Body Burners

THE fire started with a match held under a cotton blanket close to the man’s waist. Within 2 minutes, the flames had spread across the single bed he was lying on and were consuming his cotton sweatshirt and trousers.

Around a dozen onlookers were at the scene – including police, fire investigators and death investigators – yet all they did was watch. That was, after all, their job. The “victim” had in fact died some time ago, having previously donated his remains to medical research.

His body had reached a unique team led by Elayne Pope, a forensic scientist at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Her group spends its time setting fire to corpses in a range of different circumstances, to work out exactly how the human body burns. They seem to be the only group carrying out such systematic studies in this area, and are certainly the only ones publishing their work...