Christopher Hardy

Wow.

Now that provides a minimum time frame because obviously it would take a while for the soil to accumulate around that body before the roots started growing.

But it does provide a minimum time that the body had been there.

And then I was able to look at the roots beneath the body and determine that they were old enough that I was able to place the body there to around about the 2000 teens within a narrow range of about five years.

And that helped narrow the search for missing persons.

You know, it is certainly surreal to go into a crime scene.

And especially when that, you know, sometimes the bodies are just natural causes of death.

A homeless person, you know, dies in the woods.

And, you know, you just have to, you know, determine the age.

But in certain cases, it's a crime scene.

You can find bullet fragments everywhere.

Around there, you find bullet holes in the clothing.

And if there's still flesh, you can find bullet holes in the body or perhaps some damage to the bones that were caused by a gunshot.

And when you get to that crime scene, it's all cordoned off with police tape.

You're surrounded by the police officers.

I always find it surreal as a botanist.

I'm surrounded by people with guns and, you know, I don't carry a gun.

So I certainly am on my top behavior at that point.

But, you know, they're watching you work.

You know, they've already processed the crime scene.