Secrets of the Dead

Announcer: Coming up on "Secrets of the Dead," a young girl travels to the New World.

Man: She had arrived with great hopes.

Announcer: But she finds a colony in disarray.

Man: Jamestowns history is pretty much a colossal failure.

Woman: Nothing to eat, so the monster of hunger is loose.

Announcer: Was she the victim of a terrible fate?

Man: Colonists were forced to do those things that nature most abhors.

Announcer: "Jamestowns Dark Winter" on "Secrets of the Dead."

Narrator: Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World, one chapter in the beginning of a new country, but the colony has a dark secret, a horror hidden away by time.

Man: Rumors had already started to reach London of the horrific things that were going on in Jamestown.

Woman: Things got very, very bad very quickly.

Man: It must have been an absolutely terrifying event.

Narrator: June 1609, a young girl leaves England bound for Virginia full of hope.

April 2012, archeologists in Jamestown find a definitive clue, the long-lost key to a disturbing mystery.

The blade comes in-- After these chops, you move to the back of the head.

It must have been horrible.

Were looking at this, and were thinking, "Wow!"

Man: This, uh, probably has something to do with the cause of death.

Could this be a murder?

Narrator: The encounter between modern science and the remnants of the past will change the way we see the birth of America.

In the summer of 1609, a fleet of English ships sails across the Atlantic bound for the American colony in Jamestown, Virginia.

A young girl is among the hundreds of passengers, a girl whose real name may never be known.

The young girl, uh, is aboard, and, uh, this is part of the--the biggest fleet to have left England for Virginia.

It carried over 500 settlers, uh, 9 ships.

Jamestown had been founded two years earlier but had not prospered, and, uh, in fact, the first couple of years of Jamestowns history is pretty much a--a colossal failure.

Narrator: Jamestown is doomed from the start.

The colonists settle on a marshy island with no fresh water, where crops fail and malaria flourishes.

Of the first 104 settlers who come to Jamestown, all men, only 38 survive even the first 7 months.

The next year, fire nearly destroys the entire settlement.

The English had tried to settle America before with little luck.

A colony was seen as a place where a person went to die.

This was really a tough place.

This was a-- to establish this colony was--was difficult and--and--and dangerous.

Most colonies failed, most colonies were lost colonies, and they usually failed within the first 12 months for a v-- for a variety of reasons, extreme weather, lack of supplies, Indian attacks.

Narrator: Two years after its founding, the desperate colony of Jamestown still cannot feed itself.

Already, this is the third expedition sent to Virginia, a third emergency rescue mission.

Perhaps this time Jamestown will be saved.

Horn: So the young girl is-- is part of this great effort to reestablish the colony.

Uh, and there was a--a grand vision for an English New World, an--an English America that would in time rival the great Spanish empire to the south.

This fleet carried the hopes of the nation, and she went with those hopes, too.

Woman: She was a young woman, um, very young, and would have probably left her family behind.

Narrator: She left England behind, as well.

This is the England where Shakespeare has just published his sonnets and his plays run at the Blackfriars Theatre, but its also the England where thousands die from rampant smallpox and even the bubonic plague.

The Virginia Company of London offers a chance to start a new life in America, knowing full well how dangerous the enterprise really is.

Some on board have left England in the hopes of getting rich, some hope for adventure, and some have no choice.

You would need to have, um--you know, you would need to sort of collect these people, sometimes from prisons.

Narrator: The girl is likely a servant for a wealthy family.

Straube: And theyre crammed aboard these ships with livestock.

Women and children would have been kept below decks.

For a young woman whos a maidservant in a family, this is probably the biggest trip that she has ever taken in her life, and, um, the trip must have been absolutely horrible.

Man: On board a ship, youre dealing with, uh, sailors who come from rough backgrounds.

Youre dealing with a situation thats uncomfortable, dangerous even.

Um, the sights, the smells, the sounds, theres gonna be a lot of fear and fright.

These are the people you might have been warned about your whole life.

Straube: One ship, two women gave birth.

The children died.

