Identity Crisis

Renowned forensic anthropologist Bill Bassfounder of the Body Farmtackles one of his most baffling cases ever in this real-life spellbinder In 1978, 56-year-old Leoma Patterson left a bar in Clinton, Tennessee, and was never seen again. Six months later, a female skeleton was found on a wooded lakeshore in a neighboring county. The bones were consistent with those of the missing woman, and one of Pattersons daughters recognized a ring found at the death scene as her mothers. The bones were buried, and six years later, a relative of Pattersonsone of the men she was last seen alive withconfessed to killing her. Case closed.But the tentative identificationmade years before DNA testing was available to confirm itfailed to convince some of Pattersons relatives. And so it was that in 2005 Dr. Bass found himself winding around hairpin curves to the mountainside grave, where he would unearth the disputed remains and collect DNA samples. The forensic twists and turns that followed would test the limits of DNA technology and of Dr. Basss half-century of forensic knowledge.