched in between. As usually happens with entrance gunshot wounds to the skull, the entire three-layer bone plug had broken away at a slight angle, leaving a cone-shaped hole, sort of like the round window of a jet airplane, with the inside circumference of the hole larger than the outside edge.
Sometimes a bullet will also create an exit wound. That too leaves a beveled hole, but in the opposite direction, with the outside edge larger than the hole inside the skull. I didn't see that here, which meant that, theoretically, the bullet was still lodged in the woman's brain. But I hadn't found any trace of it, though I'd just squished through every square inch of brain matter, feeling for bone fragments. Was there a bullet or wasn't there?
I took a closer look at the skull. I could see that it was missing several fragments, probably pieces that the shot had blown away. Most likely, the exit wound was marked out on one of these missing pieces.
Now it was time to approach Dr. Harvey and ask him to examine my rebuilt skull. When I tentatively approached him, he stepped away from his own case without a word, businesslike but exhausted. I offered up the skull in its plastic pan like some weird project for art class, and he lifted the skull gently with both hands, slowly turning it around.
I heard his short, sharp intake of breath. The next thing I knew, he was dashing out of the room, taking the skull with him.
Standing there, still holding the blue pan in front of me, I glanced over to the team at the next autopsy station. They had just opened a body bag that contained hundreds of broken and burned bone fragments.
“You're an anthropologist, aren't you?” asked a male voice from behind one of the anonymous masks. I nodded and walked over to their gurney. “We could use you here,” said the same muffled voice. And that's how it started. Two weeks of seemingly endless hopscotch in which I moved from task to task, helping out wherever I could.
Sometimes I would arrange groups of bones in anatomical order, separating the burned and fragmented tibias, fibulas, scapulas, hoping that a count of similar bones-two right femurs, for example-would help me determine just how many people's parts were in that pile. Or I might be asked to dissect someone's pelvic bones, examining the joints in a quest to determine the person's age. Most of the time, though, I was cleaning up skull fragments and gluing them back together, just as I'd done on that first case. Little did I know that the gunshot wound I'd found had been just the tip of the iceberg.
Besides the regular seven-thirty a.m. briefing, we also attended five p.m. sessions, when the medical personnel and FBI investigators gathered to share our findings for the day. On this first day, I was exhausted and happy to shed my protective gear, which by now was covered with a dense pattern of blood splotches, charcoal smears, some goo that was better left unidentified, and my own sweat. And I hadn't seen Bill and Theresa since Dr. Harvey had taken my arm that morning. I was anxious to compare notes, so I got back into my street clothes as quickly as possible and headed down the hall to join my friends. We barely had time to exchange greetings, though, before it was time to pour into the conference room. We three novices slipped into chairs against the back wall, just as the pathologists and federal agents took their seats around the conference table in the room's center.
As always, Dr. Peerwani opened the meeting, beginning today with a mundane list of the day's case numbers and a rundown of some positive IDs. He relayed a progress report from the scene and thanked everybody for the day's efforts. Then he yielded the floor to Dr. Harvey.
“I have some startling news to report,” Dr. Harvey began. Bill, Theresa, and I leaned forward, wondering what he was about to say. “It concerns a woman found at the scene. Although her remains were burned, she didn't die from the fire. She died from a contact gunshot wound to the head.”
Oh, my God, I thought. That's our victim, the one whose gunshot wound I found.
No one uttered a sound. They just looked at one another, some folks nodding their heads, others raising their hands to massage their aching temples. Still others had already begun furiously scribbling in their notebooks and, behind me, someone started tapping the keyboard of a laptop computer.
I later learned that our discovery had not been totally unexpected. Evidence from some of the earlier autopsies had suggested that at least some victims could not possibly have died from the fire, which was why Dr. Harvey had wanted me to examine the skull in the first place. Like others on the team, he had begun to suspect that at least some Davidians had been executed or had committed suicide before the smoke and flames reached their bodies. Today's discovery was the turning point, though-irrefutable proof that one of the victims had actually been killed by a contact wound to the skull.
