Tampa forensics experts to teach techniques in Nigeria

When she is not teaching University of South Florida students the finer points of forensic anthropology, Erin Kimmerle, assistant professor of anthropology, works some of the world's most notorious crime scenes, looking for evidence that will help identify a newly discovered set of bones.

When he is not out at a crime scene, looking for evidence that will help lead to a murder conviction, Tampa police Detective Charles Massucci uses his considerable skills as an interviewer trying to get into the minds of killers.

Over the summer, Kimmerle and Massucci, along with USF professors Elizabeth Bird and Fraser Ottanelli, will travel to Nigeria to help teach medical students the basics of forensics investigation techniques.

And help Nigerians unravel the mystery of Asaba, where hundreds of men and boys were thought to have been massacred in October 1967 during the nation's bloody civil war.

It is no academic exercise, says Kimmerle, a world-renowned researcher who has taken part in many well-publicized local forensic investigations. The subjects included Abraham Shakespeare, the Florida lottery winner who was killed in April 2009; Sandra Prince, a social worker missing since 2006; and Lisa Mowrey, whose bones were recently located along Interstate 75 after she disappeared in 2004.

Forensics, Kimmerle says, "is a foundation of human rights."

In Nigeria, those rights have been lacking, Kimmerle says.

"In the past two years, there have been more than 1,000 extrajudicial killings of suspects, innocent civilians, multinational oil workers and politicians by the police, the military forces, vigilante groups and armed militants in various parts of Nigeria," she says. "All of judicial reform is based on forensic sciences. What good is law if you cannot enforce it?"

3 forensic pathologists in Nigeria

The USF team has its work cut out.

With 150 million people, Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation and also one of the world's largest democracies.

But even Nigerians admit their criminal justice system is woeful.

Forget the more-advanced forensic sciences employed by Kimmerle and Massucci - such as botany, serology, soil observations, and blood-splatter and DNA analysis.

Nigerian law enforcement rarely takes fingerprints, according to a 2009 study widely reported in the nation's media. Investigators deal with a scarcity of modern equipment and labs, according to the study, and show little interest in understanding or using the techniques Kimmerle and Massucci routinely employ.

How bad are things in Nigeria?

There are only three forensic pathologists in the country.

"One of the major problems facing investigators in solving crime riddles is the critical dearth of forensic science and tools," Fola Authur-Worrey, former solicitor general of Lagos state, told the Nigerian media. "Many crimes are committed in the dark, in secret, out of sight, that it is almost impossible to obtain statement from eyewitness, identifying the actual participants on which to base a successful arrest and prosecution."

The USF group will arrive at a time of change, says John Obafunwa, one of Nigeria's three forensic pathologists and, as provost of the Lagos State University College of Medicine, the person Kimmerle has been working with for several years to set up this joint venture between their universities.

The Nigerian legislature is about to pass a law establishing a DNA database to better investigate crimes and identify corpses.

And Lagos State's medical college plans to open a state-of-the-art forensics lab in about two years, Obafunwa says.

The changes cannot come soon enough, he says.

"Forensic science here is still rudimentary, despite the fact that we have been independent for almost 50 years," Obafunwa says via cell phone from Lagos State.

Obafunwa says he, with help from the USF team, is trying to make advancements.

Last year, with the help of Kimmerle and the University of Nebraska, Lagos State's medical college created a master's program in forensic science and medicine, Obafunwa says.

This summer, the USF team will build on that relationship, Obafunwa says, by helping to foster an understanding of and appreciation for the importance of forensics. Now, when Obafunwa conducts a death investigation, he has to send toxicology and DNA samples to labs in the United States.

The USF team, he says, will help train students in Lagos so that when its forensic lab opens, "we will be able to do most of this locally," says Obafunwa.

USF team has much to teach

Sitting in a USF classroom, Kimmerle and Massucci talk enthusiastically about their upcoming trip.

Travel and timing details are being worked out, Kimmerle says.

But this much she knows. A lot of time, she says, will be spent in a morgue, teaching students what to look for during a death investigation.

"I can't get away from it," jokes Massucci, who, in addition to his duties as a homicide detective, has a master's degree in U.S. history and teaches a forensics class at USF.

Kimmerle has traveled the globe for forensic investigations, researching mass murders in Kosova, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

This will be Massucci's first trip to Nigeria.

The opportunity, he says, is "very exciting."

"My contribution to this may be to start building some level of communications between the law enforcement community and the academic-medical community," says Massucci, a 20-year police veteran who has spent the past six years as a homicide detective.

Massucci says he wants to help teach Nigerians about what works in Tampa, which he cites as a national model for the cooperation between law enforcement and medical examiners.

Among the things he hopes to teach are identifying and securing crime scenes, minimizing contamination, proper evidence collection and forensic techniques such as ballistics, serology and DNA analysis.

These tools, he says, "ultimately give you the best opportunity, in addition to crime-scene reconstruction, to identify suspects and perpetrators."

Bird, a USF anthropology professor who specializes in cultural heritage, and Ottanelli, chairman of the USF Department of History, will spend more of their time in Nigeria researching what happened in Asaba, Bird says.

If Obafunwa has his way, Kimmerle and Massucci will spend time there, too, overseeing exhumations and helping teach medical students how to secure a crime scene and identify remains.

Though Nigeria has a long way to go, Kimmerle says that from her experience, there is a lot of interest in forensic science there.

"The last time I was in Nigeria, in 2008, when I got off the plane, I saw someone selling 'CSI' videos," she says.