The mysterious woman was lying on a high grassy ridge that offered a sweeping vista, but her eyes were closed. At first, she seemed asleep in her cage, her hair still carefully coiffed, toenails painted red. She could not see the panorama of the plains and river valleys falling away beyond the eastern edge of the Balcones Escarpment.
Without ever talking to her, I already knew her as a generous soul and a person with a strong commitment to science, like other inhabitants of this section of the Freeman Ranch outside San Marcos. Hers is one of about 60 or 70 bodies, some out in the open, some buried underground and others out in cages, at Texas State University’s Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, a unique 26-acre outdoor laboratory better known as the “Body Ranch.”
On this misty January morning, visiting homicide detectives, crime scene investigators, and an intrepid high school teacher divided themselves into teams, all guided by Texas State’s forensic anthropologists-in-training. They were all here to learn from the dead.
