COLUMN ONE : Uprooting Dead Gets a Rebirth : Forensic experts are using genetic technology to settle quarrels and rewrite history, but not everyone agrees about exhuming notables. ‘It’s all foolish,’ says one historian.

Dead men can too tell tales.

At least, James E. Starrs, a George Washington University professor who specializes in forensic science, insists they can. And to prove it, he plans to exhume the body of Carl Weiss, suspected of murdering Louisiana Gov. Huey Long in 1935.

Starrs points out that controversy has long surrounded the deaths of Long and his alleged assassin, since Weiss apparently had no motive for the murder. As a result, some speculate that Long’s own bodyguards killed him and then shot Weiss to cover up their own involvement.

Starrs and his team of experts--including an anthropologist, pathologist, toxicologist and firearms expert--plan after they retrieve the body in October to study the angle of the some 60 bullets that struck Weiss to see what position he was standing in. They also plan to examine his body for signs of drug problems or a brain tumor, which could possibly explain any irrational behavior, in hopes of shedding new light on the case.

This isn’t Starrs’ first attempt to raise information from the dead. In 1989, he led an expedition that exhumed the victims of 19th-Century Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer--proving in the process that Packer, who loudly proclaimed his innocence at the time, more than likely did dine on his traveling companions, as their survivors apparently had charged.

Indeed, there seems to be a nationwide rebirth of interest in exhumations.

Just two months before Starrs announced his plans to exhume Weiss’ body, a nine-person panel convened by the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington endorsed a plan by a Philadelphia physician to examine the DNA in preserved samples of President Abraham Lincoln’s hair and bone chips in the museum’s possession.

The idea will be to determine whether the Great Emancipator suffered from Marfan syndrome, a hereditary disorder that can prove fatal.

And earlier this month, investigators from the Kentucky coroner’s office and other forensic experts came to the Louisville cemetery where President Zachary Taylor was buried and removed his body from its crypt for re-examination.

The notion was tempting: For 141 years, history books have asserted that Taylor died of natural causes at the height of a political crisis. But Clara Rising, author of an unpublished biography on America’s 12th President, had suggested that he might have been poisoned.

Only Taylor’s coroner would be able to tell for sure.

As it turned out, however, the examination was for naught. After examining samples of the onetime President’s nails and bone-scrapings, investigators affirmed that “Old Rough and Ready” died of natural causes after all.

Admittedly, exhuming the bodies of famous people isn’t exactly a new development.

Abraham Lincoln’s coffin was exhumed four times--most recently in 1901 to confirm that the remains were indeed his. The body of President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was examined in 1981 after speculation that a Soviet spy might have been buried in his place.

In 1985, a body thought to be that of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele was exhumed in Brazil and confirmed as his--through dental charts. And recently, the body of civil rights leader Medgar Evers was exhumed to provide evidence at the trial of his alleged murderer.

What is different now is the use of DNA technology, which enables forensic scientists to copy and then analyze the genetic markings on a fragment of bone or tissue and determine a wide range of hereditary and biological factors, from the color of a person’s eyes to any diseases he or she may have inherited. DNA is an acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid.

George Washington University’s Starrs says the process also has been enhanced by greater “cross-fertilization” recently between forensic scientists and historians. The result, he says, is “recognition of the fact that what we thought couldn’t be done (now) can be done.”

Still, not everyone agrees that exhuming the bodies of famous figures to answer historical questions is a good idea. Shelby Foote, the historian who helped narrate the Public Broadcasting Corp. series on the Civil War, pooh-poohs the practice as valueless. “I think they ought to dig up everyone who has ever been buried and find out what they died of,” he cracks. “It’s all foolish.”

And Keith Melder, curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s political history division, also has serious concerns. “What is the point of all this?” he asks. “It doesn’t help our historical understanding much. If we were to learn that Lincoln had this strange disease, would it make a difference?”

Jeremy Rifkin, head of the Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends, a group that examines the environmental, economic and social consequences of genetic engineering, questions the motives of some of those who have been engaged in the rush to disturb the dead.