But one of the ships that came over, um, is recorded as having the plague on it.

So we know that there was quite a lot of death.

At least 30 individuals were tossed overboard en route.

Thats recorded.

So it was a--it was a horrific voyage.

Narrator: Real disaster strikes on July 25, 1609, a brutal storm off the coast of the Azores.

"Its like a hell of darkness turned black," one man writes.

Summers: Violent storms break apart the fleet.

The ships are scattered, battered, broken, masts are being torn off.

One ship turns back and is presumed lost.

It was a terrifying experience.

6 ships, uh, including, uh, the ship with the young girl on board, um, carried on to Jamestown, um, many of them in pretty bad condition, many, um--many of the settlers sick, many of the mariners injured, many of the supplies had been ruined.

Narrator: But finally the ships limp up the James River and arrive... at Jamestown.

Doctor William Kelso is the longtime Director of Archeological Research at Jamestown.

Kelso: Were here at the site of original Jamestown.

It was first settled in 1607, and it lived on to be the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

Weve been excavating here for over 20 years.

What weve discovered since we began was the outline, or footprint, of a triangular fort, uh, almost 500 feet of wall line, or palisade line, around it.

Uh, and, uh, weve also been uncovering various buildings that were use--that were built through time within that fort.

Narrator: Kelsos team has already made many remarkable discoveries, decoding the cryptic messages in the bones of Jamestowns settlers.

They found Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the colonys leaders, captain of the ship Godspeed, buried in a gabled coffin near the parade ground, even the colonys first fatality, a teenaged boy killed in an Indian attack, an arrowhead still embedded in his leg, though the scientists tell us an infection spreading from an abscessed tooth would have killed the boy soon enough.

Incredible discoveries, but none of them compare to what theyre about to find.

Now, were inside the fort, inside the 3 walls of James Fort of 1607.

We know that from archaeology that began in 1994.

Inside the fort, we found a number of building sites, and one of the most significant buildings that we have found is a cellar right over there.

Narrator: This cellar in the end will reveal some of the saddest secrets in the history of America.

Kelso: This is a building site that we call 191, and the reason we know its a building is because it has architectural features to it.

Um, on one side we have-- we uncovered a set of steps down into an L-shaped, uh, cellar, and in it, uh, are bake ovens.

So we felt like this was a kitchen of 1608.

Woman: One of the earliest features that we figured out was just above here.

We had a--a circular kind of oval area of burnt clay up top.

Then as we worked through those trash layers, pulling those out of the cellar, uh, they revealed brickwork as a front facade for the opening entrance, uh, getting into this oven, here.

This becomes the earliest brickwork in English America.

Narrator: Jamie May has worked with Bill Kelso since the excavation of James Fort began 18 years ago.

Shes now a senior archaeologist at Jamestown.

May: So we were digging in a trash layer, and we were finding the objects you might normally find in a trash layer, including trade items, including ceramics.

Narrator: The age of the artifacts pinpoints the era when the cellar was used, the early 1600s.

Kelso: Every last bit of soil that we excavated from that cellar kitchen has to go through a screen, and that screen catches the--the smallest artifacts that you can imagine.

Narrator: More than 47,000 artifacts have been found here.

In that window mesh were catching, uh, very small Venetian glass trade beads, uh, little beads made in Venice, as well as a lot of animal bones.

Hmm.

Wow, look at that.

Look at the blue.

I never knew they put blue on the Bartmanns.

Thats really a nice blue, too, isnt it?

Wow.

Look at the blue on the pottery.

That is amazing.

Oh, wow.

Narrator: Structure 191 is a treasure trove of European history, and its about to change American history, as well.

That dirt, please, yes.

Hmm, that parts real fragile, too.

Yeah, now its loose.

May: We found that we were getting a little bit of a strange assemblage that included things like cats and dogs and horses.

Narrator: Finding skeletons of domestic animals provokes questions immediately.

May: Which was a little bit more unusual.

You wouldnt expect for people to be throwing these animals in the trash.

So whats going on here?

