Forensic DNA Phenotyped Facial Imaging

On January 9, 2011, in Columbia, South Carolina, Candra Alston and her three year-old daughter Malaysia Boykin were brutally murdered. When no one heard from them in over three days, Candra’s father went in search of his daughter and granddaughter and discovered their bodies inside their own apartment. A computer, an expensive designer purse, and some children’s clothing were the only missing items. There was no sign of forced entry, leading the police to believe that Candra had known her assailant. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime and very little evidence was recovered from the scene. Police have released few details about the crime regarding the types of evidence or even the method of death beyond describing it as an “extraordinarily violent manner”.

Candra had a wide circle of ‘in real life’ and virtual friends over several social networks. Columbia police have interviewed hundreds of people from South Carolina and a number of other states. Over one hundred and fifty DNA samples were taken from possible suspects. Unfortunately, not one of the possible suspects has matched DNA recovered from the scene. More than three years after the fact, the case has officially gone cold.

But this past week, the case took an interesting twist. Enter Snapshot, a brand new, cutting-edge technology created by Parabon Nanolabs with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. Snapshot is a new tool not only for law enforcement, but also for national defense organizations. Dr. Ellen McRae Greytak, the director of bioinformatics at Parabon, likens the technology to a DNA blueprint as opposed to the DNA fingerprint of typical sequencing.

Snapshot analyzes the DNA of a given sample, looking specifically at known gene sequences that affect our appearance, and then compares those specific sequences against a database of 10,000 subjects of known appearance. From these complex algorithms, Snapshot is able to produce a virtual likeness of an individual based on their DNA in a process called ‘forensic DNA phenotyping’. It not only predicts ancestry (even if mixed), but skin, hair and eye colour, face shape, and even the expected amount of freckling. The picture above was released only a few days ago by the Columbia, South Carolina police, revealing a potential representation of the suspect in the Alston/Boykin slayings. This is truly groundbreaking technology.

Currently, Texas is the only state to allow forensic DNA phenotyping. As often happens, acceptance of groundbreaking technology comes with skepticism and caveats. Foremost is how accurate the results are if this type of evidence is being used in criminal cases. The image to the right shows an example of one of the database subjects, both the virtual prediction based on the analysis of her DNA and her actual picture. While not exact, it’s a fair representation of the subject, enough in a criminal investigation to delve deeper with established gold standard techniques like DNA profiling.

Where Snapshot is at it’s most useful is through exclusion. Looking at the same image to the right, you can see that it has the highest statistical confidence in excluding the groups the subject does not belong to. Even if the system does not give a 100% accurate estimate of the suspect, just knowing who he/she is not still gives law enforcement an immense investigative lead by narrowing the suspect list and allowing investigators to concentrate on more likely individuals. Imagine a killer leaves skin cells under his victim’s nails during an attack. Given a set of exclusions, it might be determined that the killer was a male of Southern European decent with olive skin, black hair, and brown eyes.  This kind of information would progress a case by leaps and bounds in the absense of an eyewitness to the event.

The virtual estimation of the man above was released by the Columbia police in hopes it would generate additional leads. Time will tell, but with a little luck, maybe Candra and Malaysia will find justice after all.

Photo credit: Parabon Nanolabs and the City of Columbia, SC Police Department

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We're coming to the end of our giveaways and only have a few copies left. Don't miss out on one of your last chances to get the new paperback version of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT or an advanced copy of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER. Enter now!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Dead, Without a Stone to Tell It

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends January 31, 2015.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

  

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends January 31, 2015.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The Million-Mummy Cemetery

Welcome back to the blog! Ann and I would like to wish you a very happy New Year and all the best for 2015. It’s going to be an exciting year for us, with the latest release in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries next month and hopefully a few announcements along the way.

Here on Skeleton Keys we like to talk about forensics and forensic anthropology, but an offshoot of that is archeology. A big announcement in the field of archeology was made in December when we’d already gone on hiatus, so we wanted to make sure we took the time to talk about it when we came back. A team of Egyptian archeologists from Brigham Young University in Utah announced that they discovered new and startling details concerning a cemetery estimated to date back to between the 1st and 7th century A.D. This isn’t just any ordinary run-of-the-mill ancient Egyptian cemetery, if there is such a thing—this is a cemetery containing an estimated one million mummies.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider that. One. Million. Mummies. That’s 30% more than the current population of Boston, all in one cemetery. Truly mindboggling.

The cemetery is located on the Fag el-Gamous necropolis in the hot desert climate of the Faiyum region, sixty miles south of Cairo. The cemetery itself is not a new discovery—it was first revealed about 30 years ago—but for the first time, scientists are beginning to understand the scope of the find. So far, only 1,700 bodies have been excavated from the deep troughs cut into the limestone terrain, but the breadth of the cemetery is known, allowing them to estimate a total population size. The bodies are buried in dense groups: in a section of land only five meters square and two meters deep, an average of forty bodies are found. In some sections, the limestone shafts go down as deep as 23 meters (that’s 75 feet for our American readers). Do the math over the entire 300 acres and there could be a total of one million mummies.

There are some definite curiosities about the cemetery. The first being that there aren’t any nearby cities that would have produced such an immense number of deceased persons that didn’t already have its own burial ground. So where did the dead come from? It’s clear that these were not upper class Egyptians. While effort has clearly been put into burying the dead with love and care, the internal organs are almost always still intact (removal was an important step in the full mummification process of the rich and powerful), and the dead were buried with few, if any, grave goods. Instead of being buried in coffins, the bodies were wrapped carefully in linen or reeds and laid into the hot desert sands. It is the climate, rather than the burial process, that mummified the remains.

The burial pattern is also interesting. The remains are found grouped together by hair colour—blond hair in one section of the cemetery, red in another. Another group all had excellent teeth, an unusual trait for the time. It appears likely that families with strong genetic ties were all buried together.

One of the most telling burials discovered to date is that of an 18-month old girl. Lovingly wrapped in a tunic and linens, she was found almost completely preserved, indicating that her loved ones had done their best to start the mummification process for her. She wore a necklace and two bracelets on each arm, signs that she was buried with most of the family’s meager wealth as a sign of their love for her. She was found with several other bodies, likely family, but genetic testing will hopefully tell archeologists more.

The Fag el-Gamous site is clearly a cemetery of the common man during a time of Roman and then Byzantine rule in Egypt. The people who buried their dead were not the rich and powerful; instead they were the families that buried their loved ones with care and all their small wealth as they were able. Items such as small glass pots, glass beads and colourful woven children’s boots have been recovered. It says much about the people of the region.

Photo credit: Kerry Muhlestein, Brigham Young University

Forensic Case Files: Richard III’s Unexpected Surprise

We’ve been following the fascinating story of Richard III for over two years. From the discovery of remains in a parking lot suspected to be the long lost king, to the confirmation of the identity of the remains, to the legend of the Princes in the Tower, and to how Shakespeare coloured the way society regarded him, Richard has been a regular visitor to this blog. We thought the story was pretty much complete, but last week a new and surprising detail was announced by the scientists studying Richard III’s DNA: somewhere in his lineage there was an unrecognized illegitimate birth of a ‘royal’ son. Although we’ll likely never know where the break in legitimacy occurs, the implications could impact Britain’s history, right up to the present day.

When the remains were first discovered in Leicester, archeologists were cautiously optimistic that they’d discovered Richard III simply from the physical properties of the remains—the spine of the skeleton showed significant scoliosis and curvature. Shakespeare introduced the image of Richard as a hunchback (‘that foule hunch-backt toade’; Richard III, Act 4, scene iv), but back in Richard’s time, contemporary writings only make note that one of the Richard’s shoulders was higher than the other—a clinical symptom of scoliosis.

