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Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.
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Liberty. Liberty.
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Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. I'm Anya, and today we're going to talk to a famous forensic anthropologist who also dreamed up a famous fictional forensic anthropologist.
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Content Warning this episode contains discussion of murder and violence.
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The career of Dr. Kathy Reichs is so distinctive because she's both renowned in the world of true crime and in the realm of crime fiction. That is quite a unique career.
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Let's go over her real world work as a forensic anthropologist. She majored in Anthropology at American University. Then she got a Master of Arts in Physical Anthropology at Northwestern University and stuck around there for her PhD in physical anthropology.
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Since then, she's taught at plenty of institutions of higher learning and consulted for the Office of the Chief Medical examiner in North Carolina. She is certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, one of only about 100 forensic anthropologists to be certified.
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She's a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She now divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Montreal, Quebec, in Canada.
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Now let's get into the crime fiction side of her career. She's also the author behind a widely known fictional forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan. She got her start with fiction and that wonderful character. With her debut novel, Deja Dead, she's since come out with 25 books, mostly novels, and a short story collection about Dr. Temperance Brennan. These are chilling, entertaining, and gripping reads that really dig deep, so to speak, about the work of a forensic anthropologist who helps the police solve crimes. They're lots of fun and I really have enjoyed them for years.
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Dr. Brennan is an interesting character because she not only is the star of a fictional book series, but also a television series. Bones was a police procedural starring Emily Deschanel and David Oriannas airing on Fox. It came out on September 13, 2005 and ended on March 28, 2017, after 12 seasons. Dr. Rides was a producer on the show.
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We got the chance to talk with Dr. Rites about her latest book in the series, Evil bones, released on November 18, 2025. You all should check it out. It's a gripping, twisted mystery about a killer who targets local animals, only to start preying on humans as well. It's not a book we wanted to read in front of Nick to avoid freaking him out, but it's very, very good. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
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And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
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And this is the Murder Sheet.
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We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.
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And this is fiction and forensic anthropology. A conversation with Dr. Kathy Reichs.
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It.
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To get started. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate you taking the time.
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C
Oh, well, thank you for inviting me.
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Before we get into your latest book, your latest novel, I want to go all the way back and just ask, what drew you to forensic anthropology in the first place?
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C
Oh, my goodness, the cops did. I wrote a short story in a book, a collection called. What was it called? A Collection of Bones or something like that. There's four novellas in there, and one of them is Tempe Brennan's origin story. And she's sitting in her office and cops come and she's planning to do bioarchaeology for her whole career. That's what her Ph.D. is in. That's what my Ph.D. is in. And because she's the bones lady out at the university, cops come to her. They've there's a skeleton has been found. They don't know who to go to for expertise, so. Well, let's go to that bones lady out at the university. Well, that's exactly how I started. That's how I did my first case. And While I, I love archaeology, I love bioarchaeology, I found it fascinating. It just didn't have the. I really found forensics compelling because it had relevance. You could really impact somebody's life. And that's, you know, archaeology is fascinating, but you're probably not going to impact anyone's life in publishing articles on it. So I like that. I retrained and I've been doing the forensics ever since. And that's same thing for my character.
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A
Wow, that is so. I mean, take us back to that moment where they come in through your door. Like, what was your reaction? Were you surprised that they suddenly wanted your expertise?
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C
Yes, I can remember because they look like fish out of water, you know, cops in an academic setting. Or you could tell they were probably academics by the way they move, by the way they talk, by the way they dressed primarily. So, yeah, I was a little bit surprised, but I was certainly willing to help them. And I remember the case. It was a little girl who had gone missing four or five months earlier. Five year, five or six year old girl. And I remember thinking about her while she, in the early days, they're still searching because there was this thunderstorm and I remember thinking, is she out there in this thunderstorm all alone or worse, not alone, you know. And then of course they found the little skeleton and that's the case they, they came to me for. So that's how I got into it once I started doing that. And it's not like every bioarchaeologist, which is a person with an archaeologist with a specialty in human skeleton. Not everyone has the expertise to do forensic work. So I did a lot of retraining because you do things in forensics you don't do in archaeology. Chain of evidence maintenance and testimony in court. And you know, there's just a lot of those aspects to it. And then I, occasionally I would get, I'm pretty much retired now, but occasionally I would get an archaeological. Something that turned out to be archaeological in origin, but it's human bones. So the authorities don't know. So they call, hopefully they call a forensic anthropologist. And then if you can say, oh, this is, you know, this is like 400 years old, they turn it over to the archaeologists. But it's fun to get one of those cases every now and then.