Narrator: The discarded animal remains would be just the first strange discovery in Structure 191.

To the colonists, the ships arriving in August 1609 seemed to be a godsend.

6 battered and broken ships reached Jamestown.

On one of those ships was the young girl.

Narrator: The nameless girl has made it to the New World at last.

Shes kept her appointment with destiny.

Horn: But this was not the great fleet that the colonists already in Jamestown expected to see.

Many of the supplies had been ruined, and there was inadequate food, uh, for those who were arriving, maybe about 300 settlers, and those who were already in the colony.

May: They kind of limped in here to Jamestown with the hopes of salvation here, and instead, they, uh, came during the worst possible time period.

Narrator: The girl has come to a world that is new, vast, and strange.

Of the 130 people already at Jamestown, only two are women.

Straube: Women in our early Jamestown period rarely get mentioned, um, unless they do something naughty, and, uh, for instance, we know one of the first two women who arrived, um, Ann Burras, was a maidservant.

Um, she got in trouble for, um, cheating on sewing a shirt for servants in the colony and got caught at that and was whipped publicly, and, uh, unfortunately, she was pregnant and lost her child.

Narrator: What challenges await the girl?

What adventures?

Horn: She had arrived with great hopes, great hopes that this would be a new life in a new world.

Narrator: The new settlers may be arriving with their hopes intact, but they bring no food at all, none.

Summers: People in Virginia, theyre hoping to be resupplied, and probably the last thing they want to see is 6 ships land without any supplies, more hungry mouths to feed in an already dwindling food supply, and this girl was one of them.

It was a blazing hot summer during a period of drought, and unlike the Pilgrims, this colony was never able to sustain its own crops and become self-reliant.

Narrator: What kind of life would the arriving settlers find in the New World?

George Percy, one of the original colonists, and the president of the settlement, described it this way-- Man as Percy: There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in the new-discovered Virginia.

Narrator: 400 years later in the cellar of Structure 191, researchers begin to find clues to a timeless riddle.

Richardson: It was a typical Monday morning.

You come into work, and you never know what youre gonna find.

May: Well, wed been digging in this L-shaped cellar for 3 or 4 months, uh, when we started finding something that was not, uh, an animal remain.

One of the students on her, uh, swipe across the layer of soil, um, hit teeth.

Uh, and she alerted me to it, and so I went over and--and took a look, and yeah, they looked like human teeth to me.

We found teeth and the jawbone and other fragments that were not cats or dogs or horses, but we could say conclusively that these were the bones of a human being.

Narrator: Jamie May knows that finding human remains in a trash pit is a very different matter from finding them in a proper burial site.

Right now.

Lets go take a look.

Kelso, voice-over: When Jamie came to me one day as we were digging the cellar, and said, "Uh, I think youd better come down "and take a look at something here.

I think were finding, uh, human remains."

We were over in... this portion over here, uh, right--almost exactly right here, uh, in the trash layer where weve been working.

Kelso, voice-over: And I thought I ought to take a look at this pretty close.

So I went down and take a look, and sure, enough... Man: We were really awestruck once we realized what we had found.

And weve uncovered, actually, some human remains.

Uh, this is a cranium in situ, and right next to it there is a, uh, native, uh, pot.

And were gonna try and remove these intact, uh, right now.

Narrator: Its a delicate and time-consuming task.

Lavin: Right now weve taken out the, uh, native pot that was right here.

So were gonna try and pedestal this around so that we can remove this as one big block of dirt and then excavate it in the lab.

Richardson: So finding these remains in the context in which they were found was super-exciting.

We all knew that this was gonna be big, almost as big as when we found the fortification.

Narrator: Their hope is to extricate the bones in one single block of dirt, leaving the full excavation for a more controlled environment.

Kelso: The major questions that occurred to me when I first saw the remains, "Why is it here?

Why is in with the--in the trash?"

So next question, "Well, how did this person die?

Who was this person?"

Narrator: The bones are immediately brought to the onsite laboratory.

