Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes

by Emily Craig

  My commander agreed to send me back to Kentucky with the understanding that I'd be called later and asked to return to New York. I didn't say anything to anyone, but I guess the word spread. My last night of that first month, when we hit a little lull, Carmen said, “Oh, Doc, we've got one more bag here that we missed somehow.” Wearily, I unzipped it-and there were two ceramic angels and a card that everyone had signed. As I hugged and kissed every single one of my amazing colleagues, I wondered if I'd ever find the strength to return.

  When I got off the plane in Kentucky the next afternoon, I felt dazed and bewildered. This was home, and it was so familiar. But I'd been away for a month, and I'd seen and done things that would change me forever. It felt strange and disorienting to be without my “combat buddies,” the men and women with whom I'd worked side by side on a job that, I now realized, I'd never really be able to explain to anybody else. We'd shared something that only made sense to those of us who'd been through it, and now I had no one to share it with. I was looking forward to seeing my friends and talking with my family-but I also felt terribly alone.

  My first stop on the way home was Daisy Hill Kennel, where my beloved springer spaniel had spent the past month. I hated to leave Savannah in a kennel, even for a short time. But my neighbors Suzanne and Bill Cassity had introduced me to the people at this long-term animal facility right before I'd left for New York, and I felt confident that my pet would be well cared for there. To my amazement, when I went to pick her up, I found notes and letters from strangers who had left not only words of encouragement for me and my colleagues, but also enough money to pay my kennel bill.

  I had managed to stay in control for the past four weeks, but now, driving home with Savannah by my side, I felt my emotional walls start to crumble. As soon as I got home, I collapsed, sobbing on my bed as Savannah tried desperately to lick the tears off my cheeks. Life and love were proving to be stronger than death, and I surrendered to a wave of overwhelming sadness as I held Savannah tightly to my chest and allowed her soft fur to soak up my tears.

  I fell asleep after this cathartic cry but was wrested awake a few hours later by a ringing telephone. It was my mother, telling me that Dad was close to death. If I wanted to see him again, she told me, I should come to Indiana right away. I'd known my dad had cancer, of course, but when I left for New York City, we'd all thought he was holding his own. Soon afterward, he began a rapid decline, which he and my mother decided to keep secret from me as long as I was in New York. Only months later did Mom tell me that, by sheer will alone, Dad had held on until I got home.

  So, the next day, Savannah was back at Daisy Hill and I was back on the road. I spent ten days in Indiana -long enough to say good-bye to my dad, who slipped into a coma the day after I got there. Two weeks after I'd gotten back from Indiana, I returned to New York for my next tour of duty-and I was glad to be there. Maybe staying focused on the city's enormous loss would help keep my mind off my own sorrow.

  When I took the taxi from LaGuardia Airport into midtown the afternoon of November 18, I was struck by how much had changed. When I'd arrived in September, the whole city had seemed subdued. Although I had little opportunity to interact with any civilians other than the workers in our two hotels, I had the sense that in the first few weeks after the disaster, New Yorkers were treating one another with special gentleness and care. The few times I managed to stretch my legs in a walk around the block, the famous New York City crowds seemed to graciously make way for me, as though no one wanted to be guilty of a careless shove or a brusque “Out of my way.” I barely even heard a honking horn.

  On this return trip, the whole mood of the city seemed different. Traffic seemed faster, more impatient, and definitely louder. Things seemed to be getting back to normal in this bustling, overcrowded city, which I supposed might be considered a good thing.

  It wasn't so good for us DMORT workers, though. Our work had always been hard, but now it seemed to be discouraging-and lonely as well. Sometimes it seemed that we were the only ones who knew what was going on behind closed doors while the rest of the world was understandably busy with getting back to normal, even preparing for the holidays.

  But the friends and families of the victims were there with us, if only in spirit. They knew that we were working around the clock, and they still hoped that at any moment we would find and identify someone they loved. It was hard on those days when we couldn't and gratifying on those days when we could.

  Like my first tour of duty, my second started as a fourteen-day assignment and ended up as four straight weeks-including Thanksgiving. Since none of us got holidays off, the Salvation Army had prepared Thanksgiving dinner for us in their tent, so during a break between shipments from Ground Zero, John Trotter and I made our way through the food line and found seats in the back, near the heater. The golden September days were long over, and the end of that November day had turned cold, rainy, and dreary. I was grateful for the heat and for the cheery attitudes of the Salvation Army volunteers who served us. They seemed almost apologetic that they didn't have better food to offer us, but I saw nothing wrong with the turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green beans that they heaped on our plates. Slices of cold white bread were a poor substitute for hot rolls, but several homemade pies had apparently been donated to the workers at the Ground Zero site, and someone had thought to scrounge a few desserts for us folks behind the front lines.

