As We Remember the Dead, Let’s Get Out of the 18th Century

Reaper, from Morguefile.com

Whether as part of the Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, All Souls Day or for other reasons, as we remember those we’ve loved and lost, let’s honor their memories by committing to a better system of investigating death in the United States.  A system that acknowledges that we’ve learned a few things since the 18th century, from which time some of our jurisdictions’ modes of death investigation are all but unchanged.

What would that system include?

To begin to get to the ideal, jurisdictions throughout the U.S. would adopt the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shockingly, millions of Americans live in jurisdictions that:

1) Require no forensic, legal, or any other kind of training for an individual to be a coroner.

2) Do not provide office space for coroners.

3) Do not provide computers for coroners.  Death records are on a paper system, likely not stored carefully or in one place.

4) Do not provide coroners refrigeration equipment for the storage of bodies.

5) Do not provide coroners or medical examiners with Xray and other basic examination equipment.

So the beginning steps include items would seem like “no brainers” — basic training requirements, facilities, equipment — but apparently our elected officials need to hear that current conditions must not continue. None of us, no matter how excellent things may be in our own jurisdictions, can afford what is bound to happen when so many others live in jurisdictions where death investigation is in a horribly crude and out-dated condition.  Missing persons cases, disease outbreak, product safety, and criminal justice are just a few of the areas that suffer nationally when death investigation is inadequate.  You think crime and cause of death statistics are accurate?  How can they be, if death investigators don’t know how to do their job or are lacking the basic tools they need to do it well?

For those jurisdictions without the resources to do more, perhaps it’s time we looked at creative solutions, such as regional death investigation centers.

Nationally, we face a dire shortage of forensic pathologists, so perhaps we should consider programs that would pay for schooling and training in exchange for a commitment of a number of years of service in medical examiners offices.

What are your ideas on ways we can change death investigation for the better?

Posted by: Jan Burke

To see what we mean by patchwork…

Take a look at this map, from ProPublica.

Our dangerous patchwork: death investigation in the U.S.

The National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science talks about the “patchwork” of forensic science services in the U.S..  Perhaps nowhere is that patchwork coming apart at the seams as it is in death investigation.

A few samples for your consideration:

In Arkansas, a recent Associated Press article in the Rushville Courier notes that cremations are on the rise, and that no training is required to hold the office of coroner in the state.  This has become a cause for concern, and “The Arkansas State Crime Laboratory, the Arkansas Department of Health and the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association all say they want more training for coroners.”  As the executive director of the sheriff’s association, Chuck Lange, said, ”If someone is going to be responsible for calling cause of death, they need a little education.”

This report from Texas was published in 2006, and a few other MEs offices have been formed since, but the overall picture remains the same.  At that time, there were 13 ME’s offices, required by law whenever the population of a county exceeds one million.  The other 296 – a justice of the peace signs the death certificates.  I would love to be wrong about this, but also believe this statement is still true:  ”Texas has no oversight State ME’s agency, Medical Examiners are appointed locally by the County Commissioners Court.”  An example of the conditions some of the medical examiners work under may be seen in this recent article.

If a highly trained forensic pathologist believes further investigation of a death is warranted, that will overrule an elected coroner’s findings, right?  Wrong.  Take a look at this infamous case in the state of Washington. The Ronda Reynolds case is now being considered in a coroner’s inquest under a new coroner.

Working conditions and equipment needs for ME/Cs offices are of concern throughout the country.  In California, the Bakersfield Californian reports that in Kern County, which serves the city of Bakersfield, the coroner’s office is asking for help with “substantial infrastructure improvements, including repairs to two coolers and a freezer, new plumbing, and upgrades to heating and air conditioning systems,” and has no X-ray.

They’d probably still be the envy of Franklin County Pennsylvania coroner Jeffrey Connor.  According a June 9th article in the Chambersburg Public Opinon, it took him a decade to convince his county commissioners that he should be allowed to purchase a cooler for storing bodies.  Just in time for summer.  Where will it be placed?  That was a question, since Connor operates the coroner’s office from his home.  (Not as uncommon as anyone with sense could hope it would be.) The cooler was to be installed at a funeral home that would pay the electric bill for it in exchange for use of four of the upper berths.

