I would say the goose is on simmer until these come back, but they will....
Fascinating. Aricle originally posted by ImpatientRedHead.
Bolds are mine
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Meanwhile, the techniques for retracing the evolution of a murder are getting ever more refined.
Take soil samples. As bodies decompose, they leak five fatty acids into the ground beneath them. Each day after death, the various profiles of these acids will vary.
Analysis of them can reveal the time of death, as well as pinpoint exactly how long any given body has been lying in a particular place. The soil can also reveal the presence of a corpse, even if the body itself has been removed or destroyed.
The ''stain'' left by a body's volatile acids, which also suppresses plant life around it, can last for up to two years, leaving a kind of phantom fingerprint in the earth. Thus, soil, like maggots, becomes an ''information bomb,'' and the dead can be reconstructed (if not resurrected) long after they have disappeared physically. In a recent case in Florida, a prison inmate confessed to a cellmate to having raped and murdered a woman he had abducted from a convenience store. Police couldn't find a body, but soil samples in several sites named by the inmate proved that one had indeed been there. The samples of earth saturated with bone minerals and fatty acids were enough to convict him.
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...0A35751C1A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all