Tales From The Crypt

By MICHAEL RILEY THE NATCHEZ TRACE

WITH SWEAT SLIDING DOWN HIS BROW, scientific sleuth James Starrs shoves a long steel probe down through the dirt around the grave of American explorer Meriwether Lewis. A few moments later, his team drags a radar sled across the same neatly clipped grass and around the weathered limestone monument. Their mission: to learn the truth of Lewis' mysterious death by gunshot here on a Tennessee stretch of the Natchez Trace, the old road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, nearly 183 years ago. Did this pioneer, whose trek to the Pacific Northwest with William Clark has been a staple of grade-school quizzes for generations, take his own life that night at Grinder's Stand? Or was he murdered? "If Lewis had a chance to speak," muses Starrs, "what would he say? The only way he can speak is through his bones."

Starrs, a professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University, is one of a growing -- and controversial -- group of graveyard detectives. Listening with the ears of high-tech equipment, they try to hear the tales that dead men tell -- stories that could settle age-old mysteries and even solve crimes. In a rush to rewrite history, these bone buffs are going after the skeletons of everyone from Presidents and Czars to assassins and the victims of cannibals.

And last month it was Lewis' turn: Starrs was using his radar probe to locate the explorer's remains. If the data show anything worth digging up, the scientist would have to obtain permission from the U.S. Department of the Interior and Tennessee authorities to do so. Lewis' descendants already support the project. Once the explorer is out of the ground, Starrs could use several technological tools that can coax secrets from the dead. Modern lab tests can detect the tiniest traces of poison or gunpowder residue, DNA analysis can help make identifications and scrutiny with scanning electron microscopes can reveal other telltale marks.

Such methods gained notoriety over the past year as scientists sought to answer lingering questions about two U.S. Presidents. Researchers dug up the remains of Zachary Taylor to see whether he was poisoned; they determined that he wasn't. Another investigator wanted to study DNA from the autopsy remains of Abraham Lincoln to find out whether he had Marfan syndrome, an inherited disease that causes victims to be taller than average and have long arms, fingers and toes. After a lengthy debate, an expert panel concluded that the study should be postponed until researchers know more about the gene that causes the syndrome.

For sheer energy and curiosity, few historical sleuths can match Starrs, who even as a young boy was fascinated by Sherlock Holmes mysteries. So far, Starrs has unearthed the victims of Alfred Packer, America's most infamous cannibal, to discover whether Packer was a murderer as well. (Yes, he was.) He also exhumed Carl Weiss, the alleged assassin of Louisiana Governor Huey Long; Weiss, in turn, had been shot by Long's bodyguards. Based on discrepancies between the bodyguards' testimony and bullet marks found on Weiss's bones, among other clues, Starrs concluded that it is more likely that the bodyguards themselves murdered their boss. Now Starrs wants to dig up the father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden, or at least their skulls, to find out whether Borden really did them in with a hatchet.

But digging up the past, even in the name of science, angers people who view tombs as inviolate resting places. University of Minnesota bioethicist Arthur Caplan is worried that the "Peeping Toms of forensics" are out of control. "If we don't want to devalue the past," he says, "then we're going to have to restrict the access of those who can rummage through it." Rather than banning such explorations, however, Caplan favors using blue-ribbon panels to establish guidelines for exhumations and testing. Even medical examiner Michael Baden, co-director of the New York State Police forensic-sciences % unit, admits the need for caution. "We have to be careful that we're not succumbing to the public desire for gossip," he says. "The remains of the dead should be treated as sacrosanct and re-examined only for reasons of great importance."

Baden's exhumation last June of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers appears to meet that test. Although white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith was charged with the 1963 murder of Evers outside his Jackson, Mississippi, home, two juries deadlocked, and Beckwith, who denies the charge, went free. Last year prosecutors reopened the case, but the original autopsy report was missing. So Baden was called in to dig up the surprisingly well-preserved body and do another autopsy. If Beckwith is retried, Baden will probably testify, and a conviction could lead to the reopening of other unsolved cases. "There's no statute of limitations on murder," Baden explains. "The Evers case shows that after 29 years you can have an active murder investigation."

That precedent causes some to clamor for the exhumation of John F. Kennedy. Most forensic scientists, however, agree that digging up Kennedy could shed light on only a few minor mysteries, such as the fate of the President's brain. It was removed during the autopsy, but it may have been buried later at Kennedy's grave site. Enough documentation exists from the autopsy report, X rays and photos to reconstruct the bullets' paths. Starrs, a longtime Kennedy admirer, balks at the thought of unearthing the slain President. Says he: "That's like exhuming my father."

Even without J.F.K., there are enough famous bodies to keep Starrs and others shoveling indefinitely. Clyde Snow, a forensic anthropologist who helped identify the remains of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, recently uncovered a pair of bodies in Bolivia. He and his team hope to prove they are the remains of none other than American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

With reporting by Anastasia Toufexis/New York