If we don’t care enough about the important work of ME/Cs even to give them office space and basic equipment, and to ensure that they have at least some level of training, perhaps we deserve all the bad outcomes that follow from having such a dysfunctional system.

Take our Death Quiz to learn more.

This post written by Jan Burke.

National Institute of Justice Announces Publication of Fingerprint Sourcebook

The Scientific Working Group* on Friction Ridge Analysis, Study and Technology (SWGFAST) worked with the International Association for Identification, West Virginia University, and others — more than 50 experts — over nearly a ten-year period to create The Fingerprint Sourcebook a fifteen chapter guide which “aims to be the definitive resource on the science of fingerprint identification.”

The sourcebook can be downloaded in PDF format either by individual chapters or as one document.

Although some media reports would lead you to believe that latent print evidence examination is outdated and being totally replaced in forensic science by DNA, this is untrue.  In fact, Both DNA and latent print evidence are useful for identification and are valuable in criminal investigations.  Each has unique properties.

Each of these areas of forensic science also has problems and challenges that we must face — in fingerprint examination, these challenges include lack of equipment, backlogs, the need for greater support for training and certification, the need for interoperability between databases and more.

New research and developments in this field continue to add to the value of fingerprints as evidence.

*You can learn more about the Scientific Working Groups and Technical Working Groups from this article in Forensic Magazine, and also from the FBI site on SWGs and the NIJ site on TWGs.

Education and Forensic Science—CSI: College, Part 2 by Max Houck

[Part 1 of Max Houck's post on forensic science education can be found by clicking here.]

How do I pick a forensic science educational program?

Easy: Start with the list of forensic science educational programs accredited by the Forensic Science Educational Program Accreditation Commission (FEPAC) listed at the American Academy of Forensic Science website. These programs have all met the national standards for forensic science curriculum, facilities, and faculty.

What is accreditation? In many countries, the national or local governments assume varying degrees of control over education, but, generally educational institutions operate with expanded independence and autonomy. Academic institutions and programs therefore rely on accreditation to ensure that they are meeting acceptable, established standards of educational quality. Accreditation, generally, is a voluntary peer-review process offered by non-governmental entities. While accreditation does not lead to rankings of institutions or programs, it does provide significant stakeholders (employers, graduate or professional schools, and certification or licensure boards, for example) with a measure of assurance of what the graduate should have learned. Two types of academic accreditation exist. Institutional accreditation reviews a college or university as a whole. Specialized accreditors, as will be discussed below, only assess specific educational programs, such as forensic science programs.

First, a little history on forensic educational accreditation is in order. A technical working group on education and training in forensic science (TWGED) was convened by the National Institute of Justice and a report was issued. The report covered four areas: What prospective students could expect from a career in forensic science, undergraduate curricula, graduate curricula, and guidelines for continuing professional development. This report provided the first coherent consensus on what a forensic science degree should contain. The American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) recognized the importance of this document and created an ad hoc committee in 2002 to convert the TWGED guidelines into enforceable standards; the following year, the committee became the Forensic Science Educational Program Accreditation Commission (FEPAC) and a permanent, although independent, part of the AAFS.

The mission of FEPAC is to maintain and to enhance the quality of forensic science education through a formal evaluation and recognition of college-level academic programs. The primary function of the Commission is to develop and to maintain standards and to administer an accreditation program that recognizes and distinguishes high quality undergraduate and graduate forensic science programs. Five educational programs volunteered to part of a pilot accreditation project in 2004. In 2008, FEPAC was recognized by the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors (ASPA). As of February, 2011, 35 programs are accredited by FEPAC.

FEPAC accredits forensic science educational programs that lead to a bachelor’s or graduate degree in forensic science or in a natural science with a forensic science concentration. The program must be housed in a regionally accredited institution of higher learning. All programs must adhere to a set of basic standards regarding planning and evaluation, institutional support, student support services, administrative practices, and student complaints. The director and the faculty must be able to fully support the programs mission and goals. Programs must have interaction with operational forensic laboratories and are responsible for keeping records of student achievement. An application is submitted to FEPAC and is reviewed for suitability. If appropriate, the applicant university then prepares and submits a self-study, which details the program’s resources, faculty, courses, and processes. A site evaluation team, consisting of one academic and one practitioner, visit the program to assess the suitability of the facilities, interview the faculty and students, and to review documentation. The evaluation provides the 11 FEPAC Commissioners (five practitioners, five academics, and one public member) with the basis for reviewing and voting on the program’s accreditation. The programs are notified of the results soon after the vote, typically held at the annual AAFS meeting.

