This article is part of “Solutionaries,” our continuing commitment to solutions journalism, highlighting the creative people in communities working to make the world a better place, one solution at a time. Find out what you can do to help and subscribe to our Solutionaries channel on Youtube.
Bees could be the key to finding missing people. Did that get your attention?
It’s one of the many interesting research projects going on in Virginia. George Mason University has what’s called a “body farm.” It is new and one of only a few in the nation.
10 News got an inside look at the process in Northern Virginia and how you can be part of the research helping investigators solve murders now and in the future.
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“These little scientists with wings on them, they’re going to be able to take us to the body,” Mary Ellen O’Toole, the Forensic Science Program Director at GMU said, while standing outside of a bee hive on campus.
Bees helping investigators work murder cases.
“They’re going to be able to tell us where someone has been dumped, where someone is laying outside and decomposing,” O’Toole, who retired from the FBI after nearly three decades, said.
Her work includes understanding serial killers and other high-profile cases like the disappearances of Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway.
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“Working a serial murder case obviously is one of the greatest challenges because oftentimes, the victims are found outside,” the director explains. “Now we have this body farm where we’re studying the very thing that I worked on in the FBI, outdoor homicide scenes.”
The school now has just the eighth body farm in the country and the only one in this region.
“The body farm here is my dream,” said Emily Rancourt, a former police crime scene specialist who now works at GMU as the forensic science program associate director.
“I would find human remains, and it was very difficult to pinpoint the time since death,” Rancourt said. “I always would want to bring some answers to the family of the cases that we were working on. And sometimes we couldn’t do that.”
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That’s because what happens to a body depends a lot on the environment, soil type, and more. The research they can do here will bring answers.
“We will have bodies that will be put out here in the summer months, in the winter months, in the fall. We will also have different scenarios that we create with the bodies,” Rancourt said. “We might take a body and wrap it up in carpet and leave it on the ground of the facility. We want to bring answers for these families. We want to give a voice to our victims who can no longer speak for themselves anymore and we want to bring all this together and collect the data so that we can help the future generations that are working as crime scene investigators.”
Bees are also part of the research.
“If a human body is dumped outside, they begin to decompose, and honey bees, just by virtue of how they act in nature, they fly around and they land on flowers and other things. And then they take that back to their hives,” O’Toole explained.
So when someone goes missing, investigators can contact beekeepers, test their bee hives for body decomposition, and drastically narrow down the search area.
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“If it tests positive, then we can estimate that the body is likely within two to five miles of those hives where the bees are,” O’Toole said. “We’re talking about narrowing down, could be 100 miles it could be 50 miles, but from an investigative perspective, that’s a big area to cover. To be able to determine is somebody out here? Has somebody been left out here are their human remains decomposing out here? They’re going to be little scientists on our behalf and I think that’s going to be remarkable.”
One of the limitations to how much research they can do is money. They have to have people checking the bodies — sometimes multiple times a day. Rancourt says you can make a donation to help with this research that will help smaller agencies in Roanoke.
“This is the kind of research that will improve these kinds of cases I think all over Virginia, and ultimately, hopefully all over the country,” O’Toole said.
You can make the decision to donate your body to science before you pass, or your loved ones can do it after you die. For information on the Virginia State Anatomical Program, click here. GMU is still waiting for its first donor body but can do other research until that happens.
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10 News is taking you inside the new science research of solving crimes. Click the links below for more stories in our series:
This article is part of “Solutionaries,” our continuing commitment to solutions journalism, highlighting the creative people in communities working to make the world a better place, one solution at a time. Find out what you can do to help and subscribe to our Solutionaries channel on Youtube.
The top-ranked and defending national champion Fighting Irish came into Charlottesville on Saturday afternoon to wrap up the regular season and handed the Cavaliers a third-consecutive loss for the first time in a decade.
No. 1 Notre Dame (10-1, 4-0 ACC) completed its undefeated 4-0 run through the ACC with an 11-9 victory over No. 6 Virginia (10-4, 1-3 ACC) on Saturday afternoon at Klockner Stadium.
The first half was a back-and-forth affair, with neither team leading by more than a goal until Virginia got goals from Jack Boyden and Payton Cormier to take a 6-4 lead into the halftime break. Cormier then scored again to start the third quarter to give UVA a 7-4 lead, but the Cavaliers would score only two more goals for the rest of the game in what was ultimately their quietest offensive performance of the season.
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Notre Dame scored the next four goals, with each coming from a different goal scorer, to take an 8-7 lead. McCabe Millon found Cormier on a man-up opportunity to tie things up heading into the fourth quarter. After Shellenberger assisted on a Ryan Colsey goal to give UVA a 9-8 lead, the Cavaliers proceeded to go scoreless for the final 12 minutes and 52 seconds of game time. Notre Dame scored the final three goals of the game, including two from Devon McLane, and went on to win 11-9.
The story of the game comes down to sloppiness and mistakes, as the Cavaliers won the faceoff battle 13-10, but were still outshot by Notre Dame 42-30. The explanation for that statistical anomaly is that the Fighting Irish dominated the groundball battle 50-26 and had six fewer turnovers than Virginia, who had 27 turnovers and eight failed clears.
That sloppy play and inability to win the 50-50 balls gave Notre Dame a possession edge that was too much for the Cavaliers to overcome, as they suffered their third-consecutive loss for the first time since the 2014 season.
Payton Cormier had four goals on 10 shots and was the only Cavalier to score multiple goals in the game. Connor Shellenberger had one goal and two assists, but also turned the ball over six times.
Matthew Nunes made 10 saves and allowed 11 goals for a .476 save percentage.
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Virginia concludes the regular season 10-4 overall and 1-3 in ACC play.
Up next is the ACC Tournament, which will be played next weekend for the first time since the 2019 season. UVA is the No. 4 seed in the tournament and will have a very quick rematch with No. 1 Notre Dame next Friday (time TBD) at American Legion Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. The other semifinal will be No. 2 Syracuse and No. 3 Duke. The winners of the two semifinals will play for the 2024 ACC Men’s Lacrosse Championship on Sunday in Charlotte.
Day 37: Today is gonna be a fun day. We woke up around 7, after a much better night of sleep than the night before. We’re only carrying our packs around 1.5 miles, so we weren’t in any particular rush. The first half mile was back along the highway, which is a less than ideal way to start the morning, but after that we hopped off into the woods again and started our way to the next hostel! …
The Pittsburgh Steelers continue to make major investments along their offensive line after using back to back first-round draft picks on tackles they now get some interior help with the selection of West Virginia interior offensive lineman Zach Frazier with the 51st overall selection in the 2024 NFL draft.
Frazier projects as the immediate starter as the Pittsburgh center and should bring massive improvement along the shaky interior of the Steelers offensive line. Troy Fautanu, Broderick Jones, and Zach Frazier will make a young offensive line core for the Steelers to lean on for years to come.
A scrappy, strong, and quick lineman, Frazier brings his wrestling skillset over to the football field and wins in a similar fashion. Expect Frazier to be productive early in helping out both the passing and running game in Pittsburgh.
