Entomology, the study of insects, has been around for a long time. In 1247 A.D., a murderer was identified by flies flocking to his murder weapon in a Chinese village. In this chapter, Dr. Bass was tasked with identifying a burned body found in a car. He ended up sending two of his graduate students to retrieve the skeletal remains because he was home with his wife who was losing her battle of colon cancer. The students were able to identify the body as male from the pelvis. The victim was determined with dental identification. The next step was to determine how long the victim has been dead for. To do this, the graduate students returned to the scene to collect maggots both dead and alive. The maggots were used to determine the time since death as they go through about fourteen day cycles. The victim was found to be dead for two weeks before the car was torched.
A review by Cailey Brogan