All That Remains

by Sue Black

  Of the many important recommendations to come out of the inquiry, several arose from the unnecessary removal of the hands and the unwillingness of the authorities to let relatives decide for themselves whether they wished to see the remains of their family members. In three cases, the hands had not been returned with the rest of the remains. One pair had been found in a mortuary freezer in 1993, four years after the disaster, and had subsequently been disposed of without the knowledge or permission of the next of kin. Because the bereaved families had not been able to view their loved ones, many had been unaware that invasive postmortem examinations had taken place. To receive this news a dozen years later came as a shocking blow.

  A further recommendation by Lord Justice Clarke advocated strongly that families should receive only honest and accurate information and that it should be given regularly and as early as possible. Charles Haddon-Cave QC, who represented the Marchioness Action Group, said: ‘Much goes on for understandable reasons behind closed doors. For this reason, there is a special responsibility placed on those entrusted with this work and the authorities who supervise it to ensure that bodies of the dead are treated with the utmost care and respect. That is what bereaved and loved ones are entitled to expect and what society at large demands.’

  Our DVI training course gave us a great opportunity to discuss with police officers what we could learn from the past, what good (and questionable) practice looks like in difficult circumstances and what could be done better today. If Aberfan was an example of good practice, it was the Marchioness disaster, and in particular the decision to remove victims’ hands, that had the most impact in terms of absorbing the lessons of previous mass-fatality events. Of all Lord Justice Clarke’s statements, the words now branded most indelibly on every DVI operative are: ‘It should be made clear that the methods used for establishing the identity of the deceased should, wherever possible, avoid unnecessary invasive procedure or disfigurement or mutilation and that body parts should not be removed for the purposes of identification except where it is necessary to do so as a last resort.’

  Forensic practitioners have always tried to do what we thought was for the best, sometimes in an effort to protect families from harrowing sights. If a body has started to decay, or has been damaged and fragmented by fire or explosion, in the past we would perhaps have advised them against viewing it. But we have no right to make that decision for them, let alone to impose restrictions on what they can and cannot see. We do not own the body. It is impossible in any case to predict how families and friends will respond to the empty shell of someone they love, regardless of its condition. So if a mother wants to see her dead child and hold his hand, if a husband wants to kiss the remains of his wife or a brother wants to spend a last moment in peaceful silence with his brother, all we can do is prepare them for what they will face and be on hand to help.

  Whereas Aberfan was what we would today call a ‘closed’ incident, in which the names of the deceased were known and nobody was left unaccounted for, the Marchioness disaster was classified as an ‘open’ incident, where DVI becomes more complex, and therefore more difficult to manage. These are situations where it is not known at the outset who the deceased might be or how many people might have died or have been injured, as often many of the surviving casualties may be in too serious a condition to be able to confirm their identities. The Marchioness had no definitive passenger list and the number of people missing was initially unclear.

  When an ‘open’ incident is the result of a terrorist attack, priorities may alter. While DVI procedure remains exactly the same, the process of body and evidence recovery may be very different. In the attack on London’s transport network in July 2005, suicide bombers detonated three bombs in quick succession on separate Underground trains in different parts of the city and a fourth aboard a double-decker bus. Fifty-six people lost their lives, including the four bombers, and 784 were injured. While identifying the dead victims was of course urgent, the first priority was to help the survivors and the second to identify the perpetrators.

  This may sound strange, but in dealing with the UK’s first-ever so-called Islamist suicide bombing, the authorities were following an accepted protocol for mass-fatality events caused by acts of terrorism. It is vital to establish whether the perpetrators have been killed in the incident and to be able to trace their networks in case it is part of a coordinated event, so that everything possible can be done to prevent further fatalities. The 2005 London bombings did indeed prove to be a coordinated attack, although unfortunately in this case the explosions occurred too close together for any of them to be stopped.

  In 2005, the UK was nowhere in the hierarchy of international DVI, but by 2009 we were leading the world. I could never have imagined that my somewhat intemperate missive to the government after the Asian tsunami would have the effect that it did, or that it would go on to play its part in establishing our DVI response force. And I am very proud of the fantastic work that UK DVI went on to perform and still carries out today to the highest international standard.

  I cannot state it often enough because it really is something that I believe in my very core: we must never forget that with disasters it is not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. So it is vital that when the next one strikes we are ready to respond to the very best of our abilities, however big or small the incident may be. In our world of increasingly senseless acts of violence, the UK’s first DVI commander, Graham Walker, reminded us all that whereas terrorists only need to get lucky once to accomplish their mission, our investigative forces can’t rely on luck – they have to win every single time to keep us safe. With the best will in the world, that is unrealistic and so we must train and prepare for all eventualities, while constantly praying that we will never need to put them into action. But when we do, our response should demonstrate that our humanity transcends the worst malevolence of which our species and nature are capable.

