By inspecting the bones, Bass and his students broadened investigators' knowledge of what happened to the victim.
In starting the Body Farm in the early 1980s, Bass and generations of UT students gained a better understanding of the habits of bugs and their attraction to bodies.
They learned the growth patterns of maggots and what they could reveal about how long a body had been in place before discovery.
In the mid 1980s, someone killed several red-headed women and dumped their bodies across Tennessee and Kentucky.
Bass was there to process some of the scenes, including one along Interstate 75 in Campbell County in January 1985 at which a young pregnant woman was found. For years, her bones were kept at the Forensic Anthropology Center; she's recently been identified, along with her likely killer.