Suddenly, the entire investigation was changing before my eyes. No longer was victim identification our sole mission. Every set of remains would now also have to be closely examined for even the most subtle signs of injury, and these findings had to be documented in detail. We would have to be able to distinguish between injuries incurred antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem-before, during, and after death. We would also have to try to determine the cause and manner of death-smoke inhalation? Flames? Being crushed by the building as it fell? Or had the victim been shot or stabbed or killed in some other way before the fire ever started? And then the victims would still have to be identified.
We were all dismissed from the debriefing with the assurance that a new protocol would be in place by morning, one that would hopefully address all of the issues that were just now bubbling to the surface. Meanwhile, Bill, Theresa, and I had to find a place to sleep. Before we'd left Knoxville, we'd prepared ourselves for the fact that if we couldn't find a cheap motel room that we could all afford to share, we'd have to camp out. Earlier that day, we'd started asking the other workers for suggestions and they'd all told us to talk to a tall white-haired man whom I'd seen circulating through the morgue throughout the day-Harold Elliott, chaplain for the Arlington Police Department.
Harold turned out to be our guardian angel. He immediately invited all three of us to stay with him and his wife, Norma, in their lovely home in the neighboring community of Arlington, Texas. We gratefully accepted his offer, returning with him to what we soon came to see as our haven, a crucial refuge from the insanity we faced each day. Suddenly exhausted beyond belief, we managed to get a good night's sleep. Then, the next morning, it all began again.
Each day started the same way. A quick briefing, perhaps a reminder to make sure all the evidence was photographed or a warning not to speak to the press, and then I was off to change into my scrubs and get to work in the morgue. I greeted every day with anticipation and a sense of adventure. Each case was different and I was not only getting to make full use of my newfound forensic anthropology skills, but I was also absorbing reams of new information about mass fatalities.
I think what surprised me most was the degree of order hidden within the chaos. The numbered body bags, arriving fresh from the scene, were entered into a log, then stored in the cooler. When we were ready to work with them, they'd be pulled out, one at a time, and loaded onto gurneys, beginning their journey through an assembly-line system of analysis.
The sequence might vary, depending
on what was in the body bag, but there was an established procedure for every type of situation. Photography was always first. Documenting the evidence as it arrived from the scene was critical-especially now that we knew that this incident might not be just a horrible accident. The rumors of suicide and execution were only now reaching the public, and the conspiracy theorists and reporters were having a field day. Speculation abounded. Had the FBI's hostage rescue teams killed the Davidians, peppering them with bullets as they tried to escape the flames? Or perhaps, as one particularly ugly rumor suggested, the angry FBI agents had pumped the dead bodies full of bullets, in some sort of bizarre battlefield revenge for their fallen ATF comrades.
Probably none of us would ever know exactly what had happened inside the compound. But our work would establish the best possible scientific foundation for interpreting the available evidence. Clearly, this case was going to trial, and there would probably be other legal inquiries as well. Maintaining the integrity of the evidence that was gathered-and keeping distortions out of the press-was crucial. So a single photographer, Chip Clark, was assigned to take all morgue photographs, while no one else was allowed to go anywhere near a camera. The investigators knew that Chip could be trusted: He worked at the Smithsonian Institution, which made him a federal employee, and he was fully aware of the protocols necessary for documenting evidence that would stand up in court.
Chip was charged with taking several different kinds of photographs. First, he recorded the initial appearance of each body bag's contents, which preserved a useful overview of the situation. Even more critical, though, was the documentation of particular images that might help tell the story of what had happened inside the compound. A picture of a burned hand encircled in a plastic wristwatch that had melted onto a clip of machine-gun ammunition was pretty telling evidence that hand and ammunition had been in intimate contact during the fire. A gas mask still stuck to the front of a child's face suggested that the child had been alive when the tear gas began to enter the compound. A unique piece of jewelry curled around the neck of a victim could be a crucial means of identification. The burned-off hand of a tiny child grasped in the hand of an adult female was a heart-wrenching record of these people's last moments-a detail that either prosecution or defense might incorporate into their stories about what had happened on April 19. Last but not least, Chip's photos gave us a permanent record of the medical evidence as we continued to search for the truth of that fatal day.