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A
Yeah, no, I bet, because, I mean, that's such an interesting historical. I know we had in Indiana recently a skull found that turned out to be like thousands of years old. You'd rather that than like an ongoing murder case.
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C
I Guess I did part of my data collection at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, upstairs. Rawls Hall, I think it was called. And it was like July and August, and it was like a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And it was not air conditioned. I remember that. Not. Not so fondly, but yeah, they have amazing collections that. Well, I don't know if they still do, but that's so cool.
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A
I imagine there's some archaeological sites too, I can think of, like Jamestown, where there's like, evidence of murder and cannibalism. With some of those.
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C
That's the.
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That's the combination of both worlds.
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C
There you go.
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A
I guess for our listeners who might be thinking, okay, that sounds really cool, but what exactly is forensic anthropology? Can you take us through sort of the discipline as a whole and kind of contextualize that?
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C
Yes, everybody's specialized these days. So anthropology divides into four subspecialties. Cultural anthropology, which is like Margaret Mead going out and studying living cultures. Archaeology, which is digging up and analyzing ancient cultures. Linguistics, which is languages. And then physical or biological anthropology, which is looking at humans, either living human biology or ancient humans who have been recovered. And then you get what you can derive from their remains, from the bones themselves. So the bioarchaeology is the aspect that attracted me because it addresses questions of social interaction among people and how societies work, but also through the biological aspects themselves, the remains themselves. What can you tell about from that? About demographics? How long people lived? Did women live longer than men? Were women dying of things different from men? Childbirth, for example, what was child mortality, et cetera? Those kinds of things can be addressed through the. Through the bones.
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A
And then when it comes to actually employing those skills and that knowledge to sort of a possible crime being brought into it by investigators, how does that tend to play out?
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C
Well, you're looking at the bones, you're looking at the same thing. So you're able to derive similar information. The questions fall into a number of fairly narrow categories. It might be, well, who is this? You know, it might be a question of identification. Somebody stumbled across bones in the woods or a skeleton or decomp. It's not just bones that we work on. There's burned and mutilated and mummified and decomposed and skeletal. You know, who is it might be the question because you don't have fingerprints, prints. You don't maybe have DNA. And then what happened? And that's more where we're focusing now, because DNA is so powerful in figuring out the who is it? The what happened to that person? And how did they end up buried in a shallow grave? Or how did they end up washed ashore, you know, in this river? Those are the questions that the only information you may have are the bones themselves and the immediate context in which they're found.
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A
I love reading the Temperance Brennan novels because they're so, I mean, like, I just. You feel like you're put in there, but at the same time, I always think when I read these, because you talk about like mummified people in water, people have been burned. That sounds so freaky to me. And I know, I mean, I'm like a true crime podcaster, so I'm pretty morbid, but I'm like, oh, man, that would be. Is it difficult to sort of get used to dealing with some of those human remains, or is that something that you kind of become accustomed to pretty quickly?
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C
I. Well, I don't think everybody's the same. I think there are some people that never become accustomed to that. I can remember being in the autopsy room with like a decomposed body and big, strong male cops, you know, keeling over or having to leave because of the odors or because of the sights or something like that. And yet there may be, you know, this tiny little 18 year old graduate student who's just dandy with it. So part of it is getting used to it and part of it is, I think, your initial makeup going into it. And it's not for everybody, obviously.
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I think I'd be with the cops on that one.
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B
You've been working in this field for so long and you also have found the time to write, I believe, 24 novels. How have you been able to basically do two jobs, each of which is probably more than a full time job on its own?
