Feature: Forensic Science At Michigan State
In the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial, much national attention has focused on 'forensic science'--sparking a tremendous amount of interest but perhaps not shedding much light on the subject. Michigan State University has long been at the forefront of forensic science education and research, boasting the nation's oldest forensic science department in the School of Criminal Justice as well as professors who are recognized as national experts. So we asked two MSU scientists to showcase the university's wealth of expertise in the area, as well as to better explain what forensic science really entails. --Editor.
A SKELETAL OVERVIEW OF MSU FORENSICS: By Norm Sauer
I was alone in the autopsy room when I pulled the brown stained skull from the paper sack. I knew immediately that the remains were those of Alec Skidmore, a missing person that my detective friend, Bob Wolverton from Lenawee County, had been looking for several years. The skeleton had been found the day before near Midland, MI.
According to Bob, the skull of Alec Skidmore (not a real name) would have been missing all the molars from the right side of the upper jaw and his upper first left molar should display an obvious filling. Bob also predicted the neat bullet hole in the occipital bone at the rear of the skull. By the end of the next day, along with my graduate assistant on the case, MSU doctoral candidate David Barondess, we had generated a biological profile from the collection of bones.
The shape of the skull and details of the pelvis indicated that the remains were male; the pubic bones, the joint surfaces, the joints between the bones of the skull and the sternal ends of the ribs all pointed to an age at death between 30 and 50 years; the morphology of the face, particularly the nasal opening and a series of measurements suggested European ancestry; and the length of the femur and tibia bone projected a living stature of 5'8' to 5'11'. The state of decomposition and the color of the bones told us that the apparent homicide victim had been buried in a shallow grave for at least five years, probably longer.
Even though this profile matched exactly the description of Mr. Skidmore, a white male, 41 years old and 5'9' tall, we needed a biological confirmation of positive identification. True, the appropriate teeth were missing and the healed fractures of the right hand, left thumb and lower right rib were all consistent with the known medical life history of the suspected victim, but we still needed to eliminate all possibility that coincidence placed a different person in the grave.
Customarily, positive identification requires an exact match between some unique feature(s) gleaned from the records or possessions of a missing person and the same feature(s) collected from the unidentified remains. In cases where soft tissue is available, finger print comparison is often the procedure of choice. All we had was a pile of bones. Our best chance for positive ID would be to find some X-rays known to be from Mr. Skidmore that we could compare to similar X- rays taken from the skeleton.
After some searching, detective Wolverton located a single bite wing dental film. A bite wing is a standard dental X-ray that shows the posterior teeth and some of the supporting bone. Unfortunately, the tooth that showed best in the X-ray had been extracted before Mr. Skidmore died. A forensic dentist was unable to make a determination. Dr. Robert Brantly, a radiologist at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing who has identified dozens of unknown remains agreed to help with the case. Using a technique and a device for systematically varying the orientation of bone and teeth while making X-rays that he and I designed several years ago, Dr. Brantly took a dozen films from the unidentified skull, each from a slightly different angle. One of the X-rays was on the mark. To the forensic radiologist's experienced eye, there was sufficient similarity in the fine structure of the small bit of bone captured in the bite wing X-ray to allow him to determine that the x-ray collected from the dentist and the X-ray he had taken from the skull were of the same person.
The missing Mr. Skidmore had been found.
In the trial that followed, I testified about the identification of the remains and the bullet damage to the rear and the side of the skull, and to the vertebral column and ribs.
As a forensic anthropologist at MSU, I am asked about 30 times each year to apply my expertise in human skeletal biology to a medical-legal problem. A police officer, a forensic laboratory specialist, a medical examiner or an attorney may want to know if a set of bones is human, how long some remains had been buried, exactly who a skeleton represents or how a person died.
The physical anthropology section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (our national organization), lists about 100 members and fellows in the U. S. and Canada. Thirty-nine of us are currently certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Nearly all have essentially the same background. We learned human skeletal biology to study archaeological specimens and now apply many of the same skills to medical legal problems. Only in the last decade or so have a couple of Ph.D. programs in the United States specialized in forensic anthropology per se.
Because there are a number of experts in the mid-Michigan area, MSU is a good place to carry out forensic anthropology. One of my colleagues in anthropology, professor William Lovis is an archaeologist, who happens to enjoy working on police cases. Two of his specialties are the location of buried archaeological sites and the recovery of human remains. In 1984 he and I worked on a well publicize case from Caro, Michigan, where our work contributed to the conviction of a man accused of murdering his girl friend seven years before we systematically unearthed and identified her skeleton.
Professor Richard Merritt, MSU Dept. of Entomology, also regularly applies his knowledge of insect behavior and reproduction to help determine how long ago a specimen had been deposited in a grave or on the surface of the ground. In one case he correctly informed the police that a body had been placed at a site in the middle of August, not in late June as the authorities had suspected.
On several cases I have utilized the services of Dr. Frank Ewers of the Dept. of Plant Pathology to help identify plant remains.
Students of forensic anthropology at MSU benefit from a number of programs available on our campus. For example, Dr. Jay Siegel's, courses (see the companion article) provide an outstanding opportunity for forensic anthropology students to learn the basics of criminalistics, while a number of his students are exposed to forensic anthropology in my classes. Graduate students at MSU are able to learn human anatomy in our two excellent medical schools.
A long working relationship with two additional institutions, off campus but near MSU, provide even more reasons why this is such an exceptional area for forensic anthropology. The East Lansing Laboratory of the Michigan Dept. of Sate Police is located across Harrison Road from the Breslin Center. Not only is it very convenient for them to bring material to my lab for identification, but it is very efficient for me to use their expertise for cases that I am trying to solve. One of the State Police Laboratory specialists, MSU Criminal Justice graduate, Amy Michaud has become an expert in facial reconstruction. In cases where an individual is not identified by a description (age, sex, height, etc.) generated from decomposed remains, Amy may be able to reconstruct the person's face by a painstaking application of clay to the skull.