品牌：
基本信息
·出版社：Putnam Publishing Group
·页码：304 页码
·出版日：2005年
·ISBN：0399152253
·条码：9780399152252
·版次：2005-02-17
·装帧：精装
·开本：16开 16开
内容简介
Book Description
James E. Starrs takes us behind the scenes and on the sites of several exhumations. He intends to set the record straight on the coldest of cold cases, to right the wrongs done by tall tales, cover-ups, and cherished historical legends.
Among the exhumations he writes about are those of Alfred Packer, a nineteenth-century Colorado prospector accused of cannibalism; of a body buried in a grave purported to be that of Jesse James; of Mary Sullivan, supposedly a victim of Albert DeSalvo, who may or may not have been the Boston Strangler; and of Frank Olson, a Cold War government scientist who fell to his death from a high floor of a New York hotel: Did he jump, or was he pushed? Was the verdict of suicide a government cover-up?
Starrs reveals the complicated fights he wages in his pursuit of the truth to be found in graves. Opposed sometimes by governmental authorities, sometimes by the descendants of his subjects, he is unswerving and indomitable in his determination to be a voice for the dead.
Book Dimension
length: (cm)23.1 width:(cm)16
作者简介
James E. Starrs is a law professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. His coauthored book, Scientific Evidence in Civil and Criminal Cases, is the standard single-volume text in its field.
Katherine Ramsland has written nineteen books, includingThe Forensic Science of C.S.I., and teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University.
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书评
From Publishers Weekly
With theCSIcraze showing no sign of abating, there will doubtless be an eager audience for Starrs''s intriguing but quirky accounts of the noteworthy and notorious exhumations he has participated in. Starrs, a pioneer in forensic science, recounts his dogged, almost obsessive involvement with seven historical mysteries, ranging from the assassination of Louisiana demagogue Huey Long to the Boston Strangler. Using clues from Dr. Carl Weiss''s exhumed skeleton, Starrs makes a powerful case that the young doctor widely believed to have been Long''s assassin was probably innocent. Starrs will also probably change the minds of many who have discounted challenges to the veracity of Albert DeSalvo''s confession to the sex murders that plagued Boston in the 1960s. His narrative isn''t for everyone--it''s occasionally repetitive (he explains several times that remains with flesh still attached are "stinkies"), and it''s filled with "humor" that many will find distasteful. Furthermore, despite his assertions of respect for the dead, he displays a cavalier attitude toward some bones he recovers, which are occasionally on the verge of being damaged in airplane overhead bins. These oddball aspects should not overshadow the significance of Starrs''s accomplishments, but they easily might. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen byPW.Agent, John Silbersack with Trident Media Group. (Feb. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
FromBooklist
Starrs is a law professor who gained media attention in the 1990s for exhuming the corpora delicti in historical cases of suspicious deaths. In these accounts of six such cases, an affinity for publicity appears to be entangled among Starrs'' motivations, plainly so in his digging up of Jesse James. (Yup, that was Jesse in the grave.) Also palpable, however, Starrs'' desire to rectify injustice when he encounters deficiencies in the official investigation. Often descendents of victims requested that Starrs reinvestigate a case. So began his scrutiny of the murder of Huey Long, the 1953 death-by-defenestration of a CIA agent, and the Boston Strangler murders; for each Starrs concludes officialdom got it wrong. Other matters Starrs opened because they intrigued him, including his attempt to unearth Meriwether Lewis (request denied) and his excavation of the 1874 victims of Colorado cannibal Albert Packer. Like the memoirs written by forensics experts (e.g., Emily Craig''sTeasing Secrets from the Dead[BKL Ag 04]), Starrs'' work enhances a genre enjoying pronounced popularity.Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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