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C
Yeah, it was actually more like three jobs because I was an academic, I was a university professor, so I was teaching at least for the first couple of books. I wrote the first book. I didn't tell anybody I was writing a novel. If you write a novel in an English department, you're a hero. You write a novel in a science department, not so cool. Anyway, so I didn't tell anybody I was writing it until it was published, of course, and then I had to explain myself. The hard part initially was finding the time to do it because I was teaching a full load of courses at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and I was commuting back and forth between Charlotte, North Carolina, Carolina, and Montreal, Quebec, doing the forensic casework, all the casework for the province up there. And I had three kids. So Just finding the time. I wrote the first book. I am not a dawn person, but I would get up at 6 and I would write for a couple hours before going onto campus. And so it took two years to write, to write and summer vacations and every vacation and weekends and stuff. So it took two years to write that first book. I think after the second book they gave me Sabbatic and I ran that as long as it was legally allowed. I think seven years or something. I was on sabbatical anyway, so it got easier after I didn't have to do the full time teaching load.
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A
And that was where. That's deja dead. That's the first.
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C
That was Deja dead.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That is so cool. I do want to ask you, you mentioned kind of an English professor who writes a book or a novel rather is a hero, but perhaps in the science department not so much. How did, how have your colleagues over
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C
the years reacted to your novels differently on both ends. I remember going in the year the book came out, the first book came out and faculty have what's called your annual salary review or your annual review and it's professional activities, teaching evaluations and something, community service or something. And I remember my chairman saying to me, of course, you know, the novel won't count towards professional activity. And I said of course not. Whereas on the. So they were a little, they didn't, they didn't go out of their way to reward that activity. On the Quebec end I was a little nervous. It. I had a year lag time because before it came out in French and everybody working at the lab, they were all French speakers. So I had a, you know, a year before it got translated and I was a little worried because I did draw fairly closely on some people that I worked with. I disguised them, I hoped, but there were some. It was pretty obvious who I was using and the only people that were annoyed were the people that weren't in the book. So. Yeah, and then people would drop by my lab, my office, my lab and say so do you have any questions about DNA or you know, arson and fire analysis or so they, they, they enjoyed it.
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So they were like pitching themselves for the next book.
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C
Okay, yeah, yeah, I got any questions I can answer and that's amazing.
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I think it's, I think it would be so cool to be in a book like that, honestly. And that's great that you got such a positive reception at least in, at least in Canada. Yeah, enough with over complicating your wardrobe. Stop buying trendy cheap stuff that doesn't last. Curate your style with high quality pieces that you can mix and match. Our wonderful sponsor Quince can help you out with that.
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- [19:29]
B
Not available in all states. That kind of brings up something else too. They want to give you accurate scientific information to put in your book. Just in a novel, it can be difficult just to tell a propulsive, thrilling story. How do you do that and integrate all of this accurate science information, some of which may be difficult for some people to understand?
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C
Yeah, I think of it as like the big three. You have to keep the science accurate, but you have to keep it brief. You can't go on and on pages on mitochondrial deep and you have to keep it entertaining, which is not necessary in writing a textbook. I think it's similar skills to addressing a jury because you want to put it in terms they understand. You don't want to dumb it down, but you want to keep their attention. You don't have to entertain them, but you want to keep their attention and not put them to sleep. So I think it's sort of the same skill set in doing and putting it in terminology that the average person will understand.
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A
Yeah, I always like reading your books and Evil Bones, the book we're talking about today is no exception because I do feel like you learn something when you read them. Like you walk away with maybe a little bit more of an understanding of a field that most of us will never encounter, let alone have any sort of expertise in. In terms of like, did you bring any of your own experiences to Evil Bones, specifically like this, this latest novel that you wrote?
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C
Probably less so than in some books, but certainly yes, if I describe them, you know, at dinner at a restaurant in Charlotte, I've probably gone to dinner at that or made a point of going to that restaurant for dinner in Charlotte or I think it setting it here and it not the only book. This one's entirely in Charlotte, isn't It, it is. Is it?
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A
I think so, yeah.
