Excavating the Old North Church – Looking Ahead

In 2023, Christ Church in Boston—better known as the Old North Church—will celebrate its 300th anniversary. Last week, we revisited the Old North as it exists in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and our reasons for setting part of the story in its basement crypts. That excavation is strictly fictional, but a real excavation was recently completed in those same crypts.

In advance of planned celebrations around the tricentennial, an eleven million dollar campaign will fund major restorations around the church and within the crypts where brick is crumbling, and the locks and plaster that have sealed the tombs for centuries are disintegrating. In addition,  massive metal pipes run through the extremely damp basement walkways, part of an early twentieth century fire prevention system. I took the picture to the right during my first tour of the crypts in 2009. The bottommost pipe crossing the walkway is only four feet above the floor, forcing visitors to scramble underneath to continue their journey through the crypts.

To make the crypts more visitor friendly, the crypt floor will be dropped eighteen inches and the existing metal pipes will be moved. Additionally, a dehumidification system will be installed to make the crypts a drier, warmer environment. However, a sermon in the church’s records from the late 1800s indicated a body buried beneath the walkways surrounding the crypts. If human remains are found during the upcoming renovations, then all work would be halted until the remains could be carefully and respectfully removed. To avoid any work slowdowns, the Boston Archeology Program started a trail dig, specially looking for human remains.

They excavated four units, one in each of the four hallways of the main crypt. Each unit was approximately four feet square and was excavated down to a depth of two feet, as that is the extent of the future renovation. While no human remains were found, a selection of other artefacts were recovered: rat bones, a coffin handle, stoneware shards, burial shroud pins, and a brick and shale floor drain.

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With this project complete, the crypt renovations can now move forward. After the renovations are complete, if you have a chance to see the Old North Church, I’d highly recommend visiting this wonderful piece of history for both the church proper (including the bell tower) and the crypts. And this might just be the excuse I need for tour #3. The other two tours were fantastic, but being able to see the crypts without the acrobatics of climbing around pipes would definitely be worth another visit!

Photo credit: Boston Archeology and Jen Danna

Excavating the Old North Church – Looking Back

Tomb 3 marker.

Tomb 9, under the front door of the church.

Christ Church—better known as Boston’s Old North Church—has played a role in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, literally since the very first scene. When we were doing character planning, we needed a project for Dr. Matt Lowell to work on in his role as an active researcher within the field of forensic anthropology at Boston University. We knew about the Old North’s historic crypts and thought this would be a great place to set Matt’s project.

In September 2009, when I travelled to Boston for my first research trip, I met with Reverend Stephen Ayers who not only took me on a personal tour of the crypts (which at the time were closed to the public), but shared with me all current research on the site. It was then that I learned about the charnel house in the corner of the basement that contained approximately one thousand sets of the church’s oldest remains.

The first of the burials in the basement crypts of Christ Church took place in 1723. However, by 1836, the existing 34 crypts were insufficient to handle incoming burials. A small wing was constructed attached to the back corner of the church, and three new tombs—numbers 35, 36, and 37—were planned. However, it was decided concurrently to clear out the older crypts, allowing them to be reused. In 1845, they took advantage of the construction of tomb 37 to create a charnel house below it. It is the same dimensions as tomb 37, but is sunk eight feet beneath the current tomb floor. They transferred all the oldest remains into this pit, and then sealed the charnel house, later filling tomb 37 above it.

Plans for the Old North tombs – 1820.

The church recognized the desire by Bostonians to be interred within the walls of the Old North, even though the crypts were closed in 1860 due to health concerns about burying the dead within the populated city limits of the north end. To meet this need, they constructed a modern columbarium in 1992 to accept the ashes of those wishing to be buried in the Old North crypts. However, so do so, they built around the three last tombs, enclosing tombs 35, 36, and 37, including the charnel house. In her paper, Of the Lonely Belfry and the Dead: An Historical and Archaeological Study of the Burial Crypts of Boston's Old North Church, Jane Lyden Rousseau outlines the history of the crypts and the sealing of the columbarium. Reverend Ayers discussed the possibility of obtaining the funds to excavate the charnel house, but this would have to be done around the existing columbarium and without disturbing the modern remains. Given the extra complexity of such an excavation now, whether this will be possible someday remains to be seen.

Prior to building the Old North columbarium in 1992. Tombs 35 and 36 are on the far left. Tomb 37 is on the far right.

