Death's Acre: Inside The Legendary Forensic Lab The Body Farm Bill Bass (howl and other poems TXT) 📖

There was one complication: the distal (lower) end of the ulna had been chewed off by a carnivore of some sort, so we first had to figure out how long the bone had originally been before it got gnawed down to about 29.5 centimeters. By comparing it with several complete ulnae, we determined that less than 5 percent of the bone was missing; that meant the complete bone would have measured about 31 centimeters. Plugging that number into a formula developed by anthropologist Mildred Trotter back in the 1950s gave us an estimated stature of around six feet one to six feet two.

Our studies of decomposition and time since death were just getting under way at the Body Farm in 1981, so we had little research data to compare with what we observed in the remains we’d recovered from the field. Bits of dry tissue remained on some of the bones; the odor of decay was pronounced but not overpowering; and numerous empty pupal cases were interspersed with the bones. On the basis of my observations of other decayed bodies over the prior twenty-five years, I put the time since death at somewhere between one and three years.

The teeth, I hoped, might be the key to telling us whether or not this was part of Monty Hudson’s body we’d found. Of the fifteen teeth we’d found, seven—nearly half—had fillings, some of them fairly large and distinctive. If we could lay our hands on Monty’s dental X rays—assuming they existed—we should be able to tell pretty quickly whether Earl Carroll’s story was true.

By this time the FBI had told Liz Hudson that Monty was probably dead, and she agreed to help in any way she could. Her earlier silence had been motivated by the best of intentions: She didn’t know Monty was already dead by the time she was released in Nashville, and she desperately hoped that by keeping quiet, she was keeping him alive. A little naïve, maybe, but also deeply loyal and very brave. Now Liz told Agent Knudsen everything she remembered about the kidnapping and began suggesting where to ask for dental records.

Monty had lived for quite a while in Tulsa, she said, so Knudsen began contacting dentists there. He struck pay dirt pretty soon: Dr. R. Jack Wadlin confirmed that Monty Hudson had been a patient of his, and he agreed to send dental charts and four bite-wing X rays of Monty’s teeth. The fillings and the pulp cavities, the internal structures, shown in the X rays from Dr. Wadlin matched the fillings and the X rays we took of the teeth we’d recovered from the shallow grave in rural Tennessee. It was indeed Monty Hudson—a little bit of him, anyway—that we’d excavated.

In the months following our field trip to Fat Sam’s territory, he and his two partners stood trial for the kidnapping of Monty and Liz Hudson. Big Daddy Turner was also charged with Monty’s murder. All three men were convicted on both counts of kidnapping. By then, Passarrella was already facing a stiff sentence for counterfeiting; the kidnapping sentence tacked on another twenty years. I hear Fat Sam’s gotten religion while serving his time, as well as become an accomplished gardener or amateur botanist. I also hear his nickname still fits pretty well.

Big Daddy Turner ended up taking the worst fall. Offered a sentence of just two years if he pled guilty to lesser offenses, he turned it down, choosing to take his chances with a jury trial. The gamble cost him dearly: he was sentenced to forty years for the kidnappings—twice as much as Fat Sam—plus life in prison for felony murder. After a series of appeals, eventually he pled guilty to two counts of aggravated kidnapping and to “accessory before the fact” to second-degree murder, but he still drew concurrent forty-five-year sentences for the three crimes. Turner had chosen what was behind Door No. 2, you might say, and what was behind it turned out to be a set of steel bars, a whole lot of years, and Turner himself. Meanwhile, just as he’d hoped, Earl Carroll—the stool pigeon—got off the lightest. I read in the newspaper he got a sentence of just two to ten years. My friends in law enforcement tell me he’s been back in at least once since, but is currently on the straight-and-narrow road, literally, as a truck driver.

Monty’s Cadillac, it later emerged, was buried several miles away, in a field where Fat Sam subsequently planted a large marijuana crop. The TBI had raided the field and destroyed the plants; by amazing coincidence, TBI agent Bill Coleman had sat on a mound of earth as he watched the crop’s destruction—the very mound of earth bulldozed atop the Cadillac. After it was unearthed, the car was hauled to the TBI crime lab outside Nashville. Fat Sam needn’t have gone to the trouble of burying it: the lab technicians found no bloodstains or other incriminating evidence anywhere inside.

Where the rest of Monty’s body ended up, I’ve never heard. The story goes that after Earl and B.R. had buried Monty in the shallow grave, Fat Sam went out to inspect their handiwork and found it wanting; apparently the body was almost entirely exposed. As the old saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Fat Sam wasn’t as thorough a grave-robber as he might have been, but he was certainly better at holding his tongue than Earl Carroll was.

Thirty-one of the “silver” bars that set the killing in motion were eventually dredged up from a creek bed in rural Giles County, not many miles from the site of Monty’s initial grave. They were right where Earl Carroll said they’d been dumped. TBI agent Bill Coleman, now retired, has hung on to one of them as a souvenir. Liz Hudson, Monty’s beautiful widow, settled down in Nashville, went to work for one of the city’s many music-related companies, and settled down with a country-music songwriter. Somehow that seems fitting.