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C
Okay. Yeah, it's skinny, Skinny Slidell and yeah, the crew down on this end. Yeah, I pay more attention, I know when I go out and I think, well, I could set something here. I pay more attention to, to the kind of details I wouldn't other, like what is the sound of, you know, a plate hitting the table or, or something like that or, you know, when you enter the restaurant. I think I describe it Chinese restaurant, is it? Or.
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A
Yeah, they definitely go to the, that's some key stuff happens in terms of.
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C
Yeah, yeah. So I definitely, you know, take note. I used to actually video. I used to take my little camera and video things. So I'd have all the details later, but I don't do that as much anymore.
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A
But that's really smart. I, I, I was curious, you know, in this case, we know how, how Brennan sort of gets involved and sort of you have police coming to her and whatnot. Is that, is that always how a forensic anthropologist gets involved in a, in a real world criminal case? Just investigators coming in, as they did to you so many years ago, and saying, hey, we need to, can you look at this? Essentially, probably.
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C
I think it's different for everybody. I had a situation where I worked regularly. I was on contract, regular contract at a forensic lab, which is a multidisciplinary lab. We had, you know, DNA and biology and fire and arson and criminalistic, whatever all the sections are. So the cops would come. That's probably. I didn't interact nearly as much with cops as Tempe does. They would come to me. Or it could be a district attorney. It could be. It's not always the cops. It can be. Or more often it would be the medical examiner would realize because, oh, we've got a report of a body, or we've actually got a body that's probably decomposed or skeletal. It's in the woods. So the, hopefully the medical examiner would know enough to bring the proper expert along for the recovery and the analysis. So it could come from the medical examiner, the pathologist, the coroner, whatever system it is, or it could come from the cops or private cases. I've had attorneys approach me and say, you know, we need another opinion on whatever the question is
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A
in this story. You know, you mentioned interactions with law enforcement and how in real life yours were lesser than Brennan's. But when it comes to this story, I noticed, like, some of the law enforcement can be kind of snarky with or dismissive of her, even though she has this Expertise, like, they kind of. They don't necessarily always seem to understand it or realize, like, what the value she brings to the table is. Was that something that was common in your experience, you know, early on or at any point or typically?
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C
No, never. But you have to have conflict between characters. You have to create some tension, or if everybody's, you know, roses and feel good, it's not nearly as interesting a story. So, no, the. The cops with whom I worked were always very appreciative and very respectful. Oh, they gave me a hard time. Don't get me wrong. They were great for. I remember we read a Digging up a body or exhumation, I don't know. There was a pit, and I remember looking down and there were bullet casings in there. And I thought, whoa. But they had tossed them down in there to see if I was going to see them or to see how I was going to react to that, you know, so they would tease, of course, but that's funny.
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B
Can a forensic anthropologist usually tell immediately if bones come from a human being or an animal?
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C
Depends on what you have to work with. I've had cases where all the remains that were found were clearly bone, but they could fit in the palm of your hand. So if you don't have any anatomical features, it can be hard and you might have to do microscopic. You might have to make thin sections and then look at it under a microscope to see, you know, the microstructure of the bone. If you've got any kind of anatomical features, you probably going to be able to say at least human, non human. You might be. Not be able to nail it as to what species it. Well, if it's a rabbit versus a human, obviously any. Anybody could do that. Well, not if you have a very small piece, but you don't always know immediate. Right. Right away, eyeballing it. But often you can. Did that make sense?
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A
It does make sense.
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C
It depends on what you have to work with.
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A
Yeah, obviously this. This book, Evil Bones certainly has, you know, an element of, like, animals. I don't want to really get into any spoiler territory. I would very much encourage our listeners to read it. But, you know, this does get into, in a general sense, you know, abuse of animals and. And harm to animals, possibly escalating into something involving humans being victims. Was that ever a kind of a theme that you had to deal with in. In any case that you worked on?
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C
I didn't. I mean, serial killers are really pretty rare. It is not. It is well known that a common escalation pattern is to go from animals to. To work your way up. And that. That's what happens in this case. It starts out with small animals, a rabbit or a rat or whatever. Bigger animals, pets. And then, you know, so the. The fear throughout the early part of the book, is this perpetrator gonna move over? Is the thrill not gonna be enough? Just with animals, Is there going to be a tipping point or he or she is going to move over to humans? Does that answer your question?