Lavin: Tight temperature and humidity controls, uh, are necessary in order to not cause any further damage to the human bones that havent seen the air in--in 400 years.

We usually do the real fine excavation of the, uh, remains in the lab here at Jamestown, using small picks and brushes, being careful not to do--put any marks on the bones.

Narrator: Within hours, the scientists come to their first major conclusion.

They believe they can tell the gender of the person to whom these remains belonged.

Lavin: Look at how thin and slight this is.

Man: A young girl?

Yeah.

Around those two missing teeth, which might speak to her qual-- you know, her health at the time.

You can see the roots, and everything and how thin-walled that is.

That doesnt look healthy.

Woman: No.

Poor girl.

Straube: Uh, it had all the characteristics of being a female, which was, uh, pretty exciting because there werent that many women.

Narrator: The bones belong to a young woman or girl.

Determining her identity will haunt the scientists.

Who was she?

Straube: Quite early on, we actually talked about naming this young woman.

Uh, we thought this would give her her dignity and enable her to tell her story in a way that would not turn people off if--if we could personalize her.

Finally, we came upon Jane, um, like, "Jane Doe."

Narrator: "Jane."

These are the remains of the unnamed girl who arrived in Jamestown 400 years ago.

The archaeologists are beginning to untangle the mysteries of Janes life.

Summers: That summer, the colonists managed to plant a 7-acre stand of corn.

So at least they had that meager supply to live off of.

Narrator: But trouble awaits the colony.

The entire crop of corn is devoured just 3 days after Jane arrives.

There will not be another harvest.

One man might be able to save Jamestown, the legendary John Smith, president of the colony.

Smith is a deeply practical man.

He trains the settlers to farm, repairs the fort, and trades with the natives.

Straube: He organized work crews.

He had the first well dug.

He was someone with the common sense to get the, uh, settlers through these-- these difficult times.

Straube: One story about John Smith that everybody knows is, um, the story when Pocahontas supposedly saved him from being executed by her father.

Narrator: The Pocahontas story is at least partially true, but not everyone in Jamestown loves John Smith.

Summers: Hes probably exceeding his authority.

but hes simply kind of going commando here and saying, "You know what?

"This is what were gonna do.

And Im gonna make you do it."

Some of the gentry leaders accused him of being vainglorious, unworthy, ambitious.

He did not take kindly to being told what to do by his social superiors.

And of course, that led to a lot of conflict.

In October of, uh, 1609 there is a so-called accident where an explosion takes place with his gunpowder in a pouch, and hes severely injured, but I think it was no accident.

I think it was an assassination attempt.

Straube: So John Smith left.

At his earliest opportunity, he took a ship back to England to recuperate.

And he was never allowed to return to Virginia.

Narrator: Just two months after Janes arrival, Smith is gone forever.

Relations with the Powhatan Indians deteriorate quickly.

Horn: The English really depended on the Powhatans for--for food supplies, but the Powhatan, um, had decided that enough was enough.

With the spread of English settlement, uh, they no longer wanted to support the English.

They wanted to get rid of them, and so in the fall of 1609, uh, they attack, and they lay siege to Jamestown.

Narrator: The settlers are trapped.

The Powhatans kill anyone who ventures outside the fort.

Summers: For those inside the fort, death awaits them outside the walls.

This same fort that was supposed to protect them from the Spanish and from the Powhatan has now become a coffin, and the people inside are feeling hunger.

Theyre feeling the stress.

Theyre starting to break down.

Theres sickness and starvation.

By November, theyre completely out of food.

Man as Percy: All of us in Jamestown began to feel the sharp prick of hunger, which no man truly described.

But he who had tasted the bitterness thereof, a world of miseries ensued.

Summers: And theres also disease.

And we know today whats causing that disease.

The wells are polluted with E. coli.

Theres things in this water that are going to kill people.

Narrator: The water contains not only deadly bacteria but also traces of arsenic.

Its poisonous.

Horn: Bad water conditions, disease swept through the colonists.

300 individuals, um, confined to the fort, many of them sick.

We know that--that some had the plague when they arrived.