The group of scientists from the University of Leicester studying the remains wanted to confirm Richard’s identify in several ways:

• Archeological: Richard’s remains were suggested to have been buried beneath the quire of Greyfriars Abbey. The abbey was destroyed in the 16^th century, but its location was loosely known. The remains were found below where the quire would have been in the 15^th century.
• Osteological: The remains belonged to a man in his late 20s to early 30s, who suffered from scoliosis, showed signed of healed battle wounds, and had died from terrible fresh wounds presumably acquired in battle.
• Radiological: the remains were dated to have come from 1456 – 1530, bracketing Richard’s death date of August 22, 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

The only method left at this point was to identify the remains by DNA, definitively connecting the long-dead monarch to modern living relatives. There were numerous challenges in this process however. First of all, it would be the oldest individual identification ever attempted on remains 527 years old. Also, Richard died with no living offspring, so all connections would have to be made through his sister Anne’s line.

The two types of DNA they wanted to examine were mitochondrial DNA—DNA passed down in near-exact copies through the female line— and the Y chromosome—the male sex chromosome. Two modern relatives, one a 16^th cousin twice-removed, and one an 18^th cousin twice-removed, were used for comparison. Scientists also analysed the sequences for both hair and eye colour to determine what the individual looked like.

They determined the DNA from the remains would have shown the characteristics of a man with blue eyes and blond hair. Although Richard was always portrayed with blue eyes and brown hair, they proposed that he was blond as a child. As a result of this analysis, they feel the painting that best portrays the monarch is the oldest surviving portrait, displayed at the Society of Antiquaries (see above).

The mitochondrial DNA proved to be an exact match between Richard and the female relative, confirming the same mitochondrial DNA passed to Richard from his mother was also passed to his sister and then down through the intervening generations.

But when they looked at the Y chromosome, an interesting disconnect arose. Due to issues around partial Y chromosome recombination, scientists only considered the retained/non-recombining sections of the chromosome. But even within those segments, a match could not be made between Richard and the male relative. A ‘false paternity’ event had occurred, interrupting the true family line. Three additional modern male relatives were subsequently tested and none of them matched Richard.

Overall, a complete Bayesian analysis of the skeletal DNA sequences report a 99.999% chance that this is indeed Richard III. So scientists are confident without a doubt now that their identification is complete.

But the big question remaining concerns the false paternity event and, more importantly, when it happened. If it happened in the line following Richard III, the royal lines remain unaffected. However, if the line happened before Richard, the royal line as we know it might have been affected. If the illegitimacy goes back to Edward the III and his son John of Gaunt three generations before, then it actually disqualifies Henry IV, V, VI, VII and VIII, and from there the entire Tudor and subsequent lines from the throne. The final supposition of which is that Queen Elizabeth II should not be on the throne and the royal line should instead have gone through Lady Jane Grey.

It is almost a certainty that we’ll never know the truth of where this break in the royal line occurred, and English history will remain as we know it, but it certainly makes for some interesting speculation when you wonder what England would have been like without the powerhouse of the Tudor dynasty. The Tudors were responsible for dynamic changes in world exploration and colonization, they brought about cultural change during the Renaissance, and had a huge impact on world religion when Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. It makes one wonder how world history might have changed if they had never come to power.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons 

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends December 11, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Human Origins in Europe

Human bones can reveal many secrets—information pointing to identity, evidence of trauma or murder, or genetic information about origins. It is this last that we’re going to discuss today.

The common concept of Europe’s origins and the modern people who now inhabit it revolves around the themes of travel, invading armies, conquest, and population mixing. But a recent paper published in the prestigious journal Science suggests that understanding may be incorrect.

In 1954, human remains were found outside the city of Voronezh—in Voronezh Oblast, Russia—at the Kostenki excavation. Excavated by a Russian team, the remains were dated at 37,000 years old, making them some of the oldest skeletons ever found in Europe. The femur of one particular set of remains, a male identified as Kostenki 14, yielded DNA suitable for sequencing. And what researchers found has changed what we know about early man's population of Europe.

Thirty-seven-thousand years ago, humans banded together in hunter-gatherer populations. Agrarian living and the advent of farming that then led to the rise of civilizations didn’t occur until approximately 10,000 – 15,000 years ago. It wasn’t until the development of agriculture produced a surplus of foodstuff for local populations that individuals were able to take on jobs different from farming and hunting. Civilizations were born as positions such as bureaucrats, lawmakers, medical personnel, clergy, and the military were created.

Approximately 74,000 years ago Mount Toba on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra erupted catastrophically in one of the worst volcanic eruptions in earth’s history. The Toba catastrophe hypothesis holds that this caused six to ten years of global volcanic winter and may have triggered an ice age. The severe cooling decimated or completely eradicated many of the earth’s species including man. It is estimated the human population dropped from possibly up to sixty million to a mere several thousand. Evidence of this near extinction exists in our DNA and in the traces of a genetic bottleneck at that time.

During this crisis, all human life was situated in Africa. Once the species began to rebound, humans spread out of Africa as hunter/gatherer populations foraged in search of sustenance. Populations spread into the Middle East and from there went west to populate Europe, east and south to populate Asia, or east and north over the Bering Strait to populate North and later South America.

When the genetic sequences of Kostenki 14 were compared to modern European sequences, a surprising correlation occurred—the ancient sequences were remarkably similar to modern DNA. The implication is that unlike the expected sequences indicating waves of discrete migrations, the genetic results show that the modern European developed by a constant flow of incoming populations with gene flow moving in all directions. The theory of groups moving into an area, killing off the previous inhabitants and then taking over has been disproved.

Another interesting point is that Kostenki 14’s genetic makeup is significantly different from those of ancient Asians or Australeo-Malaysians, indicating the genetic split between these groups that occurred as the groups separated after leaving Africa occurred before 35,000 B.C.

Photo credit: Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera)

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends December 11, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Where Do Stories Come From?

The second most common question I get concerns where ideas for our novels come from (the most common questions concern what it’s like to write with a partner). Do we dream up the basic storyline out of nothing? Do we rely on news stories or personal experiences? Do other people suggest ideas? As it’s often a mix of all of the above, I thought it might be fun to look at where some of our ideas have come from.

Ann and I have the two-heads-are-better-than-one advantage and our storylines often start small and then bloom as each of us takes suggestions from the other and builds higher. But that teamwork has to start with an initial idea. So, without spoilers, because we don’t want to give anything away for anyone who hasn’t read the books (and those of you who have will know exactly what we’re talking about), where did our ideas start?

DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT: A large part of the storyline for this novel was based in the setting. We were starting a new series and wanted to set it firmly in Essex, Massachusetts. Since a significant portion of history and life in Massachusetts, especially in that coastal region, involves the ocean and it’s shoreline, we picked the location of the body dump site and worked backwards around where the bodies exactly were found, what state they’d be in and why they were there.

NO ONES SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL: This story started with the details of the extremely specific bone injury involved. Because this kind of damage was so characteristic of a certain culture, the rest of the story fell in to place behind the type of abuse the victim portrayed.

A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH: We can thank our good friend and fire captain Lisa Giblin for this book. There are two arms to this story and she was behind both of them. The osteological angle in this story came from a suggestion after Lisa watched a TV documentary on it. As soon as she introduced the idea (one that we were unfamiliar with up to that time), we knew we had to find a way to set a book around it. And Lisa offered to be our consultant if we ever wanted to write a book about fire and arson. As any victim recovered from a fire would be prime consulting material for Matt, we jumped at the chance. We couldn’t have written this book without Lisa’s incredible knowledge and willingness to get into the trenches with us, right to the extent of mapping out all our fire scenes and rescue attacks, teaching us a huge portion of what she knew, and reviewing the manuscript multiple times to make sure we had our details correct.

TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: The main story idea for this book actually came out of a side discussion of a very minor point in NO ONES SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL. Ann and I were discussing how the perp might be caught and Ann made an offhand comment about basements. I questioned whether buildings in that area had basements (because not all do, depending on terrain and other surrounding conditions). Ann replied that of course they had basements; that’s how they managed to hide a large number of the speakeasies during Prohibition. I kind of wish someone could have snapped a picture of the stunned look on my face and the light bulb over my head in that instant as the driving theme behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER was born.

Abbott and Lowell #5 (unnamed WIP): We have a lot of things to manage in our current manuscript. Not only do we have the full case that will push the story more into thriller territory than straight forensic mystery, but we have the long arc storyline that started in A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH that needs to be resolved. So it’s a busy book. But as far as the main case goes, the most important victim detail came from listening to a podcast featuring Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass (better known together as the writing team of Jefferson Bass). Dr. Bass made a comment about something found in every forensics lab and we realized it would be the perfect way to hide our victim in plain sight as well as reintroduce Matt’s nemesis readers were briefly introduced to in concept in DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT.

Abbott and Lowell #6 (planned): Even though we’re still writing book 5, we already have a good idea where this book is going. The main story line will actually be crafted to fit where we need the team to be emotionally in this book, a state that drives the majority of the story and will push them into what we have conceived for book 7.

Abbott and Lowell #7 (planned): This book has been planned since the series was born. The character of Juka Petrović was put in place in the very first book to allow for the horrors this book will examine. It’s a history that has touched us with its tragedy and infuriated us with how the situation was handled. It’s a story that isn’t known nearly well enough, but this will give us the opportunity to highlight it and inform our readers through our fiction.

Abbott and Lowell #8 (planned): Ann brought a news story to my attention this week, and that story line may very well turn into the plot for book 8. It’s got everything we need—a mystery, tragedy and the bone clues we need to hang our hat on.

So that’s a quick rundown of where the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, past and future, have come from. For the other writers in the group, where have your ideas come from?

Photo credit: Kamil Porembiński

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It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/116827-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 30^th, so don’t miss out!

Jack the Ripper Revisted (or not, as the case may be…)

Before we start into this week’s blog post, Ann and I wanted to give a little shout out to Kirkus Reviews who has once again reviewed our upcoming novel, saying of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: “Leigh's fourth is a complex case loaded with forensic and historical detail, the authors' best so far.” For those who are interested in the full review (warning— which comes with some spoilers), you can find it here.

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Two months ago we covered the supposed revelation of the identification of Jack the Ripper more than 125 years after the Ripper’s final kill. It was a story that made a very big splash and was carried on almost every news outlet in the English-speaking world (and beyond). It also accompanied Russell Edwards’ book on the same topic, Naming Jack the Ripper. In our response to the story, we outlined all the reasons we were more than skeptical about the identification. However, we didn’t have access to the samples to be able to put data-driven science behind our opinion; we simply logicked through the information provided and were entirely unconvinced that Aaron Kosminski was the Ripper.

The original case naming Aaron Kosminski as the Ripper rested entirely on the discovery of a shawl that was posited to belong to Ripper victim Kate Eddows. According to Dr. Jari Louhelainen, the scientist working with Edwards, the shawl was matched to Karen Miller, a descendant of Kate Eddows, and thereby to Kate herself by showing an extremely rare genetic connection—a gene called 314.1c—in the mitochondrial DNA passed down through the female line of the Eddows family. Due to the scarcity of this gene in the general population, it was deemed that the shawl must have come from Eddows. The entire case rested on this one point.

Last month, in a story that barely made a ripple on the vast ocean of current media, it was announced that other scientists got access to Louhelainen's data, and science simply doesn’t support the Ripper identity claim. What was declared to be the rare gene 314.1C (occurring in only 1 in 290,000 people), was, in fact, the extremely common gene 315.1c (occurring in 99 out of 100 people of European decent). Four well-known and respected experts in the field of DNA analysis and fingerprinting all agree that there is no ground for a direct match between the modern family member and the scarf.

It has been stated that Dr. Louhelainen used an ‘error of nomenclature’ when doing his analysis and carried that error into announcing his findings. But the bottom line in this case is that nearly anyone could have left the DNA on the shawl that is attributed to the victim of Jack the Ripper. Without this crucial link, the rest of Edwards’ case for Aaron Kosminski falls apart.

With all the fuss and furor over the revelation that Jack the Ripper had been identified, it’s a shame that the news disproving this claim has hardly been noticed. For us, at least, this was no surprise considering the previous analysis. But for the majority of the world, I suspect they still believe that the Ripper case has been closed.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/115336-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 20^th, so don’t miss out!

Paperback Cover Reveal – DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT

More than a year ago, our debut novel and the first in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, released in hardcover and eBook formats. Last spring Harlequin Worldwide Mysteries purchased the mass market rights to the novel and will be releasing this version in January. Recently we were treated to some details of their version of the book, from a brand new cover to a different version of the back cover copy.

Here is the all new version of the mass market cover:

We always write out own back cover copy for our Five Star releases, so it was interesting to see someone else’s take on the book in the HQN version of that same copy:

Dark Tide… Her past is as troubled as the storm-battered marshes near her Massachusetts town. Still, for State Trooper Leigh Abbott, those brutalized by crime will always matter more than her reputation or career. So when a single human bone turns up in a beaver dam, she has no problem skirting the rules to consult forensic anthropologist Dr. Matthew Lowell. His skills and her persistence lead them to the grimmest of discoveries—a mass grave of the tortured and murdered going back years…

But a near-fatal attack on the desolate shoreline tips Leigh that the serial killer they’ve interrupted is anything but scared off. As she and Matt carefully excavate the nameless victims’ lives and secrets, their quarry is using their deepest vulnerabilities against them. Now it will only take one insidious misdirection, one lethal chance to bait a trap that could sweep them both away without a trace.

So, what do you think? How do you like the brand new version of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT? And there’s more to come in this series from Worldwide Mysteries as A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH is set to release in mass market format in April….

It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/115336-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 20th, so don’t miss out!

Traveling This Week…

 

I’m in New Orleans this week frolicking in the French Quarter attending The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene for our annual international dengue investigators meeting. But I’ll be back next week with an all new post! See you then…

Photo credit: David Ohmer

Forensic Case Files: A Look at Gladiator Diets, 2000 Years Later

In past Forensics 101 posts, we talked about the use of radioactive isotopes to establish the geographical origins of remains, the date of death post WWII, and the date of death for remains older than 100 years (i.e. Joan of Arc). Recently a journal article was published by PLOS One, an open source scientific journal that anyone can access (most scientific journals are paid content only). In the article, the authors used isotopes to look back at the gladiators of ancient Rome in an attempt to discern their diet.

Texts from the time derogatorily describe a ‘gladiator diet’ of beans and barley; a diet quite different than today’s protein-heavy regimens for muscle building. But using the tools of both stable isotopes (carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur) and inorganic bone components (calcium and strontium), the authors of the article tried to analyze gladiator remains to see if they could compare their diet to that of upper class Romans of the time.

Their research is partly based on the phenomenon of C3 carbon fixation in plants as opposed to C4 carbon fixation. Carbon fixation is a part of photosynthesis, leading to sugar metabolism, and the production of energy with oxygen as a waste by-product. C3 fixation is used by such plants as wheat and barley with carbon dioxide and a sugar as the starting materials. C4 fixation, a newer evolutionary pathway exploited by plants such as millet and corn, starts with the same sugar, but uses malate as the source of carbon dioxide, instead of the surrounding atmosphere.

