5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating forensic stories!, April 2, 2000
I have run across the name of Clyde Snow referenced in other works and found this book to fill out his personal story of searches and discoveries relating to tragedies and horrific murder cases. It is fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in special cases like John Gacey or the mass government murders in Argentina or the "Angel of Death" Joseph Mengele.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How Dead Men Tell Tales to Forensic Anthropologists, February 1, 2005
This review is from: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (Mass Market Paperback)
The Prologue tell of Clyde Snow's visit to Bolivia. Their law allowed the police to arrest anyone off the street and send them to a work camp without a trial. Some of these died from being shot while in custody. Clyde Snow's father was an M.D. who practiced in the Texas panhandle, east of Lubbock and beside the railroad. Chapter 1 tells of Snow's life and career. Hunters, and gatherers of wild crops, are famed for discovering lost bodies (p.33). Chapter 2 tells of the trial of Dr. John Webster for the murder of Dr. George Parkman. It gives the history of forensic identification by Bertillon and Vucetich. Chapter 3 tells of the trial of Adolphe Luetgert, who killed his wife and boiled her body in lye to destroy the evidence. The influence of Bertillon advanced forensic anthropology in Europe (p.77). Diet and modern medicine have changed bones (p.83). Anthropologists helped to identify the remains of dead soldiers, and recalculated height from the femur (p.84)
Page 101 tells of the "human error" involved in body identification after an airplane crash (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 tells how the identity of murder victims can be established by recreating a face from a skull, but its not perfect. It won't work if the family will not identify the victim. Chapter 6 tells how the identity was found for a modern mummy. Chapter 7 tells of identifying the bones found at the site of "Custer's Last Stand". Was George Armstrong Custer really buried in General Custer's tomb (p.146)? Chapter 8 tells how Snow identified the skeleton of Josef Mengele. Was there conflict amount the government agencies (p.162)? Chapter 9 has the final solution to the identity of Josef Mengele with "reasonable scientific certainty" (p.200). Chapter 10 tells how they found Mengele's dental records (p.208). They could not do DNA testing (p.211).
Chapter 11 tells of the Argentina politics that killed thousands of its people. Under Peron the life of the people improved, until he was overthrown (p.219). When Peron returned, conflict continued and thousands were made to disappear (p.220). This terror was described on pages 222 to 228. One effect was to loot the country by skyrocketing foreign debt (p.227). Clyde Snow and his colleagues came to Argentina to identify the unnamed remains. [There is no mention of what the Ford and Carter administrations were doing.] Snow gathered a group of students to learn his techniques for identifying people from their bones. Chapter 12 tells of the identification of one of the victims, Liliana Pereyra. She had given birth before she was murdered, and the child also disappeared.
Chapter 13 explains how Snow used the statistics of anonymous burials to prove the murder of thousands (p.27). Most anonymous burials are of old men, not people in their twenties. Another statistic was the high number of those dying from gunshot wounds (p.273). Snow's Argentine team was invited to the Philippines by President Aquino (p.277). A new Argentina law excused "torture, murder, arbitrary arrest, and misrepresentations" if the perpetrator was just following orders (p.279)! Chapter 14 ends the book telling about the ongoing investigation into the identification of unnamed bones. Appendix 1 names the parts of the human skull. Appendix 2 names the parts of the human skeleton. [Are these military putschs possible in a nation that has a right to keep and bear arms?]
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