CMU’s Forensic Investigation Research Station examines arid effects on bodies | Western Colorado

In fact, the dead have many stories to tell.

The amount of scientific information that can come from the deceased is impressive.

One of the places the deceased can be sent after their lives is Colorado Mesa University’s Forensic Investigation Research Station (FIRS).

There are only nine forensic research stations in the world dedicated to research into human decomposition.

The Colorado Mesa University facility in Whitewater, which opened in 2013, is not only one of them, but also the only one of its kind because of its location. At 4,780 feet above sea level with an average of 8.6 inches of rain per year and 60% humidity, FIRS is the one highest and driest forensic research station in the world.

Those who donate their bodies before they die will help professionals in a variety of fields, both scientific and social science, determine the effects of such an environment on decomposing corpses. This information is far more important than many unfamiliar with the purpose of the facility may realize.

“The research in our work is to learn more about degradation in this dry, relatively high-altitude environment,” said FIRS Director Melissa Connor. “The aim is to examine both the autopsy intervals – how long someone has been dead – and to examine the natural course of decomposition so that we can determine whether there is an unnatural course of decomposition. In other words, when something else happened than you would expect and maybe what it was. “

FIRS is mainly staffed and attended by professionals, with six or seven CMU interns working at the facility each semester and different classes visiting the facility during each semester.

A UNIQUE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

“For students, the experience is very unusual, if not unique,” said Connor. “We work with human remains in our body disintegration facilities. There are only about nine in the world and only one more that works regularly with undergraduate students. You will learn anatomy, skeleton collections, and the actual moving of remains, just as coroners, death researchers, and pathologists have to learn. “

The importance of understanding the effects of the western Colorado atmosphere on bodies lies in much more than simply understanding the natural world.

Connor, for example, said she often works with students on the CMU’s criminal justice program and with students who want to become medical investigators or homicide detectives, as knowledge of decomposition has been found to be critical in many criminal cases in both sentencing and exonerating. She works with biology students and medical students who want to learn more about skeletal and soft tissue anatomy.

FIRS aims to bring science and social science students together on projects and also to give each their own projects to help the station realize each student’s strengths.

The facility also hosts three or four courses per semester, including entomology, geology, and biology.

“I find it really exciting because they usually don’t really know what to expect because this is an experience that is unlike anything that most people can compare and see how it relates to the things they are going through throughout their educational career, ”said Alex Smith, FIRS laboratory manager who oversees the internship program, among other things. “It’s fun to see how they find something exciting and can be applied to their future.”

LEARN FORENSIC SCIENCE

Kendra Bartlett, an intern at FIRS last summer, moved from Massachusetts to the Western Slope because of her interest in forensic science and the ability to observe autopsies next to the Mesa County Coroner’s Office.

“The summer internship was by far one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had,” said Bartlett. “I was at FIRS about 40 hours a week and there was something new every week. I was able to watch autopsies – to make sure the forensic pathology is exactly where I want to end – to do individual research and make great new friends. “

Her experience also taught her the importance of people making decisions about donating deceased loved ones to the program.

“The internship at FIRS definitely gave me a new appreciation for individuals and families who choose to donate their remains to science. It allows students to learn visually, not from textbooks, ”she said.

That sense of shared interests in different areas for different reasons is all the truer when it comes to the professionals who work directly with Connor.

“I think we can work and find projects with any profession that has to do with death and dying,” said Connor. “We can do quite a lot with different aspects of biology. One of our professors, Margo Becktell, examines fungi on our human remains to identify them and then see if we can correlate this with the post-mortem interval. “

The program also works with entomologists.

“I’m working with an entomologist from Cornell (University of New York), Elson Shields, to identify the beetles on our body and try to get the information so we can relate this to the post-mortem interval,” she said.

Some collaborations are very unique.

“Believe it or not, I worked with a fish biologist (Eriek Hansen of Colorado Mesa) who works with equipment that can help us determine how dehydrated or dehydrated a body is. We tried to attribute this to the dehydration of a corpse and we can determine an autopsy interval based on that, ”said Connor.

SATELLITE CAMPUS HIGHER IN HEIGHT

While the Colorado Mesa Forensic Research Facility has the highest elevation of such a station in the world and focuses on high altitude decomposition, the school has a satellite campus – The Back 40 (or TB40) – in Park County, west and northwest of Colorado Springs to study the effects of even higher altitudes.

Doctoral student Christiane Baigent is stationed at the TB40 as part of her doctoral thesis. She assists the Park County Sheriff’s Office with evidence and crime analysis and the Park County Coroner’s Office advising on skeletal cases. She believes TB40 will open new doors in the world of decomposition research.

“The primary site is believed to be elevated, but clinically and physiologically there is no peer-reviewed published literature at 10,000 feet. It’s a big gap in the scientific literature for us and a big problem for law enforcement, ”said Baigent. “There are many physiological changes that happen at high altitudes in the human body. It is expected to affect the rate and pattern of decomposition.

“A lot of people don’t think about the importance of this type of research until, under certain conditions, such as at high altitude, they lose a loved one, community with as much information as possible when the worst happens.”

There are two methods that FIRS uses to obtain corpses for study. The facility has a 75 mile pickup radius handling the transportation of people who have agreed to donate themselves or have been donated by their families. Everywhere outside this radius, the station requests transport assistance from the state.

As the westernmost forensic research center in the United States, FIRS sees donations from well beyond the Western Slope.

“We had donors from California where their families fly them in,” said Connor. “We had several people from Denver, and we really had a few from the eastern United States. If one of the other decomposition facilities receives an inquiry from a donor who is closer to us, they will recommend us so that we can also work together to keep the transport costs for the families as low as possible. ”

Perhaps the biggest struggle for institutions like FIRS, besides the never-ending pursuit of more knowledge, is their public perception, much of which is likely derived from the terminology most commonly used to describe them, much to the chagrin of professors, Professionals and some donating families: body farm.

The term was popularized in 1994 by Patricia Cornwell’s novel “The Body Farm,” a detective novel that revolves around the world’s first forensic research station at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

But as offensive as the phrase, or the concept of a crumbling building, may be to many, Smith affirms that working in the facility is not only helpful, but necessary.

“I think a lot of people hear the term ‘body farm’ and think of something that’s kind of dark and macabre, but it’s not at all,” said Smith. “What we’re doing here is science. We are working to find information that can be useful, just as any other scientist would. People don’t usually think that we have an essential focus on education and working with students and that they are involved in every single aspect of our work.As we learn new things, (students) learn new things too. You will become part of all of the different projects we carry out. They help us discover new information that advances various aspects of forensics. It’s really not quite what people think, in part because people don’t fully understand what we’re doing here, which is understandable. There aren’t many places that do this.

“People don’t always think this is necessary, but it does so, so it fills knowledge gaps.”