ASM275: Forensic Anthropology

Group 1

Assassination of John F. Kennedy: I'm sure most of you know that President Kennedy was assassinated in Texas in 1963, but what you may not know is that forensic anthropology helped piece together what happened. Initially, it was believed that the shot came from the "grassy knoll" in front and slightly above street level. When the bullet hole was examined, however, a large keyhole lesion was found, which suggested that the shot had actually come from behind and above--the fourth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, to be exact.

Group 4

Balkan Genocides: Within the last decade of the 20th century, the Balkans (former Yugoslavia) suffered three wars/invasions that resulted in thousands of deaths. The conflicts involved Serbian forces against Muslim Bosniaks and ethnic Albanians over homeland territories. Most of the forensic work focused on the Srebenica Massacre, during which 8,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in a little over a week. In 1996, forensic anthropologists from all over the world were asked by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to collect evidence for war crimes. Once they had evidence, though, the forensic anthropologists began identifying victims and returning them to their families whenever possible. Until that time, forensic anthropology was unknown in the Balkans, so the results of the genocides were more global awareness and training in the discipline.

Group 2

World Trade Center Attack: On September 11, 2001, two planes crashed into New York City's Twin Towers, resulting in over 2,700 fatalities from the plane, buildings, and the ground. Fire and explosions from the planes, as well as the collapse of the buildings, produced extremely fragmented and altered human remains. It fell to NYC's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Hirsch, to organize the recovery and identification of these remains--a rather unenviable task. Because the remains were so fragmentary, genetic testing was the best method of identifying victims. DMORT participated in the recovery effort, along with many forensic anthropologists, whose job was to corroborate victims' identity using biological evidence (to match putative victims' biological profiles) when possible, and to decide if skeletal material was human or non-human. This saved DNA technicians a lot of time, energy, and expense, because it eliminated unnecessary testing.

Group 5

The Romanovs: During the conflict between the Red (Bolsheviks/communists) and White (Imperialist) Russians, Tsar Nicholas II and his family, including Anastasia, were taken to the basement of a mansion and executed in July 1918. But what happened to the bodies? Pro-Tsarists attempted to locate them but couldn't. Then, in 1991, nine skeletons were pulled from a bog outside Ekaterinburg, the city in which the Romanovs were killed. The graves also contained rope, fourteen bullets, and a jar that had once held sulfuric acid. Russian investigators suspected they might be the remains of the Romanov family, but, to be sure, they invited forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples to examine the remains. Based on the biological profiles, the skeletons closely matched photographs of the Romanov family (except Alexei and Anastasia, whose remains were missing) and their servants.

Group 3

Hurricane Katrina: When Katrina, a category 3 hurricane, hit Mississippi and Louisiana on August 29, 2005, it wreaked massive havoc and resulted in extensive human casualties. Unlike after the World Trade Center attack, however, the bodies of Katrina victims were intact, though quickly decomposing because of exposure to the elements. Thus, many were too decomposed to identify using soft tissue, which is why forensic anthropologists were called in. They examined the skeletons to determine the identities of the deceased. Also, this was the first time that DMORT operated two portable morgues, because the bodies were strewn over two states. One final tidbit about this mass disaster is that the flooding dislodged bodies from graveyards and brought them floating to the surface, adding one more task for the forensic anthropologists.

Group 6

Caylee Anthony: In December 2008, the skeletal remains of a young child were found in a wooded area of Orlando, Florida. Forensic anthropologists determined that they belonged to two-year-old Caylee Anthony, who'd been reported missing by her family in July 2008. Dr. Michael Warren, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Florida, was brought in by the prosecution to show that the duct tape found with Caylee's skeleton was potentially used to suffocate her by covering her mouth and nose. While his testimony did not lead to the indictment of Caylee's killer, it did support that she was murdered via suffocation.