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A
It does and it does. And I'm just curious, did you channel your own love of animals into this book? Because it was very palpable for me where I was like, oh, like, every time they. Every time you introduce, like, a cat, I was like, oh, Jesus.
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C
Yeah. Yeah. And readers, I think, are very forgiving. You can kill off characters, but don't you kill off animals? And they will not be very forgiving of that.
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A
Yeah, I can. I can definitely see that. But I want to go back a little bit, because one thing you mentioned that really was interesting to me was almost the parallel between writing these novels for a general audience and for general enjoyment and jury testimony. And I saw what you mean. It's about bringing the expertise you have to an audience of laypeople. And I guess in terms of your jury testimony, you mentioned some of the things that you would do to try to convey your points to a jury. Do you have any memorable recollections of sort of doing that or putting some of those tactics into place when you're trying to convey that? And, you know, what would work and what wouldn't work?
- [28:08]
C
I remember one time. Oh, gosh, I forget. It was a homicide case. Most of what I worked on would be, you know, somebody got killed. I remember looking out and under defense counsels in that case, it was a witness called by the prosecution. And I remember looking out, and the defense attorney was sitting at his table, and at his feet was a copy of Deja Dead. And I remember waiting for cross examination, waiting for him to get up and say, so Dr. Rikes, is this fact or fiction or something? He never referred to the book. And after the trial or that day's script, court session ended, he just wanted me to sign his copy. Yeah, but that was. And maybe that was a tactic. Maybe it was to, you know, to try to make me nervous or throw me off my game or whatever. I don't know. But I do remember that he was a fan.
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A
That's amazing. There's so much out there where we're talking about, like, you know, CSI Or. Or, you know, any kind of crime scene examination in fiction. It's like a very common theme and sort of topic for fiction writers as well as TV film. Are there any common myths out there about your work? Obviously your work being more specialized than that, but just. Or anything around CSI that really bugs
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C
you when you see it? Well, the most common myth with popular media, whether it's books or TV, is that every case gets solved. Now you've got 48 minutes of air time, and by the end of, you know, by the time the credits roll, the bad guy or the bad girl's been caught and the crime has been solved, that's certainly not the case. Don't ask me what statistics are actually solved versus not solved, but many of them are not resolved successfully. Or you do figure out who it is, but you never figure out who killed them. Or you did figure out who killed them, but that there was. They never could go to trial. But, you know, there's so many things that along the process of investigating homicides. So that's. One myth, is that every case gets solved on bones. We. We certainly fell into that. Into that trap. You know, she was really good at what she did, so. Yeah, but we never used anything that terminology was legit. All the stuff was legit. All the equipment at the Jefferson, Jeffersonian, it was funny. We were going to call it the Smithsonian, and we requested permission from the Smithsonian attorneys. And it was getting down to where we had to put the sign on the side of the truck and the logos on the lab coats and everything. And we were getting down to where we had to do that to get ready to shoot. And they had never said, no, we couldn't, but they never said, yes, we could. So we decided to be safe and just go with Jeffersonian instead of Smithsonian. But I digress.
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B
Talking about the TV show, what are some of the differences in storytelling in a novel as opposed to storytelling on television?
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C
Well, when you're writing a. Not when you're watching tv, it's all there, all the visual. You don't have. You don't have to describe the lab. You don't have to describe what she's wearing or what she. She looks like. The viewer is seeing that. So it really boils down. I'm talking about in writing the script, the screenplay, and I wrote something, some of those for the. For the show. So it really boils down to dialogue and some simple direction. You know, she enters left, stage left, that kind of thing. Whereas in a novel, you have to describe. You have to set the scene and what the characters look like and what they sound like and what the scene looks like and what it smells like. You have to put in all that detail that you don't put into when you're writing. When you're writing a script.
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A
Right.
- [32:06]
B
Was it at all difficult for you? Because when you write a novel, it's just you. But then suddenly when you're doing television, there's actors, there's directors, there's set designers, there's production things. Like you came and used this name or that name. Was that a challenging adjustment?
