San Marcos residents object to cadaver research near their homes

By Molly Bloom, Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, April 14, 2007

SAN MARCOS Texas State University plans to build a forensic field laboratory to study decomposing corpses on Texas 21 in San Marcos in spite of residents' protests.

"It's a done deal unless we hear something we haven't heard before," university Provost Perry Moore said at a meeting with local landowners this week.

Texas State plans to build a forensic anthropology research field laboratory at its horticulture center on Texas 21. The lab will help investigators analyze outdoor crime scenes. San Marcos residents came to a public hearing this week to oppose the 'body farm.'

University officials say research at the 17-acre "body farm" ? technically a forensic anthropology research field laboratory ? is expected to begin later this year. The facility will help investigators analyze outdoor crime scenes and determine things such as time and manner of death and a victim's identity.

Its construction follows Texas State's focus on applied research tailored to specific public needs, such as the school's earlier response to a predicted nurse shortage by launching a nursing program at the Round Rock campus.

A 10-foot-high fence topped with razor wire will surround the property, vulture-proof cages will protect bodies left in the open, and a 70-foot grass buffer around the site will absorb rain runoff.

Neighbors will scarcely know the body farm is there, university officials told a group of about 60 landowners at the Wednesday meeting.

Few of the residents at the meeting seemed convinced, however.

Harrell Tietjen, a rancher who lives across from the site, said the facility would attract coyotes, flies and vultures. Runoff from heavy rains would flow into the Blanco and San Marcos rivers.

And he said the university had not notified the public early enough about the body farm's site.

"You're doing wrong," Tietjen said, his voice rising.

"When I went to the school up here, it was a place of higher education," he said. "But I think you've gotten so high, you've fallen off."

Michael Abel, another landowner in the area, quickly rose to his feet after Tietjen finished speaking.

"I'm not sure why you had a public meeting. It's a done deal," Abel said.

There is already a huge problem with coyotes in the area who have killed some of his calves, ducks and geese, he said. "Leaving a dead body out in the open is not a good idea."

Many people at the hearing wanted to know why the site couldn't be at the Freeman Ranch that is operated by the university west of San Marcos.

Moore said the ranch can only be used for research involving ranching and farming according to the will that made the university one of the trustees.

As a state entity, Texas State is not required to follow city zoning ordinances, but the facility will fall within the land's current "public use" zoning, which includes a range of uses, from classrooms and football stadiums to rodeo grounds and emergency care clinics, said Cecil Pennington, San Marcos' assistant planning and development director.

Texas State does not have to get the site's development plan approved by the city, Pennington said.

But the university has presented a site plan to city and county officials in recent weeks for their review, university spokesman Mark Hendricks said.

The facility lies just inside the city limit, which runs along the opposite side of Texas 21. About 17 large residential lots sit on the county side of the highway, Pennington said.

Six bodies have already been donated to the research program, Texas State professor of forensic anthropology Jerry Melbye said. They currently are being stored off site.

At its busiest, Melbye said, the site will probably hold 10 bodies at once, some of them left out in the open and some of them buried.

He said the facility will not accept bodies with communicable diseases.

A Knoxville, Tenn., forensic anthropology laboratory that served as the inspiration for Patricia Cromwell's 1994 novel "Body Farm" has operated for 27 years without problems with flies or disease spreading to neighboring properties, Melbye said.

The Tennessee facility is next to a hospital, in a "much more sensitive area than what I'm suggesting," he noted.

A similar Western Carolina Human Identification Laboratory opened in 2006 in Cullowhee, N.C., about 80 miles from North Carolina's western border.

The Texas State facility will be on state land north of the San Marcos Municipal Airport at the university's horticulture center. The planned Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training center will be housed near the site.

Melbye has been working to create a forensic field laboratory at Texas State for the past 2 1/2 years, he said. Construction of fences and renovation of one building and demolition of another building is expected to begin this summer.

When the facility is complete, Melbye said, it will be the third body farm in the country and the largest yet.

"We're looking forward to some research," he said.

I read about one of these farms in Tim Dorsey's book Torpedo Juice starring his hilarious serial killer Serge Storms. If you like light hearted reads, irony, hyperbole, or Florida check him out. Dorsey has written several books with Serge as his hero/antihero.