Forensics Unwrapped
Mummy Investigators Solve the Ultimate Cold Case Files
This article was originally published in the December 2004 / January 2005 issue of CLASnotes.
To look at doctoral candidate Heather Walsh-Haney—a vivacious and outgoing woman so full of life—you would never guess she is an up and coming expert in the science of the dead. The Chicago native originally pursued a career in hotel and restaurant management, moving to Florida in her early 20s to oversee operations at a St. Petersburg Hilton hotel. Now 36 and only a few months shy of defending her doctoral dissertation, the anthropology student has been tapped by the Discovery Channel to co-host a new series, Mummy Autopsy, in which she uses cutting-edge forensic science to unwrap clues about some of the world’s most intriguing mummies.
Walsh-Haney enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Florida in 1994 with the intention of studying cultural anthropology. But after William Maples, then director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at UF, paid a visit to her biological anthropology class, she became deeply fascinated with the field of forensic anthropology. “I was just swept away by the notion that what we learn in anthropology and studying bones and human behaviors can be used to solve a crime,” she says. Shortly after that, Walsh-Haney set up an appointment to talk with Maples about the possibility of volunteering in his lab. He took her on as an assistant and she has worked for the Pound Lab ever since.
One of the busiest forensic anthropology laboratories in the US, the Pound Lab handles between 100–120 cases annually. Under the direction of Anthony Falsetti, the lab works with 24 medical examiners in Florida, and has offices in New York, Georgia, Texas and Alabama to help law enforcement officers answer questions about how a person died. Experts in skeletal remains, forensic anthropologists are able to examine clues as to how populations of people might have lived, how old they were when they died, if they were female or male, diseases they might have had, and types of trauma they may have experienced and relate their traumas to climate, warfare or occupation.
Walsh-Haney examines a 3,500-year-old sarcophagus on location in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for the Discovery Channel’s Mummy Autopsy.
The next generation of crime scene investigators learn the tricks of the trade in Walsh-Haney’s forensic anthropology honors course which culminates in a mock crime scene behind Hume Hall.
Working closely with local law enforcement and the government, forensic anthropologists often help solve crimes and identify individuals who died in mass disasters, wars, homicides, suicides or accidental deaths. The Pound Lab, recognized internationally as one of the world’s best training grounds for forensic anthropologists, has handled a series of high profile cases since its inception in 1991—including the investigations of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of US President Zachary Taylor, Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro and civil rights advocate Medgar Evers. It was the Pound Lab’s international reputation that inspired Kate Botting, series producer of Mummy Autopsy, to look at UF when recruiting hosts for her show.
“Towards the end of 2003, we began a mass search to find the right presenters,” Botting says. “It took two months, looking throughout Europe and America. We were looking for presenters who had an adventurous spirit, were well respected in their field, and had the ability to convey complex ideas in a way the audience can understand. Heather has been fantastic.”
Walsh-Haney was asked by Botting to audition and was chosen as one of five expert presenters on the series’ mummy investigation team. Anthropology alumnus John Schultz, who received a PhD in 2003 and is now an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, is also a co-host. The show premiered on December 7 during Egypt Week and will continue for 13 weeks, with a new episode airing each Tuesday night at 9 p.m. A complete episode guide can be accessed online at www.discovery.com. Walsh-Haney presents her work in four shows this season and has a five-year contract with the Discovery Channel.
“It has been fantastic because I have been able to look at skeletonized remains that I would never have had the chance to see this early in my career,” she says. “I got to look at an Iron Age warrior, Egyptian mummies, and help solve cases in Wyoming of cowboys long dead.”
One of only a handful of graduate students at UF majoring in forensic anthropology, Walsh-Haney is among a select few in a field that is becoming more popular. Undergraduates interested in becoming forensic anthropologists usually major in psychology, anthropology or biology and then, if admitted into graduate school at UF, they can pursue an MS and PhD in anthropology with a focus in forensics.
According to Allan Burns, who served as chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1998 until assuming his current post as the CLAS associate dean for faculty affairs this fall, roughly one-third to one-half of UF anthropology undergraduates are interested in becoming forensic anthropologists, though the department is only able to take on one or two new forensic anthropology graduate students each year. To better prepare students for graduate school, the department is in the process of adding a BS degree in addition to its BA in anthropology. He says the college also is considering creating an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree in forensic sciences.
“This field is hot right now. With shows like CSI and Patricia Cornwell novels, the popular interest has greatly increased,” Burns says. “I think the newfound interest in forensics also reflects a change in students’ worldview. Forensic anthropology is a place where you can use very hard sciences—like DNA work and chemistry—and have a very applicable social impact. Today’s students are bringing a broader skill set to the university, and forensic anthropology allows students with a very strong science background to use molecular biology to solve crimes and human rights cases.”
Forensic anthropologists can even help solve mysteries hundreds of years old. In the 1990s, experts from the Pound Lab were invited by the Russian government to serve on the team of international scientists that positively identified the newfound remains of the Russian Imperial family—the Romanovs—executed by Bolsheviks in 1918. Maples and Falsetti were able to identify the remains of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, as well as those of his wife Alexandra, their older daughters Olga and Tatiana, the family doctor and three servants. Two bodies were missing—the young prince, Alexei, and one of the two younger daughters, Anastasia or Maria. Though the remains of one of the two younger princesses were discovered in the mass family grave, it is widely disputed whether they were those of Maria or the legendary Anastasia.
Connie Mulligan, a biological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology and associate director of UF’s Genetics Institute, was recently commissioned by the Hispanic television network Univision to determine whether the 24-year-old remains of a Colombian woman were those of Maria. By comparing DNA evidence of the living daughter of the woman who had claimed in life to be the missing Maria Romanov to samples recovered from Empress Alexandra, Mulligan was able to debunk the Colombian family’s claims. She was interviewed on the hit Univision newsmagazine, Primer Impacto, which aired in late November.
Walsh-Haney, in the first episode of Mummy Autopsy, traveled to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh to determine whether the 3,500-year-old remains of an Egyptian woman and a young child are those of a queen and her descendent. It is a far cry from her days at the Hilton. During the past ten years Walsh-Haney has spent at UF, she has worked on numerous forensic cases, including identifying victims from the airplane crash of ValuJet flight 592 that went down in the Florida Everglades in 1996 and victims from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. To keep her wits when dealing with such heartbreaking cases, Walsh-Haney says it helps to debrief with co-workers.
“Unfortunately, we deal on a smaller scale with that kind of human tragedy every day,” she says. “There is a banter that exists between us that keeps everyone going—we know that we are helping this person and bringing them justice. Part of living is dying, and since we will always have people who die before their time, we will always need people to investigate it.”
—Buffy Lockette
Photo:
Courtesy James Murrell (Sarcophagus);
Jane Dominguez (Mock Crime Scene)