Undergraduate forensic science programs have to ensure that each student obtains a fundamental education in the natural sciences, build upon this foundation with increasingly advanced science courses, and develop an appreciation for the articulation between science, forensic science, and its application. Specific courses, some with laboratory components, must be taken in biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. An additional compliment of specialized science courses, along with additional forensic science coursework, is required. Advanced courses are also required to deepen a student’s understanding and knowledge of science and forensic science.

Graduate programs vary in their structures and the FEPAC graduate standards acknowledge this fact. Unlike the undergraduate standards–which are fairly proscriptive and structured on which courses and how many credits–the graduate standards are more flexible and allow programs to specialize (forensic molecular biology, for example).  A graduate seminar is required, as is a written thesis or its equivalent that is subjected to peer review. Additionally, original research reviewed by a committee of at least three individuals–at least one of whom must be a forensic practitioner–is required; the research must be presented publicly. With the NAS report, among other criticisms of and suggestions for forensic science, research is a key aspect of improving and shaping forensic science as a scientific discipline.

What about Dr. CSI?

According to a 2010 NAS report on doctoral programs in the US, no forensic science doctoral programs, either professional (like a MD or a DDS) or research-based (like a PhD), currently exist in the United States or Canada; such programs do, however, exist outside the US in Australia, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. PhD degrees with an emphasis in forensic science research are offered in the United States and Canada but these degrees are housed within a non-forensic science department, like chemistry or biology. The complexity and richness of forensic science as a research discipline means that PhD or professional doctorates will eventually become more common and a part of the US educational landscape. The 2009 National Academy of Sciences report recommends additional funding for forensic science graduate programs and research to improve the reliability and effectiveness of forensic science.

Education and research in the forensic sciences in the next decade will require strong science skills, mathematics, statistical ability, and a creative mindset willing to ask fundamental questions. Accreditation of forensic science programs provides an assurance of quality, relevancy, and stringency to provide the knowledge, skills, and abilities the forensic profession will need to meet its challenges.

Further Reading

Forensic Science Educational Program Accreditation Commission (FEPAC) standards, available on-line at www.aafs.org/fepac.

The Forensic Science Society, www.forensic-science-society.org.uk

Houck, M. (2006). CSI: The Reality. Scientific American, July, 84-89.

Houck, M. (2009). Is forensic science a gateway for women in science? Forensic Science Policy and Management 1(1): 65-69.

Jackson, G. 2009. The Status of Forensic Science Degree Programs in the United States. Forensic Science Policy and Management 1(1): 2-9.

National Institute of Justice (2003) Education and training in forensic science: A guide for forensic science laboratories, educational institutions, and students, available through the National Criminal Justice Reference System, www.ncjrs.gov.

National Academies of Science (2009). Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Education and Forensic Science—CSI: College, Part 1 by Max Houck

Jan asked me to write a couple of guest blogs about topics I like (Jan happens to be one of those topics, but that’s another blog). So I chose education, which is this blog; it if goes well, then I may do another one. If you’re wondering who I am, I am a forensic anthropologist, trace analyst, and educator who has worked in forensic science for the last 20-plus years. I have worked in the private sector (an instrument company and a policy institute), public sector (at an ME’s office and the FBI Laboratory), and in academia (at West Virginia University). I have worked hundreds of cases, taught hundreds of people, and published several books and textbooks in forensic science. I was also the Chair of the Forensic Science Educational Program Accreditation Commission (FEPAC), which I’ll talk more about later.