- [32:21]
C
Well, it's all vetted through the lawyers. So if you make a mistake and put something in, they just take it out. I remember our showrunner, Hart Hanson, who was fantastic from, like, season one. He kept saying, you should write one. You should write a script. And now I don't know. Right? No, it's not my thing. No, you should write one. Give it a shot. I said, I've never written a screenplay. He said, well, you'd never written a novel either, either, you know, and that worked out okay. So I thought, well, he's got a point there. Same thing for going on air. I appeared in one of them. And he kept saying, you got to appear, you got to do at least one. At least one. I kept saying, no, I'm not an on camera kind of gal. He said, david Duchovny is directing this one. I said, okay, I'm there. I'll do it. So I spent two weeks, which is what our shoot was, usually two weeks, sitting between David Boreanis and David Duchovny, which was not. Not bad duty.
- [33:15]
A
That's incredible.
- [33:16]
C
And Ryan o', Neill, that was the first episode he appeared in as well, so. Wow.
- [33:22]
A
And I do want to. I mean, for our listeners who are not familiar, Bones, the TV show is quite different in certain. You know, it's the same character, but it's also like, kind of different versions of the story. Than the book. So you're kind of getting a different experience for both, which is cool.
- [33:38]
C
You know, initially when the show came on and people would say, oh, she's much younger, she's much taller. She's, you know, she's in Washington, D.C. at the Jeffersonian. She's not moving between the Carolinas and Quebec. First of all, I would say, well, think of it as an earlier version, a prequel of Tempe. She's a younger Tempe. Some of the other stuff that's different, you just kind of have to deal with it. It's different. Think of it as More of Tempe. A different. Different version.
- [34:04]
A
Yeah. And as we said, there's different storytelling needs for a novel series versus a TV show, so. Yeah, makes sense. You know, I was wondering, you know, in Evil Bones, we see how she does this, we see how Tempe does this, and also in the TV show, we'd see if she does it. But I imagine the answer is going to be a little bit different per case. But when we're talking about a forensic anthropologist approaching a crime scene, you know, what does that typically look like? Are you typically getting to actually go to where the body is, like, in situ, like. Or is it usually in the lab and things are happening after the fact, or does it just sort of depend on what's going on?
- [34:43]
C
It can be both. I mean, often what happens is somebody finds, I don't know, a farmer's plowing his field, he realizes there's a shallow grave he's chopped up, the cops come in, they dig it up, they throw it in a cardboard box, and that's how it ends up in my lab, in the more sophisticated, I guess I'd say law enforcement agencies with which I worked and to whom I kept preaching this year after year, they would stop and they would wait and they would call me to come out and help. Help, actually, with the recovery. Because there is information associated with the burial, the context of the burial, that's in addition to just the remains themselves. So it just could vary as to, you know, how. How the bones would come to me or if I would go to them.
- [35:32]
A
Yeah, no, that makes it. In archeology, we all know context is. Is everything. You know, the burial of the dirt can tell you a lot. And having that, I imagine, is very helpful when you're examining it.
- [35:44]
C
Yeah, you don't have. I don't believe some of my colleagues do. I don't believe you have to do a body recovery with the extreme detail that you do archaeology, where you do what, you know, 3 inch levels and stop and map everything and 3 inch level. But you have to do it carefully and you have to string it off, rope it off, whatever you want to call it, stop every few inches, photograph. So you do have to do it methodically and follow protocol, but not to the extent in archeology.
- [36:18]
A
And is what they're predominantly looking at from you in terms of what they want in terms of answers, is it usually like, yes, this is a homicide case. That's your problem versus something that happened in the very distant past? Or are they also looking for things like possible cause of death hints, both
- [36:37]
C
initially, they want to know how long, how long has this body been buried in this basement or, you know, whatever it is, if it's more than generally more than 50 years, they're probably not going to want to pursue it as a homicide investigation. Then they're also going to want to know, you know, what, who is it? It might be that we have no idea who this is. What. Then I give them the biological profile, the age, the sex, the race, the height, any individuating characteristics, medical history, old fractures, that kind of thing. So they can go through missing persons lists and see if they can get a match to that profile. Or they might say, we think this is Joe Blow. You know, is it, what do you think? What do the bones tell you? Is it, is it consistent with whoever it is they think it is. And then they want to know, you know, what happened? What was the manner of death? Not so much cause of death, but manner of death, homicide, suicide, accidental, natural unknown. I think those are the five categories. How long has it been since death? Time since death, you know, and then body treatment after death, death. Were they, you know, put in a box and buried where they. It was a shallow grave. Were they thrown in the rip? You know, what, what happened to the body after death?
