When the fictionalized glamour of forensics science recedes, will the stories still captivate?
By Katherine Ramsland
ARTICLE EXTRAS
In 1993, "Big" Mike Rubenstein reported the deaths of three of his relatives in a Mississippi cabin. Rubenstein claimed to have visited the cabin in November, but he found it empty; returning in December, he found them dead. Bill Bass, forensic anthropologist and founder of the infamous "Body Farm" on the campus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was asked to construct a timeline for when the deaths had occurred. Careful research on the developmental cycle of maggots and the decomposition rates in certain temperatures placed the deaths in mid-November - exactly when Rubenstein had "visited." He was tried and convicted of triple homicide.
Stories like this have helped fuel a recent cultural obsession with forensics science, a so-called CSI effect. Some scientists, like Bass, have exploited interest from publishers to make their ...
