Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist

by Maples, William R.

  There seems to be only a very loose correlation between the weight of the body and its overall mass on the one hand, and the volume of the recovered “cremains,” as cremated remains are sometimes called for short, on the other. For most adults the cremains weigh about 2.2 to 8.8 pounds. It has nothing to do with what you weighed in life, but is probably related to what your bones weighed. A small, osteoporotic woman would produce a small amount of cremains but a large robust male with a heavy frame would produce more. The proportion of ash versus bone fragments in cremains is about fifty-fifty.

  When the body comes out of the retort in this calcined condition, a trained osteologist can stand a few feet away, glance at the remains as they emerge, and tell the crematory employees the race, sex and approximate age of the deceased. In other words the identifying characteristics are still there. Fire does not destroy them. But what happens next is devastating.

  The remains are removed from the retort, sometimes by sliding a tray out, but more often by the use of a large, hoelike scraper and a similarly shaped brush. The hoe rather reminds one of the croupier’s rake used to haul in betting chips at a gaming table. The bones and ashes are swept into the groove in the center of the floor, then scraped down the groove into a waiting container. This metal container is then taken over to a place where a large magnet is set up. This magnet is similar in size and shape to an extra-heavy clothes iron. It is not an electromagnet, but it works almost like one. It has a key handle that, when turned, neutralizes or activates the polarity of powerful magnets inside the iron. Turn the key one way and the magnet attracts. Turn it the other and all the attracted bits of metal fall off instantly.

  During this process the heavy magnetic iron is used to crush the fragile calcined bone, like a hammering pestle. At this time, any large debris is removed from the cremains, including such things as hip prostheses, orthopedic plates, bridgework, any hardware from cremation containers, cardiac pacemakers and the like—although pacemakers are not supposed to be cremated, because their batteries explode. Crematorium workers look carefully for the wire leads that betray the presence of a pacemaker in the chest, and if one is spotted, it will be removed before cremation. But the leads are small, and it is difficult to spot them every time. These fragments of nonferrous metals are separated out and usually thrown into a garbage can: they are not considered an integral part of the body, and they seldom find their way into the urn.

  Silicone breast implants are a funeral director’s nightmare, as they tend to pop open and melt messily all over the inside of the retort. Hence, no effort is spared to detect and remove them before the rest of the body is burned. If they are not subjected to fire, these bags of silicon are wonderfully indestructible and will long outlast their owners. I have found breast implants around scattered skeletons that have decomposed in the open. We had a case in central Florida in which we were examining a female skeleton and its personal effects. One of my female graduate students, who had led a sheltered life, was watching while I found and poked a breast augmentation implant. It jiggled like a jelly-filled bag. “I don’t understand,” the student said innocently. “What’s a jellyfish doing this far inland?” It took her a long time to live that error down!

  To return to the cremation process: the crudely sorted remains are next placed into a “processor,” which is a euphemism for a grinder. The grinders work in various fashions, but the most common types grind the remains until the particle size is small enough to pass through holes in a curved sievelike plate at the base of the processor. This is called the screen. The holes are about five millimeters in diameter, a bit smaller than a kernel of corn.

  The processing is now complete. The cremains, after passing through the perforated plate, now consist of ash and various particles up to the size of the openings in the screen. They now are poured into the urn or whatever temporary shipping container the family has arranged. Sometimes they exceed in volume the size of the chosen urn, and the family has to be asked if they want to buy a bigger urn. If they don’t, it is the duty of the funeral director to tell them that the excess ashes will be disposed of according to law. In practice, they used to be dumped in a common pit near the crematory. Nowadays, they are usually sent to a cemetery, to be poured into a common grave set aside for this purpose.

  One very important step needs to be mentioned: before the cremation, most crematories place a nonferrous metal plate or disk with an identifying number with the body. This plate is incised with a five- or six-digit number that is used one time, and one time only, to identify this particular set of remains. If the disk is made of aluminum, it has to be removed from the remains before burning, and put back in with the ashes. If it is made of brass, it can stay with the body in the retort, as brass melts at 1,810 degrees Fahrenheit. This tag is usually recovered when the retort is cleaned and the remains are swept out. It will then be separated out before the crushing phase and dropped into the urn with the processed cremains. The number is logged in the records of the funeral home. The purpose of this tag is obvious: to assure that a certain set of remains ends up in the proper urn. It is all rather reminiscent of the bracelets given to newborn babies at hospitals, to make sure they won’t be mixed up. Newborn or newly burned, we often look very much alike.

  Some crematories remove jewelry from the remains before cremation and then place the uncremated jewelry in the urn. Others go ahead and cremate jewelry with the remains, remove it during the examination for metal prior to grinding, and then place it in the urn with the ground remains. Most jewels, incidentally, stand up very well to fire, as they were formed originally deep within the earth at temperatures significantly higher than a gas flame. Artificial rubies, for example, can be crystallized synthetically by gem makers using an apparatus called a Verneuil furnace, but only at 2,000 degrees Centigrade. Synthetic diamonds can only be crystallized at a pressure of 200,000 atmospheres, at a temperature of 2,600 degrees Centigrade. Real gems are formed at even higher temperatures and pressures, and the burning jet of natural gas in the retort is powerless to dissolve them.

