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What will they find if they ever do come across poor John’s body?
These days, the hunt for new story leads by reporters has led Artemis Coughlin to report this from the Sunshine and Crime Web site, written by D.P. Lyle, MD:
Bacteria go to work on the tissues of a dead body and by 24 to 36 hours the smell of rotting flesh appears and the skin takes on a progressive greenish-red color.
By three days, gas forms in the body cavities and beneath the skin, which may leak fluid and split.
With animals and insects at work, the body can become completely skeletonized before long. In hot and humid climes, (such as a landfill), this can happen in three or four weeks.
We’ve seen enough shows of the CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) variety by now not to be sickened by such scenarios.
But nevertheless, State Police are refusing to allow reporters to interview the cadets in training who for many days have been made to search the Tullytown dump.
"The investigators told me if we start allowing the people who work the site to talk, then all the media are going to want interviews, and we can’t do that," said Capt. Al Della Fave.
"It’s kind of like, you go there to work. You don’t go there to give back reports" to newspapers and TV news.
"The cadets aren’t there anymore," he said. "Last Thursday they had cycled them all through, and they discontinued it. The cadets aren’t doing anymore.
Then he let something slip that boggled the mind.
"Now we’re using people from our SPEED Unit, where we tap people from all different sections of the State Police," Al said. "Young Sgt. Stephen Jones, a member of my office, was out there yesterday, a person on loan. Trooper Jeanne Hengemuhle will be out there at one point," Della Fave said.
"A couple of different sections of the superintendent’s office have given up people to help with the detail. We tap all the offices throughout the division -- those people who normally sit behind a desk, they’ll donate a day, to go help with the search."
I couldn’t believe it. Office people, searching the jagged smelly filth of the Tullytown dump. I’ll bet they’re just overjoyed.
Della Fave did mention how the seagulls were the most dangerous thing out there, how you had to wear a hat. But he wouldn’t let me interview Sgt. Jones for an I-was-there kind of story.
So I’ll just have to tell them what it’s like.
See, in my adventurous days of working at the Miami News in Florida, I got into flea-marketing on the side. And one of the great sources of flea-market items for sale not only is Trash Day at the curbsides of various towns, but also the municipal dump!
Dade County had five dumps at that time, and citizens in such nice sections as Coral Gables would take items to the dump that often were nicer than the items I had in my own doggoned house!
So I could stop off there on my way home to Homestead, and trudge through the county dump, and pick up all kinds of great items to resell at the flea market -- and often great furniture that I could just lift up and slide onto the big rear-deck batwings of my 1959 Buick convertible. Which was stuck always in the open position, and could carry a ton of dump "treasure."
People’s jaws drop when I tell them I used to be a dump-picker, but I came across the damndest things. Oh, there were whole family photo album histories, sad findings in the dump, and there were mint-condition typewriters and -- I could go on and on.
But there was the grisly side, too, that I’m sure those office people from the State Police are blundering into even as we speak: Dead animals that stink to high heaven. Long sneaky shards of glass. Jagged pieces of metal. One day I even came across a huge bottle filled with human fetuses, dumped out by a doctor’s office.
Oh, the finds were almost always sad at the dump, and may God bless the people who wind up raking up the remains of poor John Fiocco.
I’m sure they agree with me when I say I can’t WAIT for this story to finally, forever, be buried from my sight.
