No Stone Unturned- The True Story of NecroSearch international, the World's Premiere Forensic Investigators by Steve Jackson

Back in the days before CSI, most police departments were ill-equipped to find missing bodies or determine where dumped bodies were to be found. NecroSearch International is a group of scientists who came together in the quest to locate missing bodies.

The book starts out with an explanation of how criminal forensics came to be, starting with fingerprinting and moving on from there. Last of all the topics covered is DNA, although, since this book was printed in 2002, it is sadly out of date on some aspects of DNA.

After the chapter on Criminal Forensics, it starts on one about NecroSearch International: how it started, and the scientists who become "Project PIG", with PIG standing for "Pigs In Ground". In their attempts to better find missing bodies, the scientists buried three pigs, trying to mimic various kinds of burial. One deep, one medium depth, one shallow. Unfortunately, there was no protection for the bodies of the pigs, and all three were stolen, presumably by wild animals, shortly after the study began, so the scientists failed in that study.

Others soon followed, however, and various other scientists from different fields joined in the study in the efforts to find the dead pigs remains. Even a man who trained search dogs joined the group. While he wasn't a scientist, his insights, and the efforts of his dogs, were invaluable, and he soon dubbed himself a "slobberologist", somewhat in jest, so he could better fit in with the group.

The book ends with five cases on which NecroSearch worked with Police and a group in Russia, finding remains, and in the case of the Russians, trying to identify the remains of the Romanov family and their close servants, who were killed shortly after the Russian Revolution.

In many cases, the searches were successful and led to the capture, trial and incarceration of those responsible. But in the case of the Romanovs, NecroSearch's findings were rejected by the Russians responsible for identifying the remains because the findings did not support what they wished to find. In this case, the Russians wanted one of the sets of bones to have been Anastasia, but the NecroSearch's Scientists who examined the bones determined them to have been an older girl, the Countess Marie. In the end, the Russians got their way, but NecroSearch scientists left the project.

The other cases studied are fascinating, and all of them involve female victims, a sad commentary on how often women are victims of violent crime (even if that sentiment is never expressed in the book). Each case is different, from a hiker killed and dumped in the mountains, to a police informant killed and sent into the Missouri River in the trunk of her car, to a hitchhiker killed and buried under a huge pile of large rocks, to a woman murdered by her own husband and then buried in the back yard of the family home, each story is examined in detail, of what happened, how NecroSearch was eventually called in, and how they used the techniques of science to recover the body, as well as the eventual outcome of the trials.

I have to admit that this book is something of a slow starter. The part on Criminal Forensics is interesting, if a bit dry, and the part on how the scientists involved in Necrosearch came together is also interesting, but occasionally yawn-worthy. Where the book really comes together and becomes utterly fascinating, is when it talks about their involvement with various criminal cases. At that point, the book became unable to be put down for me.

Reading about the results of the crime and how the bodies were found (usually a result of using Ground-Penetrating Radar or search dogs who tracked the smell of the decomposing remains or adopocere from the bodies) was fascinating, and the sometimes amusing stories of them on the stand raised chuckles (as when one female scientist was asked to describe various pictures for the jury, and one picture only showed her bending over. Asked to describe what it depicted, she said, "Nothing, only my butt." and the entire room broke up into laughter. However, her willingness to tell the truth in that instance made her that much more credible to the jury.

There are parts of the book that are more or less forgettable, but the strength of this book is in the description of the various cases they have been involved in, and how they provided help to the detectives working the cases. A postscript at the end says that one of the Necrosearch scientists had started a spin-off, for-profit company for non-police led uses of finding bodies. That was in 2001, and with no follow-up volume forthcoming, I can only hope that NecroSearch International continues to keep going strong, helping find the bodies who are victims of violent crime, long into the future.