Also in the authors’ research toolbox is the nitrogen found in bone collagen that indicates the amount of animal protein consumed. Sulfur, co-located in that same collagen, can indicate a living environment where higher sulfur levels correspond to a sea-side location, often tied to increased seafood as part of the daily diet. We have previously discussed how strontium levels are measured and how they indicate location. The ratio of strontium to calcium corresponds to the plant-to-meat ratio in the diet.

While some gladiators were voluntary Roman citizens, the majority of them were slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war. Through winning combat, even the lowly could be raised up to the equivalent of Roman rock star status, and the promise of gladiator school was reintegration into normal society. . . if you won.

It's rare to discover remains of actual gladiators—skeletons with the characteristic trauma patterns that match descriptions of combat. These kinds of remains tend to be very few and far between, but an entire gladiator graveyard was discovered in Turkey, on Panayirda Hill, in 1992. Gladiator remains were sampled from this location; normal Roman citizen remains were excavated from a number of nearby cemeteries. All the gladiators were male, while the Roman citizens were a mix of male and female. The researchers sampled a total of 88 individuals dating back to the 1^st to 3^rd century A.D.

So keeping all the possible isotopes in mind, what did the researchers actually discover when they compared the gladiators to the upper-class Romans?

Carbon: Both groups consumed wheat and barley as a staple part of their diet.

Nitrogen: This was where the researchers found the greatest deviation within the gladiator group itself, suggesting that some gladiators were meat eaters, contradicting the original hypothesis of a uniform gladiator diet. But between the two groups overall, there was no statistical difference.

Sulfur: Both groups were surprisingly low on average, indicating that even though the two groups lived near the Aegean Sea, as a population, they were not seafood eaters. Any outliers in both groups are postulated to be immigrants from other areas since they tended to sit outside the normal range for multiple isotopes.

Strontium/calcium ratio: This is where the largest difference occurred between the two groups with the gladiators having levels nearly twice as high as their Roman contemporaries (statistically highly significant). Overall, a high ratio indicates a plant and vegetable heavy diet, while a low ratio suggests a better balance between the green foods supplying the strontium and dairy products etc. supplying calcium. The higher gladiator ratio implies that contemporary upper class Romans had a more varied and dairy-rich diet. Another possible explanation for the high values in the gladiators is the post-combat consumption of a drink that included plant ash as an ingredient, commonly used as a spice in cooking and as a pain killer. Yet another suggestion is that due to their training, gladiators had increased calcium metabolism and turnover in their bones. This would lead to a more constant level of strontium and a decreasing level of calcium, resulting in a higher ratio value.

The overall conclusion drawn is that the gladiators did not overall have a greatly different diet than their Roman contemporaries. There is the possibility of a difference in dairy consumption, but it is just as likely that it was their physiological state that lead to any differences in the trace elements. Hats off to the authors for some interesting detective work almost two thousand years after the fact!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

What's in a Title?

Ann and I are in the last few weeks of working on a new series proposal and we’ve hit that time, that dreaded time, when we have to come up with . . . a title. *cue scary horror movie music* You might think: It’s a title. How hard can it be? But when you consider what rides on a title—it needs to not only reach out and grab a reader’s interest, but also convey the tone of the book—it’s actually a key part of any novel and can’t be taken lightly.

Normally, we write the entire book first and have the luxury of settling into the story, so a title comes to us mostly organically. Ann is the title master; throughout the overwhelming majority of our writing together, she’s come up with both our book and chapter titles (and explanations). We tend to take our titles from other works, mostly poetry, using material in the public domain, or with express permission of the author or their estate.

The title for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is a line of poetry from an 1865 Civil War poem called Behind the Lines, about a Union soldier, wounded and near death on a battlefield. He fears that he will be buried in an unmarked grave and remain forever unknown:

Dead? and here—where yonder banner
Flaunts its scanty group of stars,
And that rebel emblem binds me
Close within those bloody bars.
Dead? without a stone to tell it,
Nor a flower above my breast!
Dead? where none will whisper softly,
"Here a brave man lies at rest!"

We changed the punctuation around a bit, but felt it was the perfect title for our debut novel. Admittedly it’s a mouthful, but for those of you who have read the book, you know exactly how well suited it is for the burial ground in the story.

The poem Until I Fall by HaliJo Webster, is the source of the title for NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL, a story about loss of identity and how we fit into society, our own and the larger society around us:

I shout and no one seems to hear.
I dance naked and no one responds.
I wow my "self" and stand higher
than any mountain I have stood on before!
No one sees me.
Not till I fall.

A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH was the trickiest title for us so far, as we tried to link the concepts of fire and death in the same line of text. When we finally discovered the 1923 poem Fire, written by Australia’s Dorothea Mackellar, we knew we’d finally found what we were looking for:

This life that we call our own
Is neither strong nor free;
A flame in the wind of death,
It trembles ceaselessly.

The title for the upcoming TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER was the earliest title we matched with a novel. Ann found this little gem in a book called The Devil’s Dictionary. Originally a series of satirical newspaper columns written by Ambrose Bierce between 1881 and 1887, it was published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book before taking on its final title in 1911.

BRANDY, n. A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave, and four parts clarified Satan. Dose, a headful all the time. Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes. Only a hero will venture to drink it.

An aspect of the storyline for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER centers around Prohibition, so the combination of murder and alcohol implied in the title was simply perfect for us.

So what makes a good title? A title needs to be clever, but not so clever that it is misunderstood by the reader. It needs to not only identify the intended audience, but sometimes more specifically the exact series it is a part of. A good title is memorable and sets the tone for the story it encapsulates (Okay, the title for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is maybe not memorable because of its length and structure, but it totally sets the tone for the book!).

Will a publisher keep the title you’ve worked on so diligently once they’ve purchased your manuscript? Not necessarily, but we’ve had excellent luck so far since every one of our titles has been accepted without question. Will that luck continue? Not necessarily, but an author certainly hopes so when she puts this much work into finding the perfect title. As far as we are concerned, we work at this aspect of storytelling assuming the title will be a keeper because if it suits so well, perhaps our editor will agree with our choice. Wish us luck…

Photo credit: Dustin Gaffke (photo has been cropped from original size)

Ethnic Burial Customs

Malagasian traditional 'dancing with the dead'Last week on the blog we talked about the Parisian catacombs and the mind-boggling six million sets of remains found under the city of Paris. For many people, the sanctity of the original gravesite is paramount and this kind of redistribution of human remains is nothing short of sacrilege. For others, it’s a sensible solution to a real and pressing problem, and every effort was made (and continues to be made) to honour and respect the dead.

Late last week, Ann sent me a link to a Washington Post article entitled “Reburying the Dead in Guatemala”, concerning the Guatemalan custom of reusing crypts that are no longer supported financially by the family or the community. Crypts are not bought, but leased, and if payments on the lease lapse, paid grave cleaners break open the crypt and remove the remains. If the remains are claimed by the family, they are boxed and put into a central ossuary. If the remains are not claimed, they are bagged in clear plastic with magic marker identifications and added to a mass grave.

Frankly, the article left me gaping. Mummified remains are carelessly manhandled and tossed on the ground. They’re carried under arms like packages and left propped against walls. Bags of remains and uncovered mummies are transferred to mass graves with forklifts. For me, it was the attitude of disrespect for the dead that appalled. But how much of that is simply my societal views of how the dead should be treated? Clearly this is an accepted practice for the people of Guatemala.