How is he doing?

He has fever.

Narrator: Jane finds herself in a living nightmare.

Horn: With winter coming on and with supplies in a desperate state, um, this was the fate of the young girl and other settlers, uh, as they looked to the future with no hope of resupply from England any time soon.

Disease swept through the settlers, uh, during these months the fall of 1609, probably dysentery and typhoid, intestinal diseases.

[Coughs] We know about this because George Percy, their commander, was trapped inside the fort with everyone else, and he talked about the cholera.

He talked about the diseases and what he referred to as the "Starving Time."

Narrator: According to the historical records, the settlers are beginning to eat anything.

Man as Percy: Having fed upon our horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make the shift with vermin, as well as dogs, cats, rats, and mice.

Straube: They have no prospects of food.

Theres nothing-- nothing to eat, so the monster of hunger is loose.

Narrator: For Jane, hunger changes everything.

What was once revolting is now a secret prize to be guarded carefully.

Straube: Things got very, very bad very quickly.

Narrator: Jane is a witness as death and disease grip the colony.

Summers: Shes a living, breathing person in a time period where people are dropping all around her.

Narrator: It seems shes come to the New World just to watch people die.

Horn: Over 3 out of every 4 of the settlers die during the Starving Time.

Most of them are dead by Christmas.

Over the next 6 months, some 240 of the roughly 300 settlers perish.

Straube: It would be hard to hang onto hope seeing all this, uh, happening around you, people dying, and then witnessing what people have to do to survive.

Narrator: Most of the people in Jamestown do not survive.

Summers: Youre talking about a siege.

Youre talking about fractured leadership.

Youre talking about a lack of purpose.

Youre talking about all the conditions where civilization, or the veneer thereof, breaks down.

Come on!

Get it!

When youre talking about Jane, youre talking about a teenage girl who is in the midst of all this chaos.

People are going insane.

[Men grunting] [Woman screams] Narrator: The End of Days has come to Jamestown.

Summer: In these conditions, in this sort of "Lord of the Flies" scenario, anything is possible.

Even a murder at Jamestown wouldnt be surprising, considering the stress everyone is under.

Narrator: What will become of Jane?

In the Jamestown lab, this question is about to be answered.

I didnt see those before.

Man: Oh, yeah.

I dont know if those are natural or not, but that sure does look like cut marks or something.

Lavin, voice-over: Upon excavation, uh, the human remains, uh, showed some telltale marks that, uh, indicated trauma.

Narrator: Violent trauma.

Kelso: Weve been working at Jamestown for 20 years, and we have found over two million artifacts.

Weve found over 80 burials, and none of the burials ex--showed any signs of as much trauma as we could see just on this skull.

And you can maybe see them better.

See, we have more cut marks here, one, two-- Kelso: My first idea was murder.

Could this be the cause of death?

OK. 400 years later, its hard to know in what sequence things happen.

Jane died and then was hit very hard on her head, or she was hit very hard on her head and then died.

The one is murder, and the other one is something else.

May: It wasnt easy to read Janes bones.

They were telling us very different things.

On the one hand, there was serious trauma, and if this happened at the time of death, we could be looking at a homicide.

Uh, but on the other hand, her bones were telling us that she was not in good health either, uh, and she may actually have been starving.

Lavin: I bet you theres even more fine ones like they saw on the-- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

16.

There may be 20-plus... Wow.

really fine ones right there.

Narrator: But the jawbone with its unusual cut marks is not the only strange clue.

In the summer of 2012, the excavation in the cellar slowly and laboriously reveals another bone.

Its a tibia, a shin bone.

It, too, is human, a bone, in fact, from a small person.

Man: Then when we brought in the tibia, it all started to come together, uh, in my mind, anyways.

Narrator: The scientists suspect this bone is somehow connected to the jawbone they found.

The most crucial find in Structure 191 is a cranium, which probably also belongs to the same set of remains.

May: Once the cranium was excavated, theres some marks on there that are, uh, real unusual.

Uh, and we were able to see some of that during the excavation.

