A few years before
his death in 1997, William Maples pondered the fate of the University of Florida
laboratory he had built over the course of 30 years into a world-renowned
center for forensic sciences.
“Who will replace me, and others like
me?” he asked in his 1994 memoirs, Dead Men Do Tell Tales. “Who
will hire the students I train? I cannot say. The need is there. It cries
out to heaven.”
Today, Maples would be proud of his legacy
to the university. Instead of languishing with his passing, forensic sciences
at UF are flourishing at the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine.
The center integrates the work of the Department
of Anthropology’s C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, which Maples
established, the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine’s
Forensic Toxicology Laboratory and numerous other departments to create one
of the country’s most comprehensive forensic medicine programs.
From 1968 until his death from brain cancer
at age 59, Maples participated in more than 1,200 active and historic cases,
including such notables as Czar Nicholas and his family, President Zachary
Taylor, “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick and Spanish explorer Francisco
Pizarro.
Now, anthropologist Anthony Falsetti and
toxicologist Bruce Goldberger are continuing and expanding on that tradition
as co-directors of the Maples Center.
Viewers of shows like The X-Files or the
popular new drama Crime Scene Investigation may think forensic science and
medicine are only about murder investigations. But, by definition, “forensic”
involves any application of science to law.
At the Maples Center, this definition has
been refined to focus primarily on forensic medicine.
“The Maples Center is unique because
of its emphasis on the field of human medicine. We have the resources at the
university to study and teach forensic medicine,” says Goldberger, citing
the university’s already-strong programs in anthropology, toxicology,
pathology, psychiatry, chemistry, dentistry, nursing and other disciplines.
While Falsetti carries on Maples’ work
with bones at the Pound Laboratory, Goldberger has added his expertise in
soft tissue and fluids at the Forensic Toxicology Laboratory.
“The very theoretical biological issues
that we address also have very practical applications,” says Falsetti.
“And they have to hold up to the most severe type of peer review imaginable
— a court of law.”
Perhaps nowhere on campus do the university’s
missions of teaching, research and service intersect as well as they do at
the Maples Center. Students routinely participate in research that ultimately
results in techniques that aid law enforcement.
Although Maples trained dozens of undergraduate
and graduate students during his years at UF, most of them were anthropology
students. Falsetti and Goldberger are developing a more specialized graduate
program in forensic medicine that could lead to a job in a wide range of fields.
“There is great demand nationally for
broadly trained forensic scientists, teachers, technicians and professionals,”
Falsetti says. “Our goal is to train students in both basic and applied
research to help meet this demand.”
In addition to degree programs, the Maples Center
plans to offer special seminars and continuing education programs for people
already working in the field.
“This service has been repeatedly called
for by Florida’s medical examiners, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
and various local law enforcement agencies,” Goldberger says, adding
that the Florida Sheriffs Association has endorsed the center’s statewide
mission.
To remain
responsive to its various constituencies, the center has created an advisory
board that includes forensic science experts from many specialties and professions
at the university, in the community and from around the state.
While they are developing the educational
component of the center, Falsetti and Goldberger continue to conduct research
and provide service to law enforcement that have always been central to forensic
sciences at UF.
The Forensic Toxicology Laboratory tests
samples for about a third of the medical examiners in Florida, handling about
2,400 cases a year. And the Pound Laboratory regularly consults with law enforcement
agencies regarding human remains.
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Police and forensic anthropologists often
are frustrated by the way Florida’s wildlife eats and scatters human
remains, making it difficult — if not impossible — to determine
whether the person was a victim of an accident or foul play, or even where
the death occurred.
So Falsetti is using the vast Austin Cary
Forest near Gainesville as a natural laboratory and the bodies of pigs as
substitute victims to see how the call of the wild and nature’s forces
can alter the remains of a human being.
“Everybody has different stories about
buzzards and dead bodies, and we have a lot of wildlife in Florida that will
carry off remains,” Falsetti says.
By determining what happens naturally to
a body, Falsetti hopes to be able to tell medical examiners, law enforcement
officers and others when something is not right.
“People do wander away and die naturally,
but if somebody has revisited a scene, it may show that they tried to hide
the body, which addresses the issue of intent,” he says.
Compounding a detective’s problems
caused by wandering critters are the Sunshine State’s muggy climate,
sandy soil and rapidly growing vegetation, adds Mike Warren, an assistant
professor of anthropology working on the project.
“Much depends on the body’s location,
the climate, moisture, rainfall, the population of scavengers and what insects
can be found,” Warren says. “The reason we did the study is we need
to know what happens in Florida.”
One case Falsetti is researching involves
a badly burned body found chained to a tree, surrounded by burned insects.
