The Woman in the Iron Coffin

In October 2011, construction workers unearthed the body of an African American woman in Queens, New York. NYPD detectives assumed that she had been dead for just a few days. But when Scott Warnasch from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner arrived, he identified the remains of a rare Victorian iron coffin and realized that this remarkably preserved body was over 150-years-old. Why was she buried here? And why had she been interred in this elaborate coffin? As they recovered the body, the OCME team discovered that the woman's skin was covered in smallpox lesions. The case had turned from a possible homicide into an archaeological mystery and a potential biohazard. Deploying cutting-edge forensic science, a virtual autopsy and historical research we uncover her identity and lay bare a forgotten piece of American history from before the Civil War.