  The food was fine, but this was a far cry from the Thanksgiving dinners that John and I were used to, happy occasions that we usually spent with family and friends. Now we were alone and far from home-but at least we had each other.

  “I love having you here for company, Emily,” John was saying. “But I wish I was at home.”

  I was almost more upset seeing John's pain than feeling my own. John had seemed to grow much older since I'd first met him in September. He had lost some of that sturdy enthusiasm that I so valued in him, and now he talked often of retirement.

  At nine o'clock on this rainy Thanksgiving night, John and I were the only people who were eating dinner, so we basically had the place to ourselves. Shortly after we'd carried our trays back by the heater, the volunteers up front dimmed the lights and huddled into their own little conversation group to pass the time until their next “customer” arrived. A minute later, one of them came back and placed a candle in the middle of our tiny Formica-covered table, then backed away without a word. I couldn't help but think about that classic scene from Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, where the Italian restaurateurs are trying to create a romantic mood for the canine lovers in the back alley.

  John and I weren't lovers, of course, but in the past two months we'd formed a unique bond of friendship that helped sustain us through the seemingly interminable nights when his friends and colleagues were being brought in to him in body bags. He trusted me and the rest of our team to handle his fellow Port Authority officers-and every other victim-as we would our own friends and family. But that night he revealed a deep hurt tinged with anger that I knew had been building for some time.

  “You know, Emily,” he went on, “we lost thirty-seven of our guys down there. No police agency in this country has ever lost that many. But nobody seems to really care anymore. When I drive by those billboards praising everybody else, it kinda hurts. And what about the civilian victims? Those poor people were also just doing their jobs.”

  I nodded and stared into my coffee. “People who work in the morgue also get used to being forgotten in the grand scheme of things,” I said softly. “We deal with death all the time, but that doesn't mean we're immune to it. Most people think we are, though, so what can you do? You find some way to keep going, and you learn to accept that people from the outside will never know what we're dealing with in here.”

  “I know life ain't fair,” John told me. “But this really isn't fair.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But you know, there's one little bit of it that does make sense to me. I can see why the
families need to be sheltered from the facts. If they actually knew what we had to deal with here, they'd have a clear idea of what happened to the people that died. I can see why they wouldn't want to know.”

  John laughed. “Silent servants,” he said, quoting a phrase that one of the religious counselors liked to use. “Hidden heroes. That's us, all right.”

  I stretched my legs and thought about going back for more coffee, but I was just too comfortable where I was. “I wish I was a hero,” I told him. “But I get so discouraged when I can't do more to help the families.”

  John and I sat there for a long time. We told each other that we were reluctant to go back out into the pouring rain. But I knew we were just basking in the glow of each other's company. He told me about his career in the Port Authority, his wife and children, and what had happened on the day he'd run for his life as the towers crashed down around him. I told him about my Kentucky cases, my family, and my little dog, Savannah, who I suspected was the only one who really missed me that night.

  I still couldn't talk about my dad, and John respected that because he couldn't talk about how he felt, either, when one of his friends was brought to us in a body bag. We sat together for a long time that night. Then we went back to work.

  It was a lonely time-but the New York City cops did everything they could to make me feel welcome. After that day on the pile, they treated me as one of their own, inviting me to hang out in their “private” tent and taking me up to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree. Mark Grogan even brought me along to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade from his family's rented penthouse in the Mayflower Hotel.

  Being pulled into the brotherhood of New York 's Finest and Bravest wasn't just a social thing. Now that I felt the kinship, I shared their grief as well as their camaraderie. When the police or firefighters brought one of their own into the morgue, I was confronted with the living relatives of the dead-not just once, but several times a week-a kind of emotional demand that I hadn't dealt with before, as they entrusted me with their fellow members of service. I think it mattered, too, that I was obviously older than just about everyone else and usually the only woman handling the remains when they first came in, which made me a kind of emotional focus-almost a mother figure-for many of the men working at the site. If I was to do my job, I had to keep my scientist brain turned on, cataloguing, sorting, deducing, identifying. But if I was to honor the people with whom I worked, the people whose living bodies clustered around the dead remains, I had to allow my hands to channel the love and pain of every mother, wife, sister, and daughter of every one of the victims.

  Still, feeling so much, night after night, week after week, took its toll. Sometimes I felt like a well that was about to run dry. My well-spun cocoon of defense was wearing thin, with even a hole here and there-but I kept working.

  In the end, I think what made it all possible was knowing how much our efforts meant to the rest of the city-and to the country. Messages of thanks and well-wishing flowed into us from all over America, from schoolchildren and veterans' posts and police departments in other cities. I hope they could feel our appreciation flowing back to them.

  I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way,

  that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

  – GILDA RADNER

  Acknowledgments

  I STAND ON THE SHOULDERS of those who came here first: the anthropologists, pathologists, and investigators who have devoted their lives and careers to the fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking world of forensic science. Without their care and guidance I would not have a place on the team. Without their continued help and support, this book could not have been written.

  Mal Black, Octavia Garlington, and David Mascaro taught me how to marry art and science. The entire staff of the Hughston Sports Medicine Foundation and Clinic supported my career as a medical illustrator, while Dr. Jack C. Hughston taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the human knee. Dr. Bill Bass, founding father of forensic anthropology, brought me into his world with the determination to make sure that I learned his lessons well. Bill, I hope to make you proud.

  I also hope this book conveys the respect and gratitude I have for my friends and colleagues in Kentucky 's Justice Cabinet. In particular, I want to thank Dr. George Nichols and David Jones, who first laid the groundwork for Kentucky 's Division of Medical Examiners, as well as Dr. Tracey Corey, who courageously tries to steer me and the rest of the staff to carry on the dream. All the support staff, pathologists, coroners, law enforcement officers, attorneys, judges, and juries working together to bring justice to this world have a special place in my heart. Of course, all the views expressed here and the perception of events are entirely my own.

  This book is also the result of superhuman efforts on the part of my writing and publishing team. Special thanks must go to Rachel Kranz, whose genius helped turn my country girl's stories into a manuscript full of procedural drama, and to my agent, Jeff Kleinman, who, with extraordinary effort and talent, polished my work enough to take it to Crown Publishers. There I was lucky enough to have two editors, Emily Loose and Rachel Kahan, devote a huge amount of time and effort to the manuscript. Their skill and dedication are evident on every page. Heartfelt thanks as well to the rest of Crown's team: publisher Steve Ross, associate editor Caroline Sincerbeaux, production editor Jim Walsh, copy editor Steve Samuels, interior designer Lenny Henderson, and production manager Linnea Knollmueller.

  Finally I wish to acknowledge the memory of my dear cousin, Jerry Hurley, whose bullet-ridden and decomposed body was found in the woods beside an abandoned Indiana gravel pit. May he rest in peace.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EMILY A. CRAIG, Ph.D., is the forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and one of the world's foremost forensic anthropologists. In addition to her work in Kentucky, she regularly consults with prosecutors, attorneys, police departments, and other law enforcement agencies from around the world, and she is a consultant to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo.

  After earning her master's degree in medical illustration from the Medical College of Georgia in 1976, Dr. Craig worked at the Hughston Sports Medicine Foundation in Columbus, Georgia. Her groundbreaking studies earned her a worldwide reputation as an expert in the surgical anatomy of the musculoskeletal system. During this career in orthopedics, Dr. Craig illustrated and helped author hundreds of scientific articles and medical textbooks. She created numerous scientific exhibits for presentation all across the United States and Europe and pioneered techniques that combined her knowledge of art, anatomy, and computer graphics.

  Dr. Craig then stepped away from this career to enter the world of forensic anthropology. Under the tutelage of Dr. Bill Bass, she earned her doctorate in the prestigious Forensic Physical Anthropology program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Here she became one of the few forensic scientists in the world to undertake extensive research at the infamous “Body Farm,” a secluded facility dedicated to the study and documentation of human decay processes.

  Since beginning her second career as a full-time forensic anthropologist, Dr. Craig has developed an international reputation as an expert in the identification and analysis of human remains, and she has published numerous scientific articles and textbook chapters dealing with these subjects. Her prodigious work has earned her a coveted place among the ranks of fewer than sixty board-certified forensic anthropologists in the United States, and it continues to put her on the front lines of the world's most baffling mysteries.

  ***

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