  As for dental work, the porcelain crowns on teeth will slump, but not melt, in a crematorium retort; and dental gold and silver will not melt at all. Sterling silver begins to melt at 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit. Gold melts at about 1,945 degrees Fahrenheit. Dental gold has an even higher melting point because it is an alloy, not pure gold. Amalgam tooth fillings or dental restorations will not usually survive the flames. They aren’t found afterward. A strange material called “cremation slag,” consisting of small lumps of grayish shapeless material, is often found. This slag takes the form of little beads. When broken open they reveal hollow interiors that appear to be made of glass, like tiny geodes. There are various explanations for how this slag forms: cremated hair, sand producing melted silicates, or chemicals from the bones producing a silicate-like debris. But it is almost always present.

  Standard procedure does not permit more than one individual to be cremated at the same time in the same retort. Obviously the families expect that the cremains they receive in the urn will be those of their loved one and no one else’s.

  But in actual practice it is very difficult in a firebrick-lined retort to clean it out perfectly of all traces of previous occupants. Most crematories are very responsible. They attempt to do a professional job and adhere to the ethics of their profession. Occasionally, how ever, things go astray. When that happens, or when someone perceives that it happened, lawsuits fly; and this is when I may be called on to step in and investigate.

  The claims raised in these lawsuits are varied: that the wrong cremains have been returned to the family, that cremains ended up in an unauthorized location, such as on the freeway, that infants were cremated along with adults, or that some trespassing stranger is kibitzing in the same urn with Uncle Frank. Vast sums of money are at stake. These lawsuits commonly demand millions of dollars in damages, and this is when I become involved.

  Were you asked to make sense of this pulverized mass of
burned infinitesimals, this tiny heap of ashes and calcined bone flakes, you would probably despair. How is it possible to reach back through the fire, to map and recreate what the fire destroyed? I tell you it can be done. I have done it.

  When we are presented with these cases and we have to determine whether there has indeed been a switch or some other mistake, we have to look for far different evidence than we would with a complete skeleton. As you can imagine, the crushing removes most of the evidence of race and sex. Age may occasionally still be seen by arthritic lipping or outgrowths along a fragment of a joint, or a vertebra, or by dental structures, but such bone survivals are rare in the urn and usually so tiny they are extremely difficult to read.

  In the case of immature individuals, such as infants, fetuses or small children, the immature bones may be extremely distinctive. Sometimes a very precise age estimate is possible. I well recall one case of cremated fetal remains in which I was able to determine the age of the fetus within a couple of weeks with great confidence, because of a tiny bone that survived the flames intact.

  In most cases, however, what is really important, what tells the tale, isn’t the remains of the individual, but the baggage they had with them. If you reflect a little you will see what I mean. Most of us carry around a surprising load of extraneous, artificial baggage inside our bodies, mainly because of advances in medical and dental science. Surgical procedures leave all kinds of inner footprints. After surgery to remove a gall bladder or a kidney, after bypass surgery, after a mastectomy, the blood vessels are clamped off with small metal clips. Because these clips are supposed to remain behind in the body, they are made of tough, rare metals that will resist corrosion. They may be simple stainless steel of very high quality, or they may be extremely unusual metals such as tantalum. These little clips can be cross-checked against surgical records at the hospital where the surgery was performed, and against the purchasing records of the hospital. These tiny clips, which will survive the flames of the retort, elude the pestle magnet because they are nonferrous, and will often make their way into the urn. They can be spotted amid the ashes often by the naked eye, more often (and more accurately) by x-rays. We can then have nondestructive chemical tests performed to assay accurately their exact composition.

  Dental devices can also be helpful in identifying a cremated individual. Even though dental crowns seldom end up in the urn, dental posts, made of stainless steel or titanium, which are used to affix artificial crowns onto small tooth stumps, can be extremely important. Not only do they vary considerably in chemical composition, in size and in shape (each brand looks very different), but they are often altered by grinding the ends when the dentist inserts them into the tooth. These altered tips can be compared with dental radiographs or dental x-rays and be identified absolutely individually. They will show up in dental x-rays before death, and again in x-rays taken of the cremated remains. They can be as unique as fingerprints, because the dentist has shaped them to fit a particular tooth.

  We also sift the ashes for stainless steel sutures used during surgery—heart surgery involves splitting the breastbone and wiring it back together—as well as various metal catheter devices used around pacemakers, screws in bones and a multitude of other things. If dentures are still in the jaws of the mouth when cremation takes place, the greater portion of them will be destroyed, but porcelain teeth, complete with their little metal pins used to affix them to the dentures, will survive.

  What else do we find in urns? Sometimes the staples from the cardboard cremation containers, although the pestle magnet usually catches these. There may be the occasional screw from a pair of eyeglasses. Fibers and hair may show up under microscopic analysis, but these are most likely contaminants introduced after the cremation. They do not belong to the deceased but to crematory attendants who handled or examined the remains after the burning.