“Because we know that insects come
to a body after death, there’s something about the time frame, the sequence
of events, that will help law enforcement in terms of charging an individual,”
he says. “Not only did the perpetrator kill the person, but they returned
later to try to alter the scene.”
One of the study’s main findings so
far is that searches for skeletons usually need to be extended over a much
greater area than previously believed.
“This kind of work is important because
we do get a number of calls about informants who say they didn’t do it,
but ‘know’ or ‘heard’ where a body is located,” he
says. “With a little background research, we might be able to help recover
the body.”
Warren is working on another project with
physics Professors Gene Dunnam and Henri Van Rinsvelt that uses a particle
accelerator to verify that ashes returned from a crematory are actually cremated
remains and even to help identify a person based on his or her ashes.
The process is expected to play a role in
resolving an escalating number of disputes nationally over so-called “cremains”
among families or between families and crematories. Such disputes are becoming
increasingly common as more people choose cremation over burial.
Warren and Falsetti sought the physicists’
assistance as part of their work as expert witnesses in a legal battle in
South Florida, where two family members were fighting over the cremated remains
of a loved one. One gave the other an urn, but the recipients suspected its
brownish-white contents were not what they appeared and turned to UF for help.
Traditional cremations leave behind small
bone fragments that forensic workers can readily identify as human bone. But
new technology has resulted in much finer remains with no recognizable bone
or human structure. Because cremation destroys all DNA, forensic scientists
are running out of ways to discriminate between cremated remains and sand.
“The latest cremation technology kind
of put us out of business,” Warren says.
Enter the physicists. Dunnam, Van Rinsvelt
and Ivan Kravchenko, a senior engineering technician, knew particle accelerators
had been used to identify trace elements in geological samples, so they decided
to try using a process known as Particle Induced X-ray Emission analysis,
or PIXE, with the disputed remains.
The physicists’ experiment showed that
the ashes from the South Florida family contained calcium, which would be
consistent with human bone. But it also showed that the ashes did not contain
phosphorus, another common ingredient in bone.
Their conclusion: The urns did not contain
human remains.
“We think it’s a mixture of sandy
soil with a little lime rock,” Dunnam said. “Whoever did this was
not entirely stupid, because lime rock contains calcium, which is also in
bone.”
In certain circumstances, the technique
may open a door for forensic scientists to identify individuals based on their
remains, Falsetti and Warren say. For example, if the deceased had a metal
implant, the particle accelerator also would pick up trace concentrations
of the metal, even if the visible metal lumps were removed following the cremation.
Ecstasy And Agony
While Falsetti’s specialty is anatomical
remains, Goldberger focuses on chemical remains. Lately, much of that research
has been on designer drugs, particularly Ecstasy and some deadly copycats.
Goldberger’s investigation of a string
of drug-related deaths in central Florida last summer has brought him the
kind of media attention Maples used to routinely attract. As director of the
laboratory that identified a deadly new type of drug being sold to unsuspecting
customers as Ecstasy, Goldberger has been featured in newspaper and television
stories nationally.
Until last summer, few people in the Florida
drug scene even recognized the risk of getting impure Ecstasy. Then, in a
two-month period, at least six people died after taking what they thought
was Ecstasy.
“It all started when the Leesburg Medical
Examiner’s Office asked us to help determine what had killed a young
woman in Clermont, Florida,” Goldberger says.
Police thought the woman had overdosed on
Ecstasy, but Goldberger determined that the drug that killed her was para-methoxyamphetamine
(PMA), a drug so new that even Goldberger, who performs more than 2,000 drug
tests a year, had not seen it before.
Goldberger has been leading efforts to educate
users of Ecstasy and other designer drugs to the inherent dangers, but he
says new variations come out as fast as toxicologists can identify them.
Reminiscent of Maples’ work on historically
significant cases, Goldberger also is participating in efforts to determine
whether the man who confessed to being the infamous Boston Strangler actually
committed the crimes.
Goldberger was invited to be part of a team
examining the remains of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, who was found strangled
in her apartment in January 1964. New evidence suggests that Albert DeSalvo,
the man who confessed to being the Boston Strangler and killing Sullivan and
a dozen other women, was lying.
Goldberger’s role is to determine if
there were any drugs or alcohol present in Sullivan’s system when she
died. Although no one believes Sullivan used drugs or alcohol, one theory
is that the killer drugged her.
“The person who killed her may have
been with her for some time,” Goldberger says. “It is possible there
may have been something put in her drink. Those are the kinds of facts we
are attempting to clarify.”
Aaron Hoover contributed to this article.
Anthony B. Falsetti
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
(352) 392-6772
falsetti@ufl.edu
Bruce A. Goldberger
Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, “Immunology and
Laboratory Medicine
(352) 846-1579
bruce-goldberger@ufl.edu
Related web site:
http://maples-center.ufl.edu