  CHAPTER 12

  Fate, fear and phobias

  ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark’

  Francis Bacon

  philosopher and scientist (1561–1626)

  The anatomy of the hand: variation in veins.

  I SHARE MY passion for identification of the human with my dear friend and mentor Louise Scheuer, who was responsible for me getting my first proper tax-paying job at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. While I was still writing up my PhD, Louise phoned me one day to say there was a vacancy for a lecturer in anatomy at St Thomas’ and that she thought I should apply.

  Nobody was more surprised than I was when I got the job. The chair of the panel, an august professor of neuroscience, clearly wanted someone with a biochemistry degree and was very dismissive of this ‘unqualified anthropologist’. I know that it was the last question, posed by Professor Michael Day, the head of the department, that sealed the deal. He asked me whether I would be capable of going into his dissecting room that afternoon and teaching the brachial plexus. I said that of course I would – and the job was mine. I have since used this ploy myself many times in interview panels but, having learned from my own experience, I have taken it that little bit further. I ask people applying for a job in anatomy at Dundee the same question, and when they say that of course they could teach the brachial plexus, I invite them to draw it. The brachial plexus, in case you are wondering, is a bunch of nerves that run between your neck and your armpit and looks a bit like a plate of spaghetti. Mean, isn’t it? I am glad Michael didn’t do that to me or he would have found me out. I could draw it now, but I couldn’t have done it then.

  The man who considered me unqualified eventually became my boss when our departments at Guy’s and St Thomas’ merged a few years later. I had the pleasure of teaching anatomy in his department for a number of years, but I don’t think he ever forgave me, because when he thanked me at my leaving do in 1992 for all I had done, he called me Sarah. I clearly made no lasting impression there. But at St Thomas’ I was lucky to have a group
of truly wonderful colleagues who are still friends to this day. Most importantly, it was the beginning of a long and productive partnership with a woman who has forgotten more anatomy than I will ever know and who has been my friend, my inspiration and my teacher for over thirty years.

  When Louise and I set up the UK’s first forensic anthropology teaching programme in 1986, she had a persistent and irritating moan. Every time we had to analyse the skeletal remains of a child she would say, ‘Why isn’t there a textbook to help us?’ I would respond by suggesting she wrote one herself and she would tell me to behave myself. She has the most wonderful ability to sound like a governess addressing an errant child (‘Oh, come on, for goodness’ sake!’). After about four years of this exchange, I decided to rebel and changed the record. ‘Why don’t we write one together?’ I proposed.

  And so began our biggest-ever writing project. We wanted to produce a textbook on the development of the human skeleton which examined every single bone in the human body, from the point at which it first forms until it reaches its full adult state. It was never going to make us rich or appear in the Sunday Times bestsellers list, but we felt it was essential to fill a glaring hole in forensic anthropology’s academic arsenal. Since there was no other book in existence that considered the detail of the child’s skeleton at the level we needed, we were starting with pretty much a clean slate.

  It would take us nearly ten years. First we had to accumulate all that had been written and published elsewhere on the subject in the last 300 years or so. Then we had to identify specimens that would exemplify what we wanted to illustrate and, where there were gaps in the knowledge, conduct our own research. It became crystal clear to us very quickly why this had not been attempted before: it was going to be a labour of love, and a very slow one. Indeed, it would come to dominate our lives for the duration.

  We finally saw our work published in 2000. Developmental Juvenile Osteology is a very, very long book and not exactly a page-turner, given that there are over 200 bones we needed to consider, but it was a really fascinating and rewarding one to write and it became a hugely significant marker in our professional lives. I loved those moments when I would get an excited call from Louise saying, ‘Did you know …?’ or ‘I finally understand why …’. There were many of these delightful discoveries, some of which blew our own theories out of the water as we learned together and, very slowly, started to tie it all into a magnum opus of which we were both hugely proud.

  By 1999, when I was doing my first tours in Kosovo, we were close to finishing although there was one illustration that vexed us terribly. We were unable to find any specimen that showed the growth centre at the inferior angle of the scapula (shoulder blade).

  I must admit that on one occasion it was Louise, rather than Tom or the girls, who got my rare and precious satellite phone call from Kosovo. In the makeshift mortuary at Velika Krusa, I had just seen a specimen that exemplified exactly what we had been searching for. We were both ridiculously thrilled. I was given permission to photograph it for use in the book but unfortunately, I had failed to realise that while all the other pictures we had were of nice, clean, dry bones, in this one there was still some tissue. I am glad now that the illustrations were not in colour as it would have stood out as a bit gruesome. But the image was priceless from the educational point of view.