- [37:53]
A
Are there certain telltale signs that you can kind of like look at immediately to sort of think, yes, this is an actual homicide that we have to deal with right now versus an older case, or does it just depend on the context?
- [38:05]
C
Well, a bullet hole is a good clue. You've got an entry hole and an exit hole. You probably no cause of death. Stab wounds. If a sharp instrument trauma, which could come from an ax or a knife or a sword or, you know, whatever, that would take a closer analysis. Well, not an ax. An ax is not subtle. Yeah. So you're going to look at anything you can see on those after doing ID. And I don't, I didn't do very many positive IDs. I would give them the profile, but positive ID would be done through fingerprints, if you have them, or DNA.
- [38:44]
A
And yeah, that actually follows up nicely. So we've, we know how much DNA has revolutionized some of these crime solving, investigative techniques and whatnot. But at the same time, you're often, I imagine, dealing with just bones. Is there, is there an efficient way to extract DNA from the, the remains that you were typically dealing with? Or was that kind of a hit or miss?
- [39:04]
C
Even way back, like in the 80s, I would always keep a bone plug. And then later that if Possibly later that could become useful in some way. And of course that some way that evolved was DNA testing and trying to extract DNA from the bone or from any organic material in the bone.
- [39:24]
A
So usually you could actually get DNA from bones.
- [39:26]
C
I didn't do that. I would keep the bone plug and then if we, and then send it on to the, to the DNA department because again, I worked in a full spectrum lab and I don't know how to extract DNA from bone. So I would send it to the, to the micro people.
- [39:44]
A
That makes sense. As you said at the beginning, everyone specializes.
- [39:47]
C
Yes, yes, and more and more. So definitely, you know, with every passing year.
- [39:54]
A
One question I have for you is you mentioned some pretty interesting cases that you worked on in terms of, you know, just like the memories or kind of relating to some of the questions we asked you. Are there any cases that like looking back now, still really stand out to you is something that you really like look back on as a, as a highlight or something that just sticks in your memory?
- [40:13]
C
Well, I think the ones that stick in your memory are the ones you solved. And I certainly didn't do it alone. The anthropologist works as a member of a team with the pathologist and the homicide detectives and everybody else that's involved in the analysis of those remains. And that scene, if it's a crime scene, it may not be a crime scene, but that death scene and then the ones you didn't solve, those still stick with you. I remember the case I had of a. Gosh, how did that. Well, it's long complicated, but a little boy's, a little child skeleton was found. I told them what I could about it. Nothing happened with it. Later, like 20 years later, I was doing a book tour, a French language book tour in one of the Maritime Provinces. And I've talked about that case and somebody came forward and said, oh wait, that. I bet that's my little brother who went missing in 1963, who'd been hit with a car. And sure enough, you know, we did the DNA and it turned out so 50 years later, or whatever it was, that one got solved. That was a good one. But that little child skeleton sat in my lab for decades.
- [41:24]
A
That's so sad. But I'm glad it got eventually solved. Yeah, I imagine that forensic anthropology is a pretty small world. Is that true or has it grown in recent years?
- [41:36]
C
Both are true. It's grown tremendously. I was asked by a journalist this question decades ago and that of those who are. A lot of people call themselves forensic anthropologists but they're not board certified because we testify in court. We do have a process of pure evaluation where you have to sit for a very rugged exam, both practical exam and a written exam. So then you are board certified. And at that time we got out the list and we counted and there were only 36 people who were board certified in all of North America, the world actually there are some Europeans that come here for certification now. I think it's up to over 100 certificates have been issued. I don't know how many of those old timers of us are still alive or not, but that's still a pretty small group of people. Compared to, you know, forensic. I don't know. I think we compared to the dentists, the forensic dentists at the time. And no, we were looking at breakdown by gender, by male, how many male versus how many female. And the anthropologists were running like three to one. The dentists were 99 to 1 male. Whoa. Back in the day. I don't know if it's that way anymore.
