Professional Activities
I teach part-time and devote the rest
of my time to practical applications of forensic anthropology. In this
way, I bring a full range of experience from the working forensic
anthropologist to the classroom. In the last two decades I have been
fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in all subareas of
osteological analysis and human identification. I began my
post-doctorate career as a forensic anthropologist in the Division of
Forensic Sciences at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I
continue to work standard forensic cases on a consulting basis. I have
testified as an expert witness in local, state, and international
trials.
Since 1992, I have provided technical and
educational assistance in regions of conflict. This includes recovering
evidence and documenting war crimes in Iraq after the first Gulf War,
training Guatemalan teams to identify civil war victims throughout the
‘90's, and recovering and identifying victims of Haiti's 1996 military
coup. I am now working with the newly-formed Colombian forensic
anthropology team, EQUITAS,
based in Bogotá, Colombia. All of this work has been funded by
non-governmental human rights organizations as well as national and
international truth commissions.,
I am employed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DMORT
and have been deployed to work in recovery and identification during
national disasters such as the World Trade Center and the Tri-State
Crematory, as well as natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
I teach short courses for a variety of law enforcement agencies as well
as ICITAP, the U.S. Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Assistance Training Program.
I have also worked in the recovery and analysis of human remains from
many archaeological sites. The more fascinating excavations were in
Carthage, Tunisia, including a Roman necropolis and a mass grave of
Carthaginians -- an early recorded case of genocide. In addition, I am
working several ongoing historic mysteries, including the disappearance
of Amelia Earhart in 1937, and identification of the remains of Casimir
Pulaski, a Revolutionary War hero and founder of the United States
Calvary.
Education:
My undergraduate studies were in
biology. Only in graduate school did my interests come to include
anthropology. My graduate degrees are from the University of Florida
where I studied with the late Dr. William R. Maples, founder of the C.
A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. My major crime laboratory
experience is from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Division of
Forensic Sciences, where I worked in both Toxicology and Forensic
Anthropology.
Major Publications
Forensic Anthropology Training Manual (2nd edition) Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2007.
Model Protocol for Disinterment and Analysis of Skeletal Remains ,
IN Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal,
Arbitrary and Summary Executions , United Nations Publication, Sales
No.: E.91.IV.1, ISBN 92-1-130142-4, 1991
The Herring Case - An Outlier, IN Hard Evidence: Case Studies in Forensic Anthropology , ed. by Dawnie Steadman, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2002.
Amelia
Earhart's Shoes, Is the Mystery Solved? , by T. F. King, R.S. Jacobson,
K.R. Burns, and K. Spading, Alta Mira Press, 2001. Society for American
Archaeology Public Understanding of Archaeology Book Award, 2003.
Forensic Anthropology and Human Rights Issues ,
IN Forensic Osteology, Advances in the Identification of Human
Remains , 2 nd edition, ed. by Kathleen J. Reichs, C.C. Thomas, 1998
Forensic Anthropology, The Application of Skeletal Biology to Human Identification , ASTM Standardization News , April, 1995
Human Skeletal Remains Exhumed from Saywan Cemetery, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq ,
on December 27-28, 1991. IN Unquiet Graves, The Search for the
Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan , a report published by Middle East
Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, 1992
Professional Certification
Fellow, American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Member & Certified Forensic Consultant, American College of Forensic Examiners
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