  The examination of cremains requires the patience of a Swiss watchmaker. You need a microscope, tweezers, x-ray machines and boxes with grids so you can locate any minute metal fragments defined by the x-rays. If you x-ray a box of cremains and then try to sift the ashes, searching for that tiny little fragment that showed up on the radiograph, it is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. But if you superimpose a grid over the outpoured cremains, then take an x-ray and study the grid, you can quickly localize the object.

  Everything has to be carefully documented: weights, volumes and so forth. A lot of photographs have to be taken, and this can be painstaking, jeweler’s work involving ultra-closeups or microphotography. One is always amazed at what can be found, as well as what isn’t found. Just imagine, in a set of cremains, finding an ossicle, the tiny bone from the inner ear of an infant, intact! It takes a very solid knowledge of bone anatomy and variation and often a very vivid reconstructive imagination to identify these minuscule fragments of bone and metal.

  Who pays me to do this sort of work? Attorneys, usually. They may be attorneys for the plaintiffs (Uncle Frank’s near and dear ones), or attorneys for the defense (the River Styx Funeral Home), but they have this in common: they are at daggers drawn, deeply involved in a lawsuit. The greatest problem we have in these cases probably isn’t the condition of the cremains. It’s that someone is trying to save money and do an investigation on the cheap. These examinations take time, and time is money when you hire an expert. Minutes turn into hours, days, weeks. It has been my experience that the attorneys for the plaintiffs attempt to limit the time of the examination by their experts. By doing so, they are being penny wise, pound foolish. The less time spent sifting the ashes, the less useful material will be found.

  By contrast the experts working for the funeral home are usually given adequate time to document everything fully. It is very embarrassing if you, the expert, fail to find something because someone said: “You have to do this in six hours,” while experts for the other side are given six days to look at the same set of cremains.

  You would be amazed how high the passions run in these cases. What I am about to reveal must be couched in careful terms, even though the case in question has long since been settled. I can give no names. I cannot even disclose which state this case occurred in.

  A certain woman, much beloved of her family, died after a long and painful fight with cancer. She had had surgery when the malignancy was first found and then more than a year later it was found that the cancer had metastasized. During her final illness she had received very good medical care, with frequent x-rays and scans. She was cremated in the city where she died, and her cremains were shipped to a large cemetery in a nearby state. There, a set of remains thought to be hers was transferred from the cardboard shipping container to an urn, which was placed in a niche in the cemetery columbarium, where they were to rest in perpetuity.

  That evening, someone found the temporary shipping container, with her name on it, on a freeway. Inside were cremains.

  The family was tracked down and the box returned to them. They were outraged. They immediately retained attorneys and filed a $10 million lawsuit against the cemetery. Defense attorneys hired by the insurance company representing the cemetery interviewed forensic scientists from all over the country, searching for someone to put together a team of experts. The field of forensic anthropology is not crowded. My name inevitably came up.

  I remember flying there for the interview, which was conducted in a suite of an airport hotel. I was surrounded by a phalanx of eight or more attorneys, who questioned me closely about what I would do, what should be done, what shouldn’t be done and so forth. A short time after, I was told that I had been selected to put together a team of experts, the choice of whom would be left to me. The team assembled included Clyde Snow, who had worked with the Mengele remains in Brazil; Doug Ubelaker from the Smithsonian; Lowell Levine, one of this country’s foremost forensic dentists, who testified at the trial of serial killer Ted Bundy; Bob Kirschner, a deputy chief medical examiner from Chicago; and Dr. Robert Fitzpatrick, this country’s
top forensic radiologist. One of the country’s foremost microscopy labs was retained to do all the microscopic and chemical analyses.

  By this point in the lawsuit the plaintiffs had been offered a very handsome sum to settle out of court. They refused. So we were told this would have to go all the way to trial. Our examination left no stone unturned. We lavished hours and hours upon our examination of the cremains. As our expenses mounted, the insurance company howled to the cemetery operators: “We promised you a Cadillac defense! No one said anything about Rolls-Royces!”

  The medical records on the deceased woman stacked up eighteen inches high. The x-rays numbered in the dozens. We also had good dental x-rays. One of the important factors centered on the surgical procedure performed on the woman; the surgeon had used vascular clips to close off blood vessels. In the radiographs made before her death, I could count at least twenty-nine of these clips. Her surgical record indicated that the surgeon had closed off the blood vessels using Hemaclips, a special brand. Hemaclips are tiny things, about a quarter of an inch long. Hospital purchasing records showed that the hospital was using Hemaclips made of tantalum, although Hemaclips are sometimes made of other materials as well.

  From the cremains in the urn in the niche, we recovered intact or in halves the remains of at least eighteen Hemaclips. The other eleven had been pulverized in the cremation and grinding process and were scattered uniformly throughout the ashes and cremains. These little specks could nevertheless be spotted by x-rays and chemically analyzed. Every single sample of cremains in the niche showed tiny fragments of tantalum. The cremains found in the box abandoned on the freeway did not show these flecks and indeed had no tantalum fragments at all. So they could not have come from the woman whose name was on the box.