The Old North columbarium. Tomb 35 is located behind the niches on the far right side of the columbarium; tomb 37 is behind the niches in the foreground, right side.

But we saw the charnel house as an opportunity to give Matt the perfect project in his field in the city he loves. So we changed the layout of the columbarium slightly, eliminating one wall of niches, allowing Matt and his team of grad students—Kiko, Paul and Juka—access to the remains. And when Trooper Leigh Abbott meets Matt for the first time, this is where she finds him.

Leigh stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the large area under the church sanctuary spreading before her. Through the doorway opposite, a long corridor stretched away into the gloom that shaded the far reaches of the space, dimly lit by the few exposed light bulbs that hung from the ceiling. There, long held safe in the quiet darkness and forgotten by all but a scarce few, were the oldest crypts in Boston.

Standing in the nearly silent basement, with only the creaks from the floorboards overhead betraying the presence of the funeral mourners, the centuries of history entombed in this building surrounded her, just like the dead sleeping inside the aged brick walls.

The vicar’s words rang in her head. You’ll find him if you go down the stairs and turn right into the columbarium.

The atmosphere changed the moment she stepped over the threshold. The basement and the crypts were cold and damp, but even surrounded by walls of modern burial niches, the columbarium seemed warm and inviting. A space where the living could feel closer to the dead who had gone before them.

Mournful music filtered through the floorboards into this quiet room of remembrance.

It felt . . . peaceful.

The peace was abruptly shattered by the clatter of something solid falling to the floor followed by a soft curse.

There he is.

On the far side of the room, a door opened into a small chamber. A doorway was cut into one of the whitewashed chamber walls, bright russet clay revealed at the entrance. Moving to stand in the gap, she looked into the tomb, staring in shock at the chaos within while breathing air musty with centuries of undisturbed stillness.

Rotting wooden boxes of different shapes and sizes were stacked haphazardly along the walls. Many of the boxes had collapsed, their lids loosened and their contents spilled out over other boxes and across the floor. Bones of every size and description lay in tangled piles, mixed with funeral ornaments and remnants of moldering cloth. A solitary skull grinned up at her from where it lay tipped against the cracked side of a crumpled box.

A movement to her left drew her attention and her gaze shifted to the man kneeling with his back partially turned to her. He bent over the pile of debris, freeing a single bone before transferring it carefully in his gloved hands to a clear plastic tub on the floor beside him.

We wrote the charnel house based on similar ossuaries found in Britain and described by Ms. Rousseau in Of the Lonely Belfry and the Dead. Someday, if Reverend Ayers and interested archeologists get their wish, they may find out exactly what treasures are contained within the charnel house.

But, on the short term, a real-life excavation has just begun in the basement of the Old North, in the main block of crypts under the church sanctuary. Next week, we’ll be back to talk about the exciting dig Boston’s City Archeology Program recently launched.

Photo credit: Jane Rousseau and Jen Danna

Canine DNA Profiling

Ann and I are back to blogging now, but we're also shifting back into more forensics-related posts as we're moving toward the release of LAMENT THE COMMON BONES, book five in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries. Today, we're looking at a topic that spans our two series as we examine the forensic technique which recently saved the life of a service K-9.

DNA profiling has been used in law enforcement, medical examiners, and archeologists for humans for decades. DNA is used for profiling both victims and suspects in crimes, for identifying the dead after mass disasters, and tracing family lineages through mitochondrial DNA. But the same techniques can be used for other species.

Recently a case came to light of a Belgian Malinois service dog named Jeb who was sentence to be destroyed after he was convicted of killing a neighbour’s dog, Vlad. He was not actually witnessed killing the 16-pound Pomeranian, but he was found by the late dog’s owner standing over the body of the dead dog. While not definitive, it certainly didn’t look good for Jeb. He was taken into custody by Animal Control and a judge was appointed to hear the case. After hearing testimony, including how the neighbour was scared by the large dog because ‘he always barked’, the judge made the reluctant decision to designate Jeb as a ‘dangerous animal’. As a result, he had no choice but to call for the dog’s death.

