A Voice for the Dead by James E. Starrs First Printing

James E. Starrs, a professor on the law faculty of The George Washington University, is an important voice for the use of forensic science in the investigation of crime.  In the middle of his distinguished university career and after years of teaching forensics, Starrs decided it was time to put his theories into practice and made an extraordinary leap into the politically fraught, physically arduous business of actually exhuming long-dead bodies, solving cold cases that have defied answers for years.  With the help of cutting-edge technology as well as his expertise in forensic science, Starrs has made fascinating discoveries, which he chronicles dramatically in A Voice for the Dead.  He takes us behind the scenes and on the sites of several exhumations.  Passionate about his pursuit of truth, he intends to set the record straight on these 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.