Calvert professor simulates crime scene with pig cadavers

It was a gruesome scene, one which, thankfully, was staged.

As three students descended into a wooded area in Owings, they came upon two victims -- pigs, in this case -- that had been sacrificed to further the students' understanding of forensic science.

The exercise would serve two purposes for the students of J. Thomas McClintock: to give them a realistic crime scene experience and teach them about how corpses decompose in South Maryland.

McClintock, an adjunct professor at George Mason University in Fairfax County and an Owings resident, oversaw the field experiment -- one that wasn't for the faint of heart.

After being slaughtered and surrounded by a wire fence to ward off scavengers, the pigs were left to decay for 12 days.

The aim of the experiment was to catalogue the types of insects that infested the remains, information that can allow entomologists, those who study insects, to deduce the approximate time a crime victim was killed based on the species and developmental stages of the bugs, said McClintock, who teaches DNA analysis and forensic entomology courses in George Mason's forensic science program.

McClintock, 57, has a bachelor's degree in biology from James Madison University and a master's degree in entomology and a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Maryland. He has taught in George Mason's department of molecular and microbiology for 11 years.

He also owns DNA Diagnostics, in Owings, a company that does forensic and paternity genetic testing, which he founded in 1993.

He used pigs for the experiment because the animals' tissues are similar to that of humans, he said. The experiment was enough to give laymen -- and students -- pause.

Blowflies arrived immediately to lay eggs in the corpses. It wasn't long before maggots squirmed in the decaying flesh. To study the effect clothing has on the rate of decomposition, McClintock dressed one victim -- a piglet -- in baby clothes.

"My wife was, like, 'That's a little different. Don't you feel a little strange about that?' I was like, 'I'm trying to answer a scientific question,' " said McClintock, who noted that the clothing had no effect on the process.

Puna Miller of Dunkirk, a friend and freelance photographer whom McClintock enlisted to document the decomposition, also was taken aback by the piglet, although she had been warned.