However the owners, Penny and Kenneth Job, never believed for a moment that their dog was capable of such a violent act. They had adopted Jeb after he’d been rescued as an abandoned pup in Detroit by their daughter, Kandie Morrison. Morrison worked for a local rescue group, but quickly recognized that the young Malinois would make an excellent service dog for her father, as United State Air Force veteran with Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a neurodegenerative disease. With the help of a local veterinarian, Jeb was trained into a gentle, dependable service dog to help support Ken Job and to be there for him if he falls.

The accusation of Jeb being the cause of Vlad’s death didn’t make sense to the Jobs. This simply wasn’t the dog they knew and who lived with three dogs and seven cats in complete peace. Rather than simply taking the heartbreaking news at face value, they took matters into their own hands. While they had previously believed Vlad had been cremated following the investigation, they discovered during the course of the trial that his body was instead frozen. They had argued during the trial that a stray dog had been seen in the area around the time of the killing, and the area was populated with wild foxes, but now they had a chance to scientifically prove Jeb’s innocence. They swabbed the inside of his cheek and arranged for samples to be taken from Vlad’s wounds for comparison at the Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

The Jobs were thrilled when the results came back vindicating their dog. Yes, Vlad has been killed by a dog, but not by Jeb. Shortly after, Jeb was released and returned to his loving family and crucially important life of service. DNA had proven his innocence, exonerating him just as it can exonerate innocent human convicts.

DNA analysis is not a regular part of canine cases, even those that call for the destruction of an animal. But the $460 spent by the Jobs definitely decided the case and saved the life of their beloved pet and helpmate. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about animal cases in the same light—when a life hangs in the balance, isn’t it worth ensuring that justice is being done? $460 doesn’t seem like that high a price to pay to avoid an innocent paying for a crime he didn’t commit.

Photo credit: CNN

Report From The Writing Trenches – March 2017

We’re back! *waves* We’ve been away from regular blogging for much too long, but we’ve been working hard in the meantime and had to keep our heads down while revising several manuscripts and planning for a few more books. So next week will be a normal Skeleton Keys post, but this week we’ll fill you in on what we’ve been up to.

FBI K-9s: Just before we went on hiatus, we were able to show you our stunning new cover for BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Since then, we’ve done a full developmental edit with our fabulous new editor, Esi Sogah, who suggested some really solid changes for the book that made it so much better. And then over the past few weeks, we completed the copy edit of the manuscript. So now, with the exception of the galley proof, BEFORE is in the bag. We’ll be looking at early reader copies going out in late July and then the book releases on September 26th.

This means we’re turning our attention to book 3 in the series and its deadline on December 1st for a 2018 release. We took the time to really look at the idea we had for this book originally, and had some concerns which we brought to Esi. The idea was solid, but now, after writing LONE WOLF and BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE, we realized we had a problem with the outline for book 3—set on the west coast, it was too isolating. Especially after book 2, Meg and Hawk have amassed a tight ensemble of supporting characters: her sister Cara, Washington Post reporter Clay McCord, Washington DC firefighter/paramedic Todd Webb, and fellow FBI personnel including team members Brian Foster and his German shepherd Lacey, Lauren Wycliffe and her border collie Rocco, and the newly introduced Scott Park and his bloodhound Theo. In moving the storyline to the west coast, some of this group might appear in the book, but most would not. As a result, we didn’t think it would work, so we put our heads together with Esi and came up with a new idea that would allow us to involve everyone in the case. Research is already started and we’ll be jumping into real story planning shortly and will be drafting by mid-April to early May.

Abbott and Lowell: We originally wanted to get LAMENT THE COMMON BONES out earlier, but the contracted work for BEFORE had to come first, and we decided to do one more really ripping edit on it, which took about 6 weeks. But that is nearly complete and then we’ll start to look at a cover and a release date for Abbott and Lowell #5. We could see it out in May/June for summer vacation reading.

Appearances: Bouchercon 2017 is coming up in Toronto this October and Jen is already registered to be there to represent us as separate and joint authors. I know some of our readers are already planning to come (Kathy... are you registered yet?). For any of our readers who are avid mystery and thriller readers and would love to interact with their favourite authors, there are already 1100 people signed up, over half of which are authors. So, if you love Louise Penny, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Meagan Abbott, Kelley Armstrong and many, many more, it’s a great trip to an amazing city with a chance to meet well-known authors and even discover some new ones. As an added bonus, for the Americans in the crowd, the low Canadian dollar makes it a cheap trip for you! Want more information? It’s all right here: Bouchercon 2017.

See you next week when we get back into the swing of regular blogging!