Kate Womersley

The skeleton is key to solving past mysteries

Sue Black’s skills in bone analysis have brought her worldwide renown in identifying the cause of many puzzling deaths

Getty Images 
issue 12 September 2020

One hot summer’s morning, as a nine-year-old girl living on the rim of a Scottish loch in the hotel owned by her parents, Sue Black was unaware she was about to ‘leave those days of innocence behind’. A man delivering groceries sexually assaulted her. Many years later, Black imagines how this unspeakable childhood trauma might have been written into her very bones.

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