It made me think about burial culture and how we as North Americans don’t hold the only proper ideas of how the dead should be laid to rest. Different cultures and different time periods have/had different customs:

• In the Victorian era, before photography became a common tool of the masses, the deceased was dressed in their finest and photographed, often with live family members. This would often be the only image of the deceased the family would ever have.

• Hindus believe cremation is the most spiritually pure way for a human soul to depart. The deceased is burned in a public ceremony and the pyre is lit by the eldest male in the family. The traditional custom of Sati involves the burning of an Indian wife on her husband’s funeral pyre, sometimes voluntarily, often not. Various laws have been passed in different countries, with India finally criminalizing the practice in 1987.

• Cremation is strictly forbidden for Muslims, as is embalming. As a result, burials must take place within only a few days of death. Autopsies are also forbidden unless required by law.

• The Baha’i believe that death is only the beginning of a great spiritual journey. Baha’i dead must be buried within an hour’s travel of the place of death, and may not be embalmed or cremated.

• Several cultures—the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Vikings—have buried their dead with everything they might need in the afterlife, including sometimes their live servants or wives. For the rich and powerful, this often meant burial sites of great size.

• Sometime the dead are treated in certain ways to protect the living. During the Renaissance, those suspected of vampirism were buried with a stake through their heart, decapitated and buried with their head between their knees, or with a brick between their teeth to prevent biting their way out of their shrouds.

• The people of Tibet traditionally practiced Jhator, or sky burials, where the dead are cut into pieces and left on the top of the mountain for carrion birds to feast on. The practice was both practical and spiritual. Due to the local rocky terrain, the digging of graves for burial was practically impossible, and the lack of trees to provide fuel for fires meant that cremation was not an option. From the spiritual side, the Tibetans believe the vultures are ‘sky dancers’ that will carry the soul of the departed to heaven. The body is simply considered an empty shell after death, so there is no need to preserve it.

• On the island of Madagascar, the tradition of Famadihana, or dancing with the dead, has been practiced since the seventeenth century. Also referred to as the ‘turning of the bones’, it is a celebration, a time for family and friends to gather to reconnect with each other and those who have gone before. The bodies of the dead are exhumed from their tombs and rewrapped in fresh, costly grave cloths. A band plays while the shrouded bodies are lifted up onto shoulders and danced around the tomb before being laid back to rest. Within the community, it’s seen as a way of honouring their family members, and as an act of love.

These are just a few of the cultural traditions around death. Do you know of any others not covered here?

Photo credit: Hery Zo Rakotondramanana

Forensic Case Files: The Parisian Catacombs

Paris is often called The City of Light. But deep under the city, another world exists, a world of darkness and death—the great Catacombs of Paris. Holding the remains of more than six million dead, over two hundred miles of underground tunnels stretch under the city in a labyrinthine sepulchre.

For over a millennium, Parisians buried their dead in cemeteries inside the city walls. But even by the twelfth century, the cemeteries were already overflowing with no room to expand. Parisians attempted to manage the issue by exhuming the oldest of the remains and burying them packed together in mass graves. This helped for a period of time, but, by the eighteenth century, things were getting desperate once again. Finally, after the weight of the mass grave caved the contents into an adjoining residential basement, a radical plan was concocted and acted upon.

Paris was built on top of a series of limestone mines, many which were excavated to supply the city with stone for its rapid expansion. Coincidentally, as the cemeteries were being closed, those same mine tunnels were being renovated to ensure the stability of the streets and buildings above. It was the perfect, if somewhat creepy, solution to dual problems: the mine shafts could hold the remains, while the bones of the dead could help support the great city where they’d once travelled above ground. A number of cemetery headstones and sculptures were also moved underground and slowly, the mausoleum was formed. It took over two years to move the dead of Paris underground, and an additional four years to arrange the bones into their current arrangements. The ossuary opened to the public in 1814.

A map showing the extensive catacomb plans:

Entry to the catacombs (translation: Stop! Here lies the Empire of Death):

Bone sculptures:

Cemetery sculptures and artefacts:

The first time I saw the cover for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, I knew they’d used the Paris catacombs for some of their material. Needless to say, it’s hard to get photos of skeletal remains at actual crime scenes as they are evidence and must be protected. So the cover designers had to go to accessible photos to include real bones. Even knowing where the material came from, I still thought it worked beautifully.

The catacombs hold a more varied history than simply the home of the dead. During World War II it was home to the French resistance, who used the system of tunnels to traverse the city in secret. At the same time, a section below a high school in the sixth arrondisement was used as a German bunker. But the catacombs’ impact on the city is lasting—due to the presence of the tunnels under the city, tall structures cannot be supported in Paris. As such, tall, modern skyscrapers will never grace the cityscape and Paris will forever retain its historical appearance.

Photo credit: Cesar I. Martins, Wikimedia Commons, Shadowgate, Adam Baker, Julian Fong, Americano, Will White, Sharat Ganapati, Fraser Mummery, Tommie Hansen, and Randy Connolly.

Forensic Case Files: Famine and Death at an Irish Workhouse

The Irish Potato Famine took place between 1845 and 1852 when a severe potato blight ravaged Northern Europe. It is believed that potatoes carrying the microorganism Phytophthora infestans carried the blight from North America’s eastern coast to Europe in 1844, where it then spread. In 1845, half of Ireland’s single strain potato crop was lost to the blight; three quarters was lost in 1846 and the first starvation deaths were recorded. A staple food for both the farmer and the poor, some families depended almost solely on the potato to stave off starvation. Paired with the vitamins and protein in milk, the twelve to fourteen pounds of potatoes consumed per person per day provided a relatively balanced, albeit uninteresting, diet. But with their crops dying by the acre, many families had no chance of survival. And even though the majority of Ireland’s lands produced enough grain to feed its starving people, this was considered a cash crop and Ireland continued to export thirty to fifty shiploads of food to Britain daily while their own people died by the thousands. By the time the famine finally ended, over one million Irish had succumbed to starvation and related diseases, while another million had emigrated, many coming to North America.

In 2005, a worker for a local archeology consulting firm, Kilkenny Archaeology, discovered human remains on the site of the old Kilkenny Union Workhouse. Excavations started the following year, and 63 mass graves were uncovered, each holding the remains of 6 to 27 deceased for a total of over 970 dead. Out of that 970, 545 were children under the age of 6.

The Kilkenny Union Workhouse opened in 1842, following the creation of the Poor Law Act. It became home to over 1,300 poor souls, providing food and shelter in exchange for backbreaking and brutal labour producing clothes and blankets by hand. But as the famine continued, the number of people seeking refuge at the workhouse skyrocketed, and by 1851 it housed over 4,300 inhabitants—more than three times its intended maximum population.

With so many residents housed inside its walls, the workhouse buildings were extremely overcrowded and became a prime incubator for diseases such as cholera, typhoid and consumption. The final stressor came when a typhus outbreak struck in 1847. Because of a recent ban from burying paupers in local cemeteries, the workhouse constructed an unconsecrated cemetery on their own property. Due to the number of inhabitants dying each day, there was no choice but to use a system of mass graves to manage the dead, creating and closing one grave per week.

Over half of the recovered remains show signs of scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C; for the Irish, this need would have usually been filled by the potatoes in their diet. Without that component, the bones showed a range of characteristic clues:

• severely low mineral content

• thinning of the cortex (the hard outer layer of bone that provides the majority of structural support)

• epiphyseal separation in young victims (a reversal of the normal process of epiphyseal fusion)

• holes in the skull at the temples and around the teeth.

The bones tell a heartbreaking story of starvation and suffering. But they also speak of redemption, as many of these osteological signs only come about during the recovery from scurvy. Clearly many of the dead had survived near starvation to begin their recovery at the workhouse, only to die from typhus in their still weakened state in the overcrowded ranks of the workhouse.