“We have seen death as a sacred realm,” Rifkin says. “We protect cemeteries and there are both laws and social taboos about uprooting the dead. Now, we are taking the last sacred realm, and because of the new genetic engineering technologies (we are) making it a subject for titillating gossip, media hype, public relations and moneymaking.”

Theologians also are divided.

The Rev. Richard Spencer, a Presbyterian minister who has taught at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, warns that forensic experts and philosophers are “going to have a hard time drawing a line” between what can be justified morally and what cannot.

On one hand, he contends that exhumations and genetic exams performed for historical purposes may well be justified--provided they can increase human understanding of the past. But he frets that cases involving mere curiosity about a family’s own genetic history would be less clear-cut. They “raise interesting questions about our right to examine remains to find out about our own genetic history,” he says. “I would be slow to do that.”

But the Rev. John Langan, a professor of ethics at the Kennedy School of Ethics at Georgetown University, is more a traditionalist. “In the Christian tradition the body of the dead is treated with respect,” Langan says. “The dead are beyond our quarrels or our curiosity.”

As a result, Langan believes that the desire to obtain evidence to solve a crime “constitutes a serious reason” for exhuming a body but he contends that “doing it to settle historical arguments is generally not a good idea.”

Whatever one’s philosophy, exhuming the coffin of a historical figure takes more than merely knowing where the bodies are buried.

In Rising’s case, for example, she first had to get forensic experts to agree that the details of Taylor’s death sounded suspicious. Then there was the problem of obtaining permission from the family.

Rising also had to have the approval of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which administers the crypt in Kentucky that is Taylor’s final resting place. There, lawyers confirmed that Richard Greathouse, the Jefferson County coroner, had the authority to order the tests on Taylor.

Finally, there are always bureaucratic snags. For example, the government museum that has charge of the Lincoln remains is convening a technical panel to study such questions as who should do the testing and what kinds of testing should be done.

“We have gone about this in a thorough way,” says Marc Micozzi, director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. “We are being conservative.”

Micozzi also cautions that at the moment there is no genetic marker to identify Marfan syndrome--although he expects it to be known within the year.

How far the current fascination with exhumations will go remains to be seen.

Those who support such exhumation efforts also argue that they heighten interest in history at a time when many are lamenting a decline in historical knowledge among youth.

“It brings people to life,” says Helene Rufty, a descendant of Taylor who attended the ceremonies marking his removal from the crypt. “I think there will be continuing interest.”

But others find the procedure of dubious value, warning that it leads to a tabloid form of history. “I think it gets people involved in aspects of history that are not very important,” the Smithsonian’s Melder says.

Even supporters admit that the hullabaloo surrounding the exhumation of President Taylor’s body got a little out of hand.

Reporters and TV photographers turned up in droves to see the coffin removed from its crypt. Jefferson County’s Greathouse says that one news organization offered his office $8,000 for an exclusive autopsy report. Another was accused of sneaking into a private office and rifling through personal papers, presumably in hopes of obtaining material for something more than just a bare-bones account of the event.

In fact, since Rising first raised her suspicions about Taylor’s death, she has received calls from three producers interested in making a mini-series based on the 12th President’s life.

But the former humanities professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville is unfazed. The only reason she wanted Taylor’s remains examined was to dig into the evidence to solve a historical riddle, she insists. “I think we found the truth,” Rising says of the incident.

Still, forensic experts see the new trend as opening up a new world for their art. “This is a showcase for forensic science,” argues George Washington University’s Starrs. “We are bringing it out of the lab and showing people what it can do in a historical setting.”

In fact, Starrs argues that forensic science is not used frequently enough in criminal cases. “The police should use more of it,” he says. “If you can do it in a historical context where the obstacles are insurmountable, you certainly should be able to do it in a current case with fresh evidence.”

For now, Rising says she does not believe she started a fad. “I would certainly not want to be involved in any ghoulish trends across the country. I wouldn’t sleep well at night if I knew that,” she says.

Meanwhile, controversy still rages over the 1877 exhumation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. When his body was moved from the site of his death at Little Big Horn to a grave site at West Point, there was doubt that gravediggers had gotten the right body. Alas, however, Custer’s descendants have refused permission to dig up the hapless general a second time. That makes his reburial at the U.S. Military Academy his last stand--from a forensic point of view, that is.