All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes

by Sue Black

They also tend to be familiar to the perpetrator.

Once the killer has had time to think, he or she may return to the primary site and move the remains to a safer place, usually further away from the crime scene.

Because they have been better thought out, secondary deposition sites are much more difficult to predict or find and tertiary sites even harder.

restored the topography of the quarry to exactly how it had been in 1976 and earlier. We found items confirming

We knew that if remains had been buried there we would have found them, as our minute screening turned up much smaller bones than those we were looking for, such as those of rabbits and birds. We discovered the potential source of the rotting smell: the site where rubbish and waste from workmen’s toilet facilities had been buried during the construction of the A9 in the 1970s.

It was hugely deflating for the team that had gone into this mammoth operation with such high hopes, but we knew we had done our best and we were confident that, wherever they had been and wherever they were now, they were not in Dalmagarry Quarry.

it was a brave and bold decision and one that demonstrated unswerving police commitment to closing such cases, regardless of the passage of time.

‘Time can never heal the pain, and I can’t believe that time will ease the conscience so much that someone out there can believe they will get away with murder. It always gives me some hope when I read of an old crime being solved. Maybe one day.’

But as time passes, allegiances change, relatives and acquaintances die, and if this person, or people, have a conscience, even if they heed it only on their own deathbed, they must do the decent thing and put an end to the family’s misery.

As well as campaigning tirelessly on child-protection issues, in 2000 she set up the Moira Anderson Foundation, which helps families affected by child sexual abuse, violence, bullying and related problems.

it examines, in classic no-nonsense Lanarkshire style, but with compassion and empathy, the devastating effect of child abuse on everyone who comes into contact with this most heinous of crimes.

why people bring in self-proclaimed psychics, especially when all else has failed and they feel they have nothing to lose.

charlatans, and I worry about the damage they can do to vulnerable loved ones.

Sandra arranged for Moira’s sisters to have their DNA samples taken and analysed and asked me to store the reports in case they were needed.

She provided me with a comprehensive list of what Moira had been wearing when she disappeared so that, should we find the buttons from her coat, the buckles of her shoes or her Brownie badge, we would be aware of their significance.

GPR (ground-penetrating ra...

who would go looking for a missing body in a cemetery? Gartshore would have known that the lair would probably be dug and left open over the weekend ready for the funeral on the Tuesday.

We would then immediately cease to be working for the family and would instead be working for the Crown.

Coffins do not always end up where they are supposed to be. Occasionally people get buried in the wrong place for a variety of reasons.

Records do not always accurately reflect the true picture.

Having developed a high level of mutual trust and respect, we are so used to working together that we are all attuned to the tasks the others are performing and able to anticipate what our colleagues need without a word being spoken.

the rest had to be dug by hand in case this became a forensic investigation.

Having to break the news to Sandra, who had been so hopeful of a resolution for Moira’s family and the whole Coatbridge community, and whose strong conviction had driven her to campaign so tirelessly for so long for the grave to be excavated, was hard.

was also distressing for Mr Upton’s family, unwittingly caught up in a case with which they had little connection.

The not knowing is one of the most debilitating burdens for those grieving for the missing.

If the work we do brings them some little comfort and relief, then it has great value.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, the idea that for every unidentified body there will always be a corresponding report of a missing person, and all we need do is connect the two, is a vast over-simplification of reality.

A report may have been made in a different country, to a police force distant from where the body was found, or may have been recorded many years before, archived and forgotten. Perhaps there has been no report at all because nobody realised the person was missing, or there was no one who cared sufficiently to raise the alarm.

A time lapse between death and the body being found can complicate matters.

In an ideal world, our police forces would have unrestricted budgets and unlimited personnel to devote to searching for missing persons and matching them with unidentified bodies.

will usually be carrying evidence of who we are,

In such situations, the next of kin can be traced swiftly to verify their identity and assist with the investigation.

The biggest challenge is posed by a body found unexpectedly in an isolated place, maybe decomposed, and carrying no circumstantial evidence that could lead easily to their identification.

This is when forensic anthropology comes into its own and offers the best and sometimes the only chance of reuniting the de...

we must resist the temptation to stray into the realm of supposition.

These days, some hospitals choose not to confirm the sex of a baby, ostensibly because of staff shortages and the time required to make the assessment, but they will have other concerns, such as the risk of litigation if they get it wrong and the prevention of selective abortion by couples whose culture values one sex above the other.

Imagine the effect on your confidence in your own identity if, for the first twelve years of your life, you have believed yourself to be a boy and then you start to develop breasts, or, having always been told you were a girl, you notice hair appearing on your chest. Puberty is a period of great sensitivity and awkward awareness of our bodies at the best of times, and unanticipated alterations of such magnitude are understandably devastating to a young person.

wait until after menopause, when oestrogen declines, allowing testosterone to assert itself, and watch your beard and moustache grow.

The forensic anthropologist needs to be aware that the features we see in the skeleton are a complex interaction between the gen-etic blueprint for sex and the effects of biochemistry, resulting in a grey area

It is therefore extremely important that we are not influenced by circumstantial evidence (the remnants of female underwear, for example) and that we are alert to the possibility of any congenital features or surgeries.

the issue of biological sex and gender was prominent in the minds of many whose job it was to try to categorise and identify the dead. One of the affected countries, Thailand, is recognised as the transgender capital of the world. With a male-to-female operation here costing almost a quarter of the price charged in the US,

and the third sex, or kathoeys, are acknowledged as a fully integrated sector of society.

So what do we do if all we have available to us is some dry, scattered or buried human bones?

In circumstances where saving a mother’s life was considered more important than the survival of the baby, some gruesome obstetrical tools used to be employed to try to rescue her from cephalopelvic disproportion.

Cephalopelvic disproportion is seen less often nowadays, mainly as a result of improved health but also perhaps as a rather brutal example of the survival of the fittest, whereby feto-maternal mortality has resulted in the phasing out of unsuccessful pelvic shapes.

Where there is access to adequate medical services, it no longer matters if the pelvis is the wrong shape or size because the baby can be removed by Caesarean section with a very high success rate for both mother and baby.

ingesting additional amounts of the male hormone in the form of anabolic steroids decreases fat levels and increases muscle bulk in bodybuilders.

The bone-muscle equation is a simple one: stronger bones are required to withstand the forces exerted by the attachments of stronger muscles.

If there is no dominant circulating hormone, as will be the case in pre-pubescent children, the skeleton will tend to retain a paedomorphic or childlike appearance,

sex cannot be determined with any degree of reliability from a child’s skeleton.