One thing to note about the mass graves—the dead were buried with care. Compared to mass graves in war zones like Srebrenica, where bodies were carelessly tossed on top of each other, the Irish remains were carefully shrouded and laid in simple pine coffins. The coffins were then neatly stacked in the mass graves before being finally filled in. Sometimes family were buried together, a parent and child or siblings interred together in a single coffin.

In May 2010, a reburial ceremony was held, consecrating the ground as part of the new Famine Memorial Garden.

Photo credit: Bioarchaeologist Dr Jonny Geber, University College Cork

Word on the Street Toronto 2014

This past Sunday I took part in Word on the StreetToronto, Canada's largest book and magazine festival. Celebrating its 25th year, Word on the Street has everything for the book lover—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, publishers, booksellers, libraries, literacy groups and much, much more.

This was my first Word on the Street, but what a fabulous festival! Every genre and taste was represented for every age. Despite the doom-and-gloom weather forecast for severe thunderstorms, the sky cleared during the festival and Toronto residents responded, coming out in droves.

I was part of the crew coming out from the Crime Writers of Canada and helped man booth 147. Along the way I met some of our existing readers, some new readers, and had great discussions with readers and authors alike. It was a really wonderful experience being immersed in a crowd of people who were all there for one reason—a universal love of reading.

Here are a few pictures from the afternoon...

Queen's Park Circle shut down for the festival:

Rick Blechta and Terry Carroll selling books and signing at the Crime Writers of Canada booth:

Jonathan Bennett, Jeramy Dodds, and Michael Lista in the ‘New Narratives’ tent:

Gail Gallant, Lucy Leiderman, and Lesley Livingston specializing in spoken word poetry in the ‘This Is Not the Shakespeare Theater Stage’ tent:

The Toronto Public Library booth was hopping with both kids and adults:

Penguin Random House's Author Solutions was out with several of its authors doing signings:

The Kobo Writing Life booth:

Toronto Book Award finalist Anthony De Sa, talking about his novel Kicking the Sky:

The ‘Amazon.ca Bestsellers Stage’ tent, introducing Andrew Pypers' The Demonologist:

Ottawa firefighter John Kenny with his debut novel The Spark:

And what's a festival without a beer tent?

Joan O'Callaghan and I manning the Crime Writers of Canada booth, meeting new readers, talking up the CWC and signing books:

Thanks Word on the Street for a great time. Looking forward to seeing you again next year!

Forensic Case Files: Jack the Ripper Finally Identified?

Apparently this is debunking science month here at Skeleton Keys. Last week, we looked at the bad science that led archeologists studying the Viking invasions of England to incorrectly identify the sex of buried remains. This week, I want to talk about the recent announcement that Jack the Ripper has been identified more than 125 years after the final murder took place. Several people asked my opinion on this case, and while I’m not an expert on Ripper mythology, I’m happy to tackle the scientific aspect of this announcement.

On September 6^th, a story broke on the Daily Mail naming a Polish hairdresser, Aaron Kosminski, as Jack the Ripper (read the original story here). Russell Edwards, a self-appointed ‘armchair detective’ purchased a shawl supposedly found with the body of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth Ripper victim discovered on September 30, 1888. He approached Dr. Jari Louhelainen, a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, in hopes of recovering forensic evidence from the scarf to connect the killings to Kosminski. Kosminski had been one of the six main suspects at the time of the murders and Edwards ‘became convinced Kosminski was our man’. (Jen’s note—please keep in mind my opening explanation from last week’s article on the Viking shieldmaidens about how objective science proceeds. Convincing yourself of the end result before you begin is not a good start).

Upon examining the scarf. Louhelainen found traces of blood splatter and semen. Louhelainen extracted DNA from both using a supposedly novel technique called ‘vacuuming’, and, once again, mitochondrial DNA was used to determine the genetic line of the sample. A female descendant of Eddowes provided a DNA sample for comparison and was a perfect match to the blood spatter. A similar descendant of Kosminski (a mysterious, unnamed female whom Edwards claims to be protecting by leaving in anonymity) provided a sample which also resulted in a perfect match to the semen sample.

On this data alone, Edwards declares that Kosminski must be Jack the Ripper.

So where does this claim go off the rails for me?

• The DNA was identified by a novel technique, one that has never been vetted or peer-reviewed in any way (although Louhelainen’s layman’s description of the technique is so basic that there must be more to it than simply soaking the fabric in buffer and sucking it back out again; that hardly seems like a novel technique as it’s fairly close to how we extract cheek swab DNA from filter paper). So where is the proof to the scientific community that this protocol actually does what Edwards claims? Scientific data is rigorously examined through a the process of peer review—a paper is written for an established scientific publication, then that paper is reviewed by fellow scientists in the field who will either accept the paper with revisions (I have yet to see a paper that doesn’t have even a few small comments on aspects to be fixed) or reject the paper. When that paper is published, it has been written with a Materials and Methods section so detailed that anyone reading the paper should be able to exactly replicate the procedure to get the same results given identical starting materials and conditions. But instead of Louhelainen writing a peer-reviewed article on the technique and its results, Edwards has written a layman’s book with no oversight to the scientific process. I can’t believe results only viewed by a privileged few. The entire study cannot be published as ‘data not shown’.

• Assuming this is a legitimate technique, it has tested the DNA found on the shawl of one of the five victims only. This only proves contact with one of the victims and doesn’t scientifically link him to any of the others.

• While the victim’s DNA was extracted from blood, Kosminki’s DNA was extracted from semen. This proves sexual contact of some kind, but in no way actually puts the knife in his hand. For all we know, when Kosminski left Eddowes following that encounter, she was alive and well. The DNA evidence also provides no information about timelines—the sexual encounter could have been minutes, days, weeks, or months before or after Eddowes’ death.

• At the time of Eddowes’ death, Kosminski lived with his two brothers, both of whom would have had identical mitochondrial DNA from their mother. So perhaps it was not Kosminski’s semen, but instead, that of one of his brothers?

• Kosminski’s descendant seems to be shrouded in mystery and apparently Edwards (and the descendant?) wish it to remain that way. As a result, no one else could possibly double check the results of the testing since they have no sample with which to compare the DNA extracted from the semen sample.

• Call me cynical, but I'm suspicious of any science that comes out as a ‘perfect match’. Science almost never works out that way. Yes, mitochondrial DNA only passes down through the female line, but, over time, DNA naturally mutates and drifts and it is unlikely that 125 year old DNA would be identical to a modern sample. Within a 97 – 99% match, absolutely. But a perfect match? And to have two perfect matches, one to Eddowes’ descendant and another to Kosminski’s? Well… you get my drift. Science is simply not that exact. And once again, we can’t see the results ourselves to have a real opinion on it.

• The Daily Mail article shows the scientists at work in the lab. Now, I realize this is an inside baseball kind of point, but I work down the hall from the lab of Dr. Hendrik Poinar, a world famous ancient DNA specialist who not only sequenced the Woolly Mammoth genome, but is currently working on Black Plague deaths in an effort to identify Y. pestis as the causative agent. I know the conditions his people work under—an ultra-clean room under negative pressure and enhanced personal protection (to keep the samples clean vs. protecting the lab worker in this case). Yet Louhelainen and his people are shown unrolling the scarf in a typical biosafety level I wet lab, next to an unrelated specimen and other various pieces of lab equipment and anatomical models. Add to this the fact that the scarf was handled by many people over the years (and supposedly never washed) and I’m not convinced that any starting material they collected was uncontaminated.

