re: Dr. Mary’s Monkey

quote:

---

This book was required reading in a forensic anthropology class I took in college. The details concerning Dr. Mary Sherman's death are forensically impossible.

---

If by that you mean a mattress and clothing fire couldn't have caused such severe burns, well I don't know. But what I do know is several forensic pathologists have said otherwise.

And fundamentally, the problem I have with Haslam's assertion that there's no way a mattress fire could have caused her burn injuries is this...

If I recall correctly, Haslam consulted just one so called "expert" on extreme heat and human tissue, a mortician. Well a mortician is no more an expert on fire and the human body than he is on human anatomy and physiology. A mortician might can locate a spleen for instance but can he tell you what it does?

A mortician is an expert on what an oven, at extreme temperatures does to a human body but is he an expert on accelerants, or chemical fires, or fires from synthetic materials and what all that does to a human body? Well no, why would he be? He operates an oven.

If I recall correctly, Haslam didn't talk to an expert on any of those things, not even a fire scene investigator. He pretty much stopped at a mortician. It's almost as if Haslam already knew there were fragments left behind after a cremation (which is something we all know) and simply wanted nothing more than to confirm his own bias.

With regard to her injuries and their cause, he did some pretty shitty research.