Uh, you could see that there were some marks, but until the soil was removed, it wasnt really clear, um, that these were, uh, such big hack marks, basically.

Narrator: The 4 cut marks on one side are clear without any doubts, and on the back, something has chopped right through the skull.

Lavin: Why would you have marks on the front and the back?

Kelso: Janes skull obviously showed cut marks on the forehead and a heavier blow to the back of the skull.

I really wanted to look at it more closely to see if perhaps this was sign of a--of--of violent death or murder.

We saw more and more marks that were pointing to a possibility even more bizarre than murder.

Frankly, I was speechless.

We look at this, and were thinking, "Wow!

This could be evidence of cannibalism."

Narrator: But this is not the first time that word, "cannibalism," has been heard here.

For 4 centuries, dark rumors have surrounded Jamestown.

Kelso: Ive been reading the--the historical records that, uh, relate to the early events at Jamestown for-- for 20 years.

I have personally never believed them.

I thought they were exaggerations, and many historians dismiss these documents, as well.

But George Percys words have now taken on a new meaning.

Man as Percy: Now with famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face, nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible, such as to dig up dead corpses out of graves and to eat them.

Horn: And thats what we think happens to Jane.

It must have been horrible, and, um, Im sure that, uh, she welcomed death when it came.

Narrator: But the scientists want to know more about Jane.

What happened to her after she died?

To find out, Bill Kelso asks for help from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. We let the bones tell the story.

Narrator: Douglas Owsley is one of the leading forensic anthropologists in the nation.

Owsley: I work with law enforcement agencies in the identification of human skeletal remains.

I have worked on the, uh, Branch Davidian compound in Waco, uh, assisted the identification of men and women that were killed in the Pentagon plane crash.

Uh, one of my early cases was Jeffrey Dahmers first victim.

Over the years, Ive looked at approximately 100 different skeletons, complete and partial skeletons that have been found on Jamestown Island.

Ive never seen in any of those others anything like what we saw in the Jane case.

Jane is--is totally unique.

Narrator: Just the photographs sent from Jamestown give Doug some vital clues about Jane.

You can look at the teeth, and when you look at the teeth, you see that theres a first molar.

Most people get them at age 6.

Second molar-- most people get them at age 12, and the third molars arent showing up here.

We dont see the third molars.

So theyre still actually still up in the sockets.

Thats our best indicator as to-- as to the fact that were dealing with someone thats about 14 years of age, a clue that were really dealing with a--with an adolescent, were dealing with a teenager.

Narrator: Janes bones themselves arrive in Washington, D.C. Owsley, voice-over: Dr. Kelsos team brought the package up.

Everything is very carefully packaged.

We have about 2/3 to 3/4 of the cranium and the lower jaw, and we have part of the leg bones.

The first thing that just strikes you when you see Janes remains are all of the numerous cuts that are found on the bones, cuts and chops.

Narrator: What caused these marks?

What happened to Jane?

The story begins to materialize.

Its a story thats all written in the bones, especially in the cranium, the most revealing of the remains.

Karin Bruwelheide, Dougs longtime associate, will help explain.

Well, the first thing that grabbed me is when I saw the frontal.

You have these 4 striations.

Theyre very closely spaced.

Theyre all the same size.

They are really telling because they are very parallel, and because of that, you know, then, that the individual wasnt moving when they were made.

Um, you know, its just like analyzing a forensic case.

If this individual was alive, it would have been struggling to get away, presumably.

And so the fact that theyre all very nicely aligned on that frontal bone indicated to us that she was already dead when these cuts were made.

Its not a case of murder.

All of the chops that we see, all of the dam-- damage that we see occurred after the death of this young lady.

But then you shift your attention to the back, and thats where really the force is.

As far as the opening of the skull here, I have a--a little bit more sentimental, uh, notion that they would not have wanted to see the face of the individual.

If youre looking at the person that youre trying to butcher, I think it would be more, uh, amenable to--to turn the face away from you and to actually concentrate, then, on your objective.