• The provenance of the shawl itself has been called into question. Supposedly found at the scene with Eddowes’ body, it was never reported or entered into evidence. Instead, one of the investigating officers removed the bloodstained shawl to give to his wife as a gift. The wife was so horrified by the gift that she put it away and it was then handed down through four or five family generations before being sold to Edwards. But there is no official record of it ever being part of the original murder scene.

My biggest problem with this whole announcement—besides actually naming Kosminski as the Ripper when there is zero proof that he killed even this one woman—is the lack of data. Science works as a transparent system. Show me the DNA gels and then I’ll maybe be on board, but only as far as a DNA match goes. As far as I’m concerned, the identity of Jack the Ripper remains undetermined.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Forensic Case Files: Viking Shieldmaidens, or How Forensic Anthropology Changed Our View of History

Nineth century Viking burial with sword and knife from Memorial Park, Islandbridge; Dublin, Ireland.It’s not very often that I rant about science, but, oh boy, the story that caught my attention this past week totally set me off. As a career scientist, my day job is all about having a hypothesis and then setting out to prove (or disprove) it. Sometimes you don’t get the results you thought you’d get, but, as I tell my grad students, your results are your results. They’re not wrong, they just are. If you included all of the appropriate controls and conducted the experiment properly at least twice, then this is the truth of the science. You don’t convince yourself of something; instead, the data leads the way to the study’s end result. This is how objective science works. Period.

Recently, researchers at the University of Western Australia decided that previous research teams weren’t being specific enough in their study of Viking remains. The research concerned graves found in England dating back to Viking invasions prior to the 10^th century. It was believed that the overwhelming proportion of Vikings migrating to England at the time was male, with only a very few females in the party, often identified as camp followers. But personal and place names from the area as well as modern mitochondrial DNA relating back to that time implied that there must have been more women present than originally thought. Shane McLeod (currently at the University of Sterling) decided to study that disconnect more closely.

Previously, when examining remains within Viking graves, archeologists sexed the occupants simply by their grave goods—the presence of buried weapons indicated male remains, while females were identified by a traditional oval brooch. Some of this research was done before the science of osteology became well-established, but some publications dating into the 21^st century still use grave goods as the only method of sexing remains. Despite having the knowledge at their fingertips to sex the remains based on well-established osteological markers—sex determination from either the skull or the pelvis—they based their conclusions that Viking invaders/warriors were comprised only of males from a superficial examination of the graves.

However, when the University of Western Australia team went back to actually examine the bones themselves, they determined that a full fifty percent of Vikings buried with weapons were actually women. Surprise!

A hundred years ago, it was not possible to use forensic anthropology techniques to determine skeletal age because the science was in its infancy and wasn’t understood to any great extent. But today, there is absolutely no reason to make gender-biased assumptions instead of stating scientific fact because the research team is only looking at part of the picture. Now, to be fair, sometimes remains are degraded because of age and weathering, but for remains with clear osteological markers, there is no excuse for not completing a full examination. In this case, out of the 14 skeletons examined, 6 were determined to be female, 7 were determined to be male, and only 1 was indistinguishable due to degradation of the remains.

Many saw this result as the battle cry of the Viking shieldmaiden. While the fact that some of the women were buried with weapons isn’t conclusive evidence of those same women fighting on the battlefield, the lack of grave weapons is also not conclusive that a particular woman was not a shieldmaiden. That part of the story is yet to be resolved. However, what is clear is that the current overwhelming view of men as the only Viking invaders of England is not correct. Thanks, forensic anthropology, for clearing that up!

Photo credit: Carrie Morgan

State Police Crime Lab Tour: Ballistics

In this final installment of my tour of the Springfield Massachusetts State Police crime lab, we’re going to cover ballistics. Lieutenant John Crane was our guide through the world of ballistics, which was an eye opener for me and my daughters who are all gun control-loving Canadians. In fact, when we told Lieutenant Crane that we’d barely ever seen guns and had certainly never held one, he immediately handed us several different ones. Maybe not a big deal for the Americans in the crowd, some of whom consider guns a daily part of life, but it definitely was a surreal experience for us!

Ballistics:

• The ballistics division has three primary roles:

1) Respond to shootings, reconstruct the scene, and collect all firearms’ evidence.

2) Test evidentiary firearms.

3) Compare fired items.

• A ballistics officer will go to a victim’s autopsy to retrieve the evidence as it’s removed from the body. This maintains chain of custody.

• The unit responds to all suicides by firearms simply for practice and to learn new ways for bullets to behave inside the human body.

• Springfield has a population of 150,000. There is approximately 1 gun crime/week, and 15 - 20 murders/year are gun related. This number would be higher, but Springfield is home to one of the country’s top trauma hospitals (Bay State) and they save many victims who would likely die in other locations.

• The National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) is the AFIS equivalent for cartridge cases. It helps identify the cartridge, but it doesn’t actually put the gun in any one individual’s hands, so it has limited use.

• There is only a 3% chance of successfully identifying a fingerprint from a gun. It is not possible to pick up a print from the textured grip, only from the barrel or the magazine. But the hot gases produced during firing can destroy the fingerprint and will absolutely destroy any DNA that might be on the firearm.

• The ballistics division has three different ways to test-fire a gun for comparison of either the bullet or casing to the recovered evidence:

1) The snail—a very large metal box with an inner, snail-like curl. The bullet is fired into the box and circles through the curl to fall out, spent, at the end. The bullet gets flattened and is of no use for comparison, but the cartridge pops clear, so this is an excellent method for cartridge matching.

2) The water tank—a ten-foot long metal box filled with water with a firing tube at one end. Bullets up to .50 caliber can be fired into the tank, but hollow points bullets can’t be tested since they break apart only a foot or so into the tank. Otherwise, it’s an excellent firing tool for most handguns. Most bullets only go a few feet into the tank before falling to the bottom. Advice from the ballistics officer, Lieutenant Crane—if you’re being shot at, jump into the nearest body of water because it’s like firing into cement. (Jen’s aside—Mythbusters has confirmed this).

3) The cotton box—an eight-foot long metal box filled with rolled cotton, separated in one-foot dividers of cardboard, and with a firing tube at one end. When a bullet is fired into the box, it spins through the cotton, picking up strands until it becomes enmeshed in a ball of cotton and stops. When the bullet is retrieved, it’s in absolutely pristine condition for direct comparison. This is the only way to test fire hollow point bullets.

• The ballistics officers use a two-headed Olympus microscope with an attached digital readout for performing evidentiary comparisons (see above photo). Lieutenant Crane was kind enough to go through a comparison for us and even showed us the evidence from a fatal shooting just the week before. When comparing evidence, officers like to have two different areas of agreement, but one extremely strong area of agreement will be sufficient if that’s all they can get. A minimum of two people have to check the evidence to agree with the match.
  

All in all it was a fascinating tour and I definitely got some new ideas for upcoming novels. Thank you once again to Detective Lieutenant Holleran, Sergeant Heffernan and Lieutenant Crane for taking the time to introduce us to their real world forensics!

Photo credit: Jack of Spades

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The Seymour Agency’s 1st Literacy Fundraiser:

We at the Seymour Agency are raising money throughout September for #LiteracyMatters. Stop by the agency blog for our auction of great prizes such as signed books, swag, professional editor calls, and manuscript critiques: http://seymouragency.blogspot.ca/; all money raised will go to support the Southwest Florida Literacy Council Gulf Coast. Bidding goes from September 1 – 30, 2014, so don’t miss out on these great prizes. I’m donating signed hardcover copies of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. And, as an extra bonus, the lucky winner will also get a hot-off-the-presses advanced reading copy of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, which won’t be available to the general public until February of 2015. Want to find out what happens next with Matt and Leigh? Sto by http://seymouragency.blogspot.ca/2014/09/auction-item-36-jen-j-danna-books.html and bid for your chance to find out long before everyone else. So I hope to see you all bidding in September!

