No Stone Unturned

This book looked very interesting and was indeed quite good. At the beginning, we learn about the beginnings of forensic science (« forensic » meaning « used in connection with the detection of crime »), with the first time it was possible to tell if blood came from an animal or a human, blood types, DNA comparisons, etc. Very interesting stuff.

Then, we learn about the creation of a very unusual group of experts known as « the Pig people. » These people were from law enforcement (cops, FBI, etc.) and also academics from many different areas of expertise, like geologists, botanists, biologists, anthropologists, physicists, etc. who believed that they should work together to solve crime. It was the first time such a group of people existed, and they proved that the police could use experts who knew how bodies decompose over time, or how soil composition will change when a body is buried, or how aerial photographs could point to places where there had been soil disruption, or how a tree will look different depending on whether it grows on top of a decomposing body or not.

This small group of experts decided to work with law enforcement to find clandestine graves of people who had been murdered, but at first, they needed to do a lot of research about decomposing bodies, so they got a few dead pigs to do their experiments, because pig carcasses behave like human bodies when they are decomposing. Hence the nickname « Pig people. »

Little by little, they became famous as they worked–successfully or not–on different projects, and after a few years, they even started working internationally. After the forensics and Pig Project introductions, the rest of the book tells of five different cases that these Pig People worked on over the years. The first case is the most significant one, as it was the first time that these people were successful in finding the body of a murdered young lady (Michele Wallace) whom law enforcement had been looking for for almost 30 years! It’s a heart-breaking case and the book explains it in every possible detail: Michele’s life, the police officers who had been looking for her, the years of different searches, the Pig people’s involvement, and finally the trial.

I really enjoyed this book, even though it was long and the details about those five cases were extensive. I felt that the book was sometimes more about all the people who are involved in murder cases like that, and it was really fascinating to learn about the different techniques and attempts, the law enforcement and criminals involved, the ways people can be freed even when they are clearly horrible people, the many different methods (cadaver dogs, ground-penetrating radars, meteorology, entomology, excavations, etc.) used by the Pig people (who re-named themselves Necrosearch International), and other amazing people involved in those cases.