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                                                                                SCIENCE, Page 64

Tales from the Crypt


To solve history's mysteries, graveyard sleuths are unearthing
the dead and famous

MICHAEL RILEY/THE NATCHEZ TRACE -- With reporting by Anastasia
Toufexis/New York


    With sweat sliding down his brow, scientific sleuth James
Starrs shoves a long steel probe down through the dirt around
the grave of American explorer Meriwether Lewis. A few moments
later, his team drags a radar sled across the same neatly
clipped grass and around the weathered limestone monument. Their
mission: to learn the truth of Lewis' mysterious death by
gunshot here on a Tennessee stretch of the Natchez Trace, the
old road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee,
nearly 183 years ago. Did this pioneer, whose trek to the
Pacific Northwest with William Clark has been a staple of
grade-school quizzes for generations, take his own life that
night at Grinder's Stand? Or was he murdered? "If Lewis had a
chance to speak," muses Starrs, "what would he say? The only way
he can speak is through his bones."

    Starrs, a professor of forensic sciences at George
Washington University, is one of a growing -- and controversial
-- group of graveyard detectives. Listening with the ears of
high-tech equipment, they try to hear the tales that dead men
tell -- stories that could settle age-old mysteries and even
solve crimes. In a rush to rewrite history, these bone buffs are
going after the skeletons of everyone from Presidents and Czars
to assassins and the victims of cannibals.

    And last month it was Lewis' turn: Starrs was using his
radar probe to locate the explorer's remains. If the data show
anything worth digging up, the scientist would have to obtain
permission from the U.S. Department of the Interior and
Tennessee authorities to do so. Lewis' descendants already
support the project. Once the explorer is out of the ground,
Starrs could use several technological tools that can coax
secrets from the dead. Modern lab tests can detect the tiniest
traces of poison or gunpowder residue, DNA analysis can help
make identifications and scrutiny with scanning electron
microscopes can reveal other telltale marks.

    Such methods gained notoriety over the past year as
scientists sought to answer lingering questions about two U.S.
Presidents. Researchers dug up the remains of Zachary Taylor to
see whether he was poisoned; they determined that he wasn't.
Another investigator wanted to study DNA from the autopsy
remains of Abraham Lincoln to find out whether he had Marfan
syndrome, an inherited disease that causes victims to be taller
than average and have long arms, fingers and toes. After a
lengthy debate, an expert panel concluded that the study should
be postponed until researchers know more about the gene that
causes the syndrome.

    For sheer energy and curiosity, few historical sleuths can
match Starrs, who even as a young boy was fascinated by Sherlock
Holmes mysteries. So far, Starrs has unearthed the victims of
Alfred Packer, America's most infamous cannibal, to discover
whether Packer was a murderer as well. (Yes, he was.) He also
exhumed Carl Weiss, the alleged assassin of Louisiana Governor
Huey Long; Weiss, in turn, had been shot by Long's bodyguards.
Based on discrepancies between the bodyguards' testimony and
bullet marks found on Weiss's bones, among other clues, Starrs
concluded that it is more likely that the bodyguards themselves
murdered their boss. Now Starrs wants to dig up the father and
stepmother of Lizzie Borden, or at least their skulls, to find
out whether Borden really did them in with a hatchet.

    But digging up the past, even in the name of science,
angers people who view tombs as inviolate resting places.
University of Minnesota bioethicist Arthur Caplan is worried
that the "Peeping Toms of forensics" are out of control. "If we
don't want to devalue the past," he says, "then we're going to
have to restrict the access of those who can rummage through
it." Rather than banning such explorations, however, Caplan
favors using blue-ribbon panels to establish guidelines for
exhumations and testing. Even medical examiner Michael Baden,
co-director of the New York State Police forensic-sciences unit,
admits the need for caution. "We have to be careful that we're
not succumbing to the public desire for gossip," he says. "The
remains of the dead should be treated as sacrosanct and
re-examined only for reasons of great importance."

    Baden's exhumation last June of slain civil rights leader
Medgar Evers appears to meet that test. Although white
supremacist Byron de la Beckwith was charged with the 1963
murder of Evers outside his Jackson, Mississippi, home, two
juries deadlocked, and Beckwith, who denies the charge, went
free. Last year prosecutors reopened the case, but the original
autopsy report was missing. So Baden was called in to dig up the
surprisingly well-preserved body and do another autopsy. If
Beckwith is retried, Baden will probably testify, and a
conviction could lead to the reopening of other unsolved cases.
"There's no statute of limitations on murder," Baden explains.
"The Evers case shows that after 29 years you can have an active
murder investigation."

    That precedent causes some to clamor for the exhumation of
John F. Kennedy. Most forensic scientists, however, agree that
digging up Kennedy could shed light on only a few minor
mysteries, such as the fate of the President's brain. It was
removed during the autopsy, but it may have been buried later
at Kennedy's grave site. Enough documentation exists from the
autopsy report, X-rays and photos to reconstruct the bullets'
paths. Starrs, a longtime Kennedy admirer, balks at the thought
of unearthing the slain President. Says he: "That's like
exhuming my father."

    Even without J.F.K., there are enough famous bodies to
keep Starrs and others shoveling indefinitely. Clyde Snow, a
forensic anthropologist who helped identify the remains of Nazi
war criminal Josef Mengele, recently uncovered a pair of bodies
in Bolivia. He and his team hope to prove they are the remains
of none other than American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid.