Bloated bodies, burned victims, bones, and bite marks

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Bloated bodies, burned victims, bones, and bite marks

In the spring of 1983, I began to assist the newly appointed state medical examiner with the identification of a “John Doe”, whose body had been pulled from the murky waters of the Cumberland River, here in Nashville, Tennessee.  The badly decomposed body was bloated, discolored and bore an odor that would choke most. Visual identification would be impossible. Fortunately, the decedent bore a mouthful of expensive gold inlays in his molars that would uniquely differentiate him from any other person. That was my baptism in the world of forensic identification.

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Missing Children Of Bedford County

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Missing Children Of Bedford County

When the subject of missing persons comes up, people usually respond by saying ‘what a horrible thing it is, it must be tough going through something like that, I feel sorry for the family’. Those types of things are usually characterized by most of us as things that happen to other people. You might see it on the six o’clock news, but not something that you would ever think would happen to them. 

A terrible house fire erupted quickly that totally consumed a 5000 square foot home in the Rover community of Bedford County, near Shelbyville, about 45 minutes southeast of Nashville last September. Mr. and Mrs. Leon and Molly McClaran who had been married for over 30 years had custody of two of their grandchildren, nine year old Chloe Leverette and seven year old Gage Daniel. When a passerby first reported the blaze, the entire house had already been consumed by the fire. Firefighters had to bring water in by truck since there were no fire hydrants nearby. Firefighters eventually set up a large plastic water trough near the home from which to draw water from.

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