State Police Crime Lab Tour: Evidence and Criminalistics

It’s part two of our series based around my tour of Springfield’s Massachusetts State Police crime lab. Today, we’re talking about evidence handling in the lab as well as criminalistics. And stay tuned at the end of the post for some important information on how you can get your hands on an advanced reading copy of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, book five in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, months before it becomes commercially available.

Evidence:

• Most evidence is dropped off by the investigating officer, but some municipal police departments have evidence officers whose job it is to deliver evidence. This can be problematic since the investigating officer is not present if the technician has any questions about the information on the forms accompanying the evidence.

• Once there, new evidence labels are added and detailed to maintain the chain of custody.

• Any drugs that come in are immediately heat-sealed before being stored.

• All evidence is temporarily stored in the evidence room before being sent out to the appropriate lab or testing facility. Case numbers on the box or envelope are in the format of: xx(year)-xxxxxx(case number). Some cases I saw were from ‘80s or ‘90s (cold cases) but most are from 2013 or 2014.

Criminalistics:

• For me, criminalistics was a typical wet lab, and very similar to my own.

• They process clothing, sex assault kits, weapons, all biological samples (i.e. blood, saliva or semen), and gunshot residue. They also carry out blood stain pattern analysis on scene or on evidence brought into the lab.

• 

  The lab contains a separate room with several alternative light sources. These light sources can be used to visualize human biological fluids like saliva, sweat, semen which all fluoresce. Contrary to most TV crime shows, blood does not fluoresce under alternative light sources. In fact, it tends to darken and be less visible.

• The lab has special test cards to indicate the likely sample type of biological fluids. However this can’t be used for confirmation as there are several well known false indicators. For example, the test for semen gives false positives for mold and feces; while saliva can also be found normally in breast milk and feces.

• Blood is tested in situ in the field by swabbing the substance and transferring it to filter paper. Several chemicals are added; if blood is present, the filter paper will immediately turn blue. If there is no immediate reaction, then the substance is not blood.

• All DNA samples are processed only at the Maynard lab location.

Next week will be the final post in this series as we delve into the science of ballistics. See you then!

Photo credit: JustGrimes and University of Michigan

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The Seymour Agency’s 1st Literacy Fundraiser:

We at the Seymour Agency are raising money throughout September for #LiteracyMatters. Stop by the agency blog for our auction of great prizes such as signed books, swag, professional editor calls, and manuscript critiques: http://seymouragency.blogspot.ca/; all money raised will go to support the Southwest Florida Literacy Council Gulf Coast. Bidding goes from September 1 – 30, 2014, so don’t miss out on these great prizes. I’m donating signed hardcover copies of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. And, as an extra bonus, the lucky winner will also get a hot-off-the-presses advanced reading copy of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, which won’t be available to the general public until February of 2015. Want to find out what happens next with Matt and Leigh? This is your chance. So I hope to see you all bidding in September!

State Police Crime Lab Tour: Fingerprinting and Tread Analysis

Climbing a mountain was pretty neat, but another highlight of my recent trip to Massachusetts was a tour of one of the regional Massachusetts State Police Crime labs. Many, many thanks to Detective Lieutenant Michael Holleran for making this tour of the Springfield lab happen. Detective Lieutenant Holleran was kind enough to be my technical advisor on fingerprinting past and present when we were writing TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, and he went to the trouble of setting up the tour, and then drove all the way across the state to meet and stay with us the entire time. Once again, we couldn’t write what we do without the generous help of the officers and staff of the Massachusetts State Police!

I was going to include all the information about the tour in a single blog post. But when the ever-stalwart Ann came back to me this ‘this blog post is toooooooo long’, I decided it needed to be cut into manageable chunks because this is very dense information. So, today, we’re going to cover crime scene services in the lab, primarily fingerprinting and casting. Next week will cover evidence handling and criminalistics. And then in our final week, we’ll cover ballistics, the largest section and truly deserving of a post of its own.

Detective Lieutenant Holleran (Crime Scene Services), Sergeant Ken Heffernan (Crime Scene Services), and Lieutenant John Crane (ballistics) took us through the Springfield crime lab that serves not only the Massachusetts State Police, but also many of the surrounding municipal forces. All three men are troopers who do everything in their area of the lab—they go out to the crime scene, gather evidence, and then return to the lab to analyze it. There are currently eight officers in the Springfield crime lab that are part of fingerprinting and crime scene services, and three officers in ballistics. All biological work in the criminalistics and biologics units, and much of the other testing (drug chemistry, arson, DNA, alcohol testing, and trace evidence) is performed by civilian forensic scientists.

Fingerprinting (part of Crime Scene Services): 

• All fingerprint evidence is handled in a designated fingerprint lab.

• Officers use a defined flowchart of test protocols to run on each print, starting at the top and working their way down, stopping after the first successful print development. Multiple tests can be run on the same print as long as the designated order is followed.

• UV light sources can be used to visualize prints on non-porous surfaces. Some prints can only be visualized and photographed this way; when they are chemically developed, no print appears.

• AFIS databases are accessed using MorphoTrak software. Massachusetts is the first state to link directly to the FBI database via third party software. Sergeant Heffernan ran one of his current cases for us—a break and enter with a fingerprint picked up through the mesh of a window screen. It took nine minutes for the resulting multi-point comparison match.

• Even after a positive AFIS result, the print must be confirmed by the human eye. In total, 3 officers must agree on the comparison for it to be considered a positive match.

• In the past, inked fingerprints have been standard, but over the last 10 years, live fingerprint scanning has gradually spread throughout the state. Troopers have live fingerprint scanners out in the field to be able to scan prints in situ instead of having to transfer evidence back to the lab. This kind of mobile fingerprinting also allows for faster identification of any deceased persons on scene.

• Live fingerprint scanners reject bad prints, but a good inked print will always have better resolution than a live scan, so troopers are still taught how to do classic inked prints by the Crime Scene Services officers since most troopers take their own perp prints out in the field.

Tread Analysis (part of Crime Scene Services):

• Casts are used to identify both shoe treads and tire tracks.

• Casts are taken using Denstone^®, a dental stone used for impressions because it has only 0.1% shrinkage with drying. Due to its ability to maintain its shape and size, it can be used for direct comparisons between the cast and the actual shoe or tire.

• Sergeant Heffernan feels that shoeprints are the most overlooked evidence and could be used much more effectively. For instance, the unique wear on shoes as well as any individual markings can be used to conclusively identify footwear present at the scene.

• There is an extensive tire tread database available for comparison. There is also a database for shoes, but it’s expensive because there are so many different types of shoes, and it must be constantly updated.

We’ll be back next week with a trip through the evidence room and the criminalistics lab. See you then!

Photo credit: Jessica Newton Photography

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The Seymour Agency’s 1st Literacy Fundraiser:

Naples, Florida (July 2014) - The Seymour Agency has announced it will be hosting a fundraiser to support the Literacy Council Gulf Coast through a national online auction taking place during the month of September. Industry editors, agents, and authors have donated critiques, phone chats, and goody packages as prizes.

Everyone deserves the time and means for the luxury of reading. Literacy Council Gulf Coast works with underprivileged youth and adults to provide quality literary education needed to function in today’s society.

The online auction will go live in phases on September 1, 2014 and bidding will end on September 30, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. with the largest bid received winning.

If you are not interested in the items up for auction, please consider a cash donation through CrowdRise. CrowdRise is a convenient way to donate money to charities.