Summary

In Chapter 18, Bass tells the story of a case in which a capital murder case pivoted on the question of how long a murdered family had been dead. At this point in Bass’s career, he had been doing time-since-death studies for nearly 40 years and had built up a database of information. His goal was to be able to tell the police with scientific certainty when a deceased person had died.

In this particular case, Bass says that the evidence rested on the presence of pupal casings and was solved in a surprising way. The victims were Darryl and Annie Perry and their daughter, Krystal. The suspect was Darryl’s stepfather, Mike. Mike had taken out a $250,000 life insurance policy on Krystal. The policy had a two-year waiting period before it would pay benefits. Krystal was killed three months after that two-year time...