  By the time the book was completed, I had been back in Scotland for several years, Louise had retired and my second season in Kosovo was looming. At that point, Louise and I were probably better versed in age-related changes in the child’s skeleton than anyone else on the planet. My grandmother, who passed down to me her belief in fate, used to say that sometimes there is a reason why we find ourselves in a certain place at a certain time and often it has nothing to do with our own plans, choices or desires. We are there because fate has put us there, quite possibly to help someone else. That I found myself in Kosovo at that precise moment in my life when I had all this knowledge at my fingertips was, I am convinced, predestined.

  One of the indictment sites assigned to us in 2000 involved the murder of virtually an entire family. During the war with the Serbs, those Kosovo Albanians who could stay out of the towns and villages tried to do so, to keep clear of the Serb forces, which tended to be most active in the more populated areas. On a March morning in 1999, this family had been making a trip from out in the countryside to the nearest village to pick up supplies, with Father driving the tractor and everyone else perched on their flimsy wooden trailer behind him. Without warning, the trailer was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launched from the hillside and blown to pieces. On board were eleven of the man’s family: his wife, her sister, their elderly mother and his eight children. The youngest was just a babe in arms and the eldest were twin fourteen-year-old boys. None of them survived.

  As the man clambered down from his tractor, now separated from the trailer by the blast, a sniper shot him in the leg. Injured and bleeding, he was able to crawl into the undergrowth for cover. He tied his belt around the wound to stem the flow of blood and, in the certain knowledge that all of his family were dead, waited for the light to fade and silence to return, desperately hoping that, even if the snipers had not gone away, they would not be able to see him so clearly in the twilight. He knew that if he did not recover what was left of his loved ones, they would be preyed upon by roaming packs of wild dogs and he could not allow that to happen.

  When he felt it was safe to crawl out from under the bushes, he began to search for the remains of his family. The RPG had fragmented them all, apart from the baby, who was still perfectly intact. It is testament to the savagery of the hit and the enormity of his grim undertaking that he was not able to retrieve all the parts of their bodies: he told us that he had only been able to find the right side of his wife and the bottom half of his twelve-year-old daughter. As my husband wondered, how can anyone summon the presence of mind and the fortitude to do what he did? Where do you find that depth of courage, strength and commitment to those dearest to you? Tom, quite understandably, reflected that it would have been too much for him to want to go on, and he would probably have ended his own life there and then. But this man didn’t. His determination to search the grassland in the failing light for the bloodied remnants of his family, growing weaker and weaker all the while through his own blood loss, is truly remarkable.

  When he had gathered together all he could, he buried their remains, using a spade salvaged from the wreckage. He chose a distinctive tree as a marker for their resting place so that he would know where they were located and could find them again when he was able to return. Having toiled for hours, this tormented man’s last act was to place the body of his baby son on top of the accumulated fragments of the rest of his family, cover them with soil and pray for their souls.

  It was over a year later that the ICTY investigators identified this as an indictment site for the case being built against Slobodan Milosevic and his senior officers. They believed the attack was a clear act of genocide as the deliberate targeting of a man and his whole family could not be justified as a legitimate act of war. The man, who had somehow survived, took the investigators to the tree where he had buried his loved ones and gave them permission to exhume the bodies. Not only did he want justice for his family, and the families of other Kosovar Albanians, he also feared that, because their body parts were all mixed up, his God would be unable to distinguish between them to find their souls. He could not be at peace until he knew they were safe with God and he was desperate for each to have their own named grave, so that their souls would be recognised and rescued from the cruelties of the world.

  I was not present at the exhumation but I was aware of the monumental task that awaited our team. We had to try to identify and separate the commingled remains of eleven severely fragmented and decomposed individuals, eight of whom were children, to a standard that would meet international evidential admissibility, while at the same time being mindful of the needs and wishe
s of a brave man who had lost everything.

  At the mortuary, we expected a delivery of eleven body bags but there were only enough body parts to fill one and a half. This was the sum total of what this man had been able to find and bury that terrible day. The remains were very badly decomposed and although some soft tissue survived, most was little more than a liquefied mass interspersed by bones. Examining them was an extremely difficult and painstaking task, not to say an unpleasant one. There was no point in the whole team sticking around just to stand and watch, so we decided to give them a welcome day off and I stayed on with the mortuary technician, the photographer and the radiographer to see what we could achieve.

  We laid out twelve white sheets on the floor – one for each of the potential deceased, labelled only with their reported ages, and one for the residue that we would inevitably not be able to assign with any confidence to a specific individual. Even DNA in this situation would not have helped us as the dead were all members of the same family and we had no reference DNA for comparison purposes. Even if we’d had such samples, the probable cross-contamination of body parts that had been buried together would make the chances of extracting reliable source DNA very slim. So this had to be an old-fashioned anatomical identification process – and, with so many children involved, at that moment in time, Louise and I were probably the most experienced forensic anthropologists available anywhere to undertake the task. At that point I was the one in Kosovo and Louise was back in London, but she would be at the end of a phone if I needed her, and that shored up my confidence no end.