Narrator: If the story the bones tell is true, the person butchering Jane could not bear to look at her face.

And the strikes are coming down now, and you can see that.

There are 4 clear chops to the back of the head that gouges into the bone about a distance of two millimeters.

And it strikes once, strikes twice, and then another impact, and this impact here is even deeper.

Narrator: The gruesome work is not easy.

And then theres another really significant cut that I think is the one that in this whole process actually completed the fracture.

It basically splits through and cracks the cranium at this point.

The skull was being split open.

The person who was doing this would have been, um, attempting to remove the brain.

The brain is--is rich in nutrients.

Its got lots of fat in it.

Its not uncommon, in terms of 17th century diet to--to include animal brains in food dishes.

Narrator: The terrible truth is, the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism.

Straube; What we have with Jane is what we call "survival cannibalism."

Jane was eaten so that the others could live.

Narrator: At least 3 people were eaten in Jamestown during the dark winter.

Further testing will reveal more about Jane and the people who ate her.

Doug wants to examine her bones more closely.

Owsley: We start thinking of how to best document the cuts and chops.

We decided to work with Scott Whittaker in documenting the photographs through stereo zoom microscopy, magnification, if you will.

And we decided to use scanning electron microscopy.

What magnification are we here?

So we are--we are at about 16--16 times.

So 16 times the original cut.

Its a strange type of cutting.

Instead of just going in and forcefully slicing, its a sawing type of motion, where theyre going back and forth, back and forth numerous times.

When you look at this under the scanning electron microscope, you can just see how the blade goes up and down and all around.

Its just a--its a very kind of inexperienced, unusual type of dissection.

Owsley: So whats so unusual to me is this motion here, where its clearly an up-and-down, raking against, up and down the mandible, and then losing the track, going this way, this way, all over.

Anybody who was skilled in--in butchery, in kitchen work...

Right.

wouldnt do that at all.

What theyre trying to do is re--remove those tissues that have not only the external skin and dermis and underlying tissue but also muscle underneath that.

Its patterning after what you would do in animal butchering.

Its just being done very awkwardly.

Bottom line is that the person really didnt know how to use a knife.

So we also have to remember that this is a little girl.

So we have to consider that as we look at these tool marks.

You know, these-- theyre tentative.

Theyre not confident.

Um, you know, this is a person.

This is somebody they know.

Narrator: Janes bones tell us both how she was butchered and how difficult it was for the people who performed the task.

Kelso: Were these people really monsters?

No.

I think they were just normal people that had to-- had to survive.

They were ordinary people who were starving, people like us.

Narrator: Modern technology can tell us even more about Jane.

The Smithsonian team uses a single tooth to test the chemical isotopes in her body.

Kelso: We know that, uh, from the forensic, uh, analysis that she was a 14-year-old English girl, probably from the south coast, uh, based on stable isotope tests of the teeth.

We can--we can know that shes English because, uh, the stable isotopes tell us that she was raised on wheat and barley, the European, uh, foodstuff, instead of corn, which is American.

Narrator: The isotope tests reveal that Jane only lived in Jamestown for a few months in 1609.

She arrived in August, and she died that same year, and then her flesh was eaten.

Horn: Many of these were considered tall tales, but now we know that-- that theyre true, that we have physical evidence that shows us that cannibalism did-- did take place here at Jamestown in this Starving Time period.

Driven by insufferable hunger, colonists were forced to do those things that nature most abhors, eat human flesh.

Narrator: Janes bones serve as decisive physical evidence of cannibalism.

May, voice-over: With Jane, after 400 years, we now have the body, and the marks on her cranium are the smoking gun.

Narrator: The scientists already know quite a lot about Jane, but one mystery remains.

What did she really look like?

Dr. Stephen Rouse, forensic researcher at the Smithsonian, may help answer that final question.

Rouse: Dr. Owsley brought me in on this case because of the experience that I had in doing the--the, uh, 3-D modeling and reconstruction on living people.

Were storytellers.

We tell stories based in peoples lives, based in facts.

