Like many of my millennial siblings I partake in quite a bit of true crime content. Over the years it’s become important to me that the content I consume is doing the work of being ethical in how it portrays the victims and their loved ones. I’m not here for tragedy porn, I’m here because the hows and whys of human interaction fascinate me and sometimes those interactions are negative.
Which is perhaps why Lay Them to Rest found its way onto my to read list. Laurah Norton, host of the true crime podcast The Fall Line chronicles the work that goes into identifying John and Jane Does by following the case of “Ina” Jane Doe, whose decapitated head was found in a park in Illinois in 1993 and had remained unidentified, that she and her friend and colleague Dr. Amy Michael work. Dr. Amy is a biological anthropologist and Director of the Forensic Anthropology Identification and Recovery Lab at the University of New Hampshire and her official standing in the field opens doors for them to work in concert with local law enforcement.
Norton chronicles in parallel narratives the history and development of the various disciplines that come together to do the work of forensics, specifically in identification work as well as how those facets of modern investigation are applied to the Ina Jane Doe case and other cases that find their way across Norton and Dr. Amy’s purview. Norton finds a balance between the facts of the case and making meaning from them by linking the two narratives together. As I hoped, the writing was never lurid, but it doesn’t flinch from the truth of the remains they were working with and how they would have gotten to those states.
Norton doesn’t shy away from exploring the ways in which we are living during a changing of the tide for cold cases, but she also makes sure to acknowledge the people who are still missing from the narrative – the missing missing. Norton’s authorial voice is very present in the book; in many ways this is a memoir of her journey into the work and her desire to learn as much as possible so she could do the most good in advocating for families of missing and unidentified people and working towards getting funding where it is needed most. I could see this being a turn-off for some, and while I didn’t personally need all of the times she writes about remembering to pick up a souvenir for her son on her travels, it does help to ground what the cost of the work is to those who do it and helps to bring all the various parts together. But this isn’t a perfect book, some of the more technical chapters were difficult to get through even though Norton does a commendable job of making it as reader friendly as possible in most of the book. There are also a few additional cases that they work on during the Ina Jane Doe investigation that aren’t given a final update to wrap up the book. But the end focuses on the family of Susan Hope Lund, the identified Jane Doe, and that is an important and valid use of the page space.