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Learning Where Bodies Are Buried

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By VALERIE KALFRIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 14, 2007

TAMPA - Crime scene technician Maria Ramirez crouched inside a hole about 2 feet deep, skimming a trowel across the dirt and the roots at the bottom.

The curve of something - possibly a rib or a limb - began to rise from the sand.

University of South Florida graduate assistant Casey Anderson leaned into the hole and gestured to Ramirez, who works with the Tampa Police Department. "See how this sand is all different colors?" Anderson said. "That's a good indicator something's there."

The two were among about 20 people working inside 400 acres of the university's ecological research park off Fletcher Avenue on Thursday. Away from the traffic, where lichens blossom and dried deer moss puffs from the ground like cotton, are hidden graves, planted there to teach law-enforcement professionals and future forensic scientists how to find them.

This week, forensic specialists from USF and elsewhere demonstrated how they unearth these clandestine burial sites at a workshop for homicide detectives and crime-scene technicians.

The workshop included excavating four pig carcasses donated by USF's medical college that professors and graduate students buried about six months earlier, some with clothing or other items for a realistic experience.

"One of the sites had a whiskey bottle and three cartridge cases," said Tampa police Sgt. Jack Waters, head of the department's forensic unit and one of the instructors.
Forensic anthropology can provide families with closure by locating a missing person or helping detectives solve a slaying, said USF forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle. She recently consulted with investigators searching a South Tampa yard for the remains of a missing Temple Terrace woman, Sandra Prince.

Kimmerle has planned two other workshops next year to demonstrate facial reconstruction and age-progression in images of missing people.

"It's a way to apply science to real-world problems. It feels like it has a lot of meaning, a lot of application beyond just knowledge," said Kimmerle, a former chief forensic anthropologist for the United Nations who has done field work across the country, as well as in Bermuda and Eastern Europe.

This week's attendees mostly came from law enforcement agencies in Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Hillsborough counties, although one, Henry Schmidt of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, traveled from Wyoming. Each paid $625 tuition, Kimmerle said.

"I think it's of great value," Schmidt said between hoists of his shovel. "I use the professionals I've met here as a resource to bring resolution to some of these cases."

After attending lectures, the group divided into four crews Wednesday to locate graves in the park. They tried ground-penetrating radar, metal probes that tested the earth's solidity, even spotting disturbances with the naked eye.

Tampa police homicide Detective Brionne Thomas noticed the soil became dark when her crew discovered a grave. "The levels of the sand will change color with bacteria and organic material," she said.

Excavation began Thursday. First, each crew taped off an area at least 1 meter by 2 meters and divided it into segments. They dug down an inch or so at a time, sifting each shovelful for items such as teeth or hair.

Anything they found was first photographed at the site, then measured from the edges of the grave and at its depth. If it couldn't be picked up easily by hand, the crew worked at it with trowels and paintbrushes to keep it intact. Everything unearthed was collected in paper bags and labeled. Any bones or tissue will be reburied for additional research, Kimmerle said.

"This is the south wall of Grid Three. Fifty-five centimeters," said Manatee County sheriff's Deputy Steve Woodford, calling out the location of a tattered piece of cloth. "I feel like I'm on 'Cops' or CSI or something."

Not quite. Unlike television shows in which a grave is unearthed between the commercials, some of the crews had yet to dislodge large pieces of bone after three hours.

Several of the students marveled at how long the work takes.

Waters grinned. "This is the hardest working science there is," he said.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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