We wanted to do a reconstruction of this individual.

We wanted to see what she looked like and be able to convey what were seeing in the bones to the public.

To do that, we needed a complete skull.

We needed to be able to rebuild back with the entire skull in order to do a complete facial reconstruction.

We needed to be able to see not just the right side, which was more complete.

We needed to have the left side complete, as well.

Thats all essential steps in doing a facial reconstruction.

If we were to mirror this right now, and by "mirror," what Im talking about is Im just taking this piece and--and creating a mirror image of it, a mirror digital image, because we want this to look like a real person.

We want it to look like Jane.

In order to finish this story, we needed to meet Jane.

We needed to see what she looked like.

We had finalized the skull, and that served as a template for a forentic-- forensic sculpture.

Narrator: They contact Ivan Schwartz, who creates casts of historical figures.

Building Janes face requires skills in both science and art.

We received this, uh, digitally reconstructed skull of the--the girl who died more than 400 years ago, um--uh, whose skull was in many, many pieces.

Narrator: Using the model, the artist gets to work.

He begins to sculpt a human face out of clay.

Schwartz: We had two copies of this, one as a reference and one to actually work on with all the, uh, tissue depth markers in clay.

Narrator: The markers indicate how deep to layer the clay as the artist brings the skull to life.

Tissue and muscles-- a face begins to take shape.

Finally, we can look into her eyes.

4 centuries later, its Jane.

Schwartz: I think that this reconstruction will give people a sense of what people did look like 400 years ago.

Narrator: The reconstructed Jane also opens a window into the lives of the people who lived and died in the Jamestown of 1609.

And now, Jane lives on as the focal point of a public exhibition at the Jamestown museum.

The reconstruction is the result of collaboration between scientists, patient work with endless attention to detail, and today, visitors can look at Jane and understand her story.

Lavin, voice-over: Archaeology has given Jane a voice that she did not have.

Narrator: The surviving settlers of Jamestown discarded her remains.

They didnt even have the strength to give her a proper burial, but thats what made it possible to tell her story today.

Horn: Jane is one of a kind, and the chances of finding the remains of a victim of cannibalism are so remote as to be unimaginable.

This is an astounding discovery.

From the tests weve been able to do on her bones, we now know more about her than we do of any other woman during that early time period, but now she is sort of representing all those young women who, you know, very bravely came to Virginia in those early years.

Narrator: Jane could not have known what awaited her in Jamestown, just as we never knew her until now.

Straube: Jane certainly puts a face on the Starving Time, especially a female face, and we know so little about the women who were here in those--those early years.

Um, at first, we just had a few bits of bone, a skull, but now, weve been able to study it, weve put her together.

Weve done a facial reconstruction.

Shes able to tell her story.

And wow!

What a story.

Narrator: Jane was a girl from the coastal plains of England, just 14 years old.

She arrived one summer, one face in a crowd of many.

The New World and her new life stretched out before her.

Horn: To have physical evidence that cannibalism had taken place here was an incredible find.

No other site, archaeological site, in any part of the Americas throughout this entire colonial period, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, has ever come across, uh, an example of cannibalism from physical remains.

Straube: Jane tells us a brutal story, but it is heroic, too, um, because we can read in--in her bones the kinds of things that people had to go through to establish, um, our country.

Narrator: We now know much about her physical life and death but still nothing about what she thought or felt in those hard months in 1609.

Did she fear for her life?

She lived through the worst of times, hunger, disease, violence, death.

Her remains show us how hard it was to forge a new nation in the swampy malarial land surrounding James Fort.

Horn: Jane--her story is not the kind of, uh, view that most Americans have of our founding.

Where they might be thinking of maybe one tough winter but feasting with Indians and getting through and thereafter, uh, peoples living in harmony, the actual story is one that is much, much tougher, uh, and one that carries tragedy, but its also a story of great fortitude, of great endurance, and that, I think, is the true story of Jamestown and the beginnings of early America.

Narrator: 400 years later, Jane speaks to us.

She shares her story of what life was like in early America.