- [42:54]
A
That's incredible. So if we want, if true crime listeners who are savvy want to look and see if someone's a legit forensic anthropologist versus just calling themselves that, they should look for board certification.
- [43:06]
C
They should look for ABFA after the person's name. American Board of Forensic Anthropology. And if you're interested in the subject, you can go out. There's a website, it's got all kinds of information and there's a whole section, I think one for high school and one for college level students about where there are programs and what you need to do to prepare if you want to go into the field, that sort of. So abfa.org okay, we will link to
- [43:33]
A
that in our show notes so people can check it out. And that, that does tie in nicely to what I wanted to ask you, which if someone is listening to this and is a young person and perhaps interested in this, do you have any advice on other than sort of looking into that website on sort of maybe seeing if this would be a good fit for somebody if they want to make a career out of it?
- [43:53]
C
They're in high school or they're in university level or either you're in high school and you want to go into the field. I would look for a program that has a board certified forensic anthropology on faculty because that person typically will bring their students in on casework and give them practical, not just class work, but practical experience as well. I used to tell people back in the day when there were very few actual programs in forensic Anthropology to rather than take a degree in forensic science, which is just a watered down overview thing, you'll learn about forensic sciences, but you won't acquire a skill to actually do one of them. That I would instead focus on, like biology or chemistry or hard sciences, physical anthropology, and, you know, then move on towards a graduate program in forensic anthropology.
- [44:55]
A
That makes sense. And. And then I want to go back to evil Bones. Can you. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, in terms of this particular book? Did anything stand out in this. Right. I mean, obviously you've done it so many times before, but did anything stand out as far as putting this one together or any challenges or sort of, you know, exciting things that happened as you were writing this?
- [45:17]
C
I don't know. I just decided. I always look for a new. I decide on setting and normally they're set not always, but either in the Carolinas or in. In Quebec, although she's gone to Israel and she's gone, you know, other places as well. Then I decide on, well, what aspect of forensic science haven't I used yet? You know, what's something new that we haven't looked at? And in this one, it's forensic veterinarian, veterinary expertise. We hadn't looked at that yet. And then I dec on, you know, well, what's the crime going to be and what are the. What are the clues? And they're not all forensic clues, but what are the clues, both scientific and regular gumshoe kind of clues that we're going to use. And then what new characters will I introduce? We'll have our core cast. She's got in this one. When I wrote this, I started. It was like two years ago, but this one, her great niece is in there, I think her great niece Ruthie is visiting and her daughter Katie. And anyway, so which of those am I going to bring in as the old. And Ryan, of course. Ryan is present. Skinny Slidell is. Skinny's one of my favorite kids. He's fun. I enjoy writing Skinny. I enjoy writing his dialogue. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:31]
A
He's very jaded and like, very. Feels like over everything. So. Yeah, I like his character too. That's awesome. Well, listen, we would strongly encourage our listeners to check it out. It's really good. I was gripped by it. I think I read it, like, really quickly. I was fl. So good.
- [46:47]
C
Good. That's my job.
- [46:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, it's terrific. And Kathy, thank you so much for taking the time.
- [46:53]
B
We really appreciate.
- [46:54]
A
Talk with us. We really, really appreciate it. Is there anything we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention or you think it's important for people to know about.
- [47:02]
C
Well, this book is out November. They've changed the date a few times, but it's out this this November. So go get it, read it. Enjoy it.
- [47:15]
A
Awesome. Well thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
- [47:18]
C
Thank you so much.
- [47:20]
A
Thanks to Dr. Reichs for talking to us. We'll include a link to our website in our show notes along with the ABFA website that she mentioned. We'll also include links to where you can buy evil bones. Check it out. It's a great read and let us know what you think.
- [47:32]
B
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [47:53]
A
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [48:16]
B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with
- [48:28]
A
other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. Early Birds Always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets
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