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Outlook: The secrets uncovered by a body detective

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Forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black  arrives at Monkland Cemetery to examine a burial plot

06/05/2019 GMT

The secrets uncovered by a body detective

BBC World Service - Outlook, The secrets uncovered by a body detective

Sue Black can tell from a cadaver what the deceased's mother ate during pregnancy

Professor Sue Black is a British forensic anthropologist who can tell extraordinary details about a person’s life – and even that of their mother - from their dead body

Professor Dame Sue Black is one of Britain's leading forensic anthropologists. She's often called to crime scenes - not to find out how the victim died, but how they lived, and who they were. Her great talent is putting a name to a nameless body by finding traces of their identity in places you wouldn't imagine possible. Sue has travelled all over the world in her role and was part of one of the first teams to go to Kosovo in 1999 to collect scientific information about people who had died in the war there. She’s written a book about her life’s work called All That Remains: A Life in Death.

When John Dwayne Bunn was 14 he was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. He’d grown up in Brooklyn in the early 1990s where his world had revolved around back flipping onto broken mattresses with his friends. He lived in a part of Brooklyn seething with crime, gun violence and racial tension. Amidst all of this, no-one had noticed that he was illiterate. While he was in prison, alone and desperate to tell his mother how much he loved her, he began teaching himself to read. He tells Outlook's Maryam Maruf how, thanks to letter writing and reading, he discovered a new kind of freedom that would help him get through this nightmare.

Image: Prof Sue Black arrives at a cemetery to examine a burial plot
Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Staff/Getty Images

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