ABOVE: Researchers who loaded car trunks with pig carcasses and set the vehicles on fire still found abundant entomological evidence that could help estimate when the body was placed there.
© GAIL ANDERSON
The six cadavers all wore the same clothes: red t-shirts, plaid boxers, and cargo shorts. They’d been shot in the head and then stuffed into the trunks of old, beat-up cars or deposited in densely shaded spots of forest in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. All died on July 24, 2007. Graduate student Stacey Malainey of Simon Fraser University checked on the six pigs, which served as proxies for human homicide victims, twice a week from the day they were killed, for nearly a month.
When it comes to murder, cadavers are most commonly found dumped in the bushes or the forest. “But there are a remarkable number that are concealed, and particularly concealed in vehicles—in old, junker vehicles,” ...