Because of documentary shows, like Forensic Files, and more fictionalized accounts, such as the CSI series, forensic science is a permanent part of the modern culture. These popular portrayals of forensic science are glossy, pretty, and dramatic–a far cry from the work actually done by forensic professionals. That popular perception also obscures not only the profession reality of forensic science but also what it takes to become a forensic scientist, namely, a strong science education. With the increased recognition that forensic science needs to emphasize its scientific foundations, both from within the profession and from external critics, comes the realization that forensic science is a separate discipline, in its own right, and not “merely applied” chemistry, biology, or other sciences. Popular interest fairly flooded the existing forensic science programs, particularly with the high profile cases of the early 1990s, and the corresponding growth in the number of educational programs offering forensic science degrees contributed to the need for accreditation of these programs. Accreditation provides assurance for students on what to expect in a program and for employers of what the graduate should be able to do. The 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences recommended increasing emphasis on graduate education in forensic science and, with that, additional research to improve the reliability of the science used in investigations, laboratories, and courtrooms.

The first forensic science educational program in the US was created in 1946 at Michigan State University (one of my alma maters—Go Spartans!); today, there are hundreds of programs with the words “forensic ” in their title. The profession of forensic science requires a solid grounding in the natural sciences, an understanding of statistics and interpretation, an appreciation for management skills, and the perspective of the role of forensic science in the criminal justice system. With the increased recognition of forensic science as a separate discipline, additional calls from the community demanded improvement in the quality of forensic science education. Although accreditation and standardization of forensic science programs was not a new message, a confluence of effort, resources, and people were needed to act on the community’s desires.

What does it take to be a forensic scientist? Lots of studying and personal integrity

Most forensic laboratories require at least a bachelor’s degree in science for an entry-level job. The daily work demands this: Chemistry, Biology, Statistics, Physics, and Materials Science are all central to the work of forensic experts. If you like this sort of study and do well at it, that’s the first step. The second is far more personal. Who are you as a person? The demands of the forensic job are many and can hit you hard in a variety of ways. Consider the nature of the work: You do not deal with the happiest segments of society—murder, sexual assault, robberies, kidnapping. I know many people who love the science but can’t take the inherent sadness of the work or the disturbing nature of some of the crimes. If you think working a crime scene is like one of the CSI shows, think again. It’s hard to ignore the way they are portrayed on TV; even at their scummiest, those scenes are pretty clean compared with some of the scenes I’ve been at. The main thing TV doesn’t convey is the smell. Crime scenes all have a particular smell to them. And, for me, it was never a shock to see a dead person in the morgue (I worked for a medical examiner for a while) but it was at the scene in someone’s living room. Bodies belong in the morgue, not in a house. If I’ve learned anything in my years of working in forensic science, it’s that (1) no matter how dirty my house gets, it’s still clean by comparison, and  (2) my sex life is boring, again by comparison, and I’m happy with that.  Ultimately, in forensic science, you have to be able to handle both: The science and forensic stuff.

The other aspect of the personal side is honesty. The citizenry of the jurisdiction you serve (key word, there) have entrusted you (another key word) with their safety. You help the police solve crimes through scientific expertise. You will have access to many things that may seem tempting, like valuable items, drugs, guns, or money. Breaking that public trust is one of the worst things you can ever do: You have disappointed thousands and thousands of people who believe in the rule of law and that justice is possible. To work in a forensic capacity, you must be able to hold the trust of the citizens you serve. It is an awesome responsibility and peoples’ lives are in your hands. You can’t let them down.

[To be continued.

Tomorrow: 

How do I pick a forensic science educational program? ]

Let Us Count (Some) of the Ways: How Forensic Science Affects Our Lives

While some of the ways in which forensic science affects our lives are obvious, many are not so widely known.   Many of us think only of forensic science as a tool of criminal justice, and even then, do not consider all that it does in that realm.  Quality forensic science improves all our lives — here are a few of the many benefits we receive from it when it is at its best:

Criminal Justice

In criminal justice, when evidence is available, forensic scientists and their work may:

Help to determine if a crime has been committed

Help to determine how a crime was committed

Help to determine when a crime was committed

Help to determine what sequence of events occurred at a crime scene

Identify victims

Exclude the innocent as suspects

Identify the guilty

Evaluate evidence that may lead to conviction and testify in court

Counteract less reliable evidence, such as eyewitness accounts and false confessions

Exonerate the wrongly convicted

Link the guilty to previously unsolved crimes

Resolve cases that took place long ago

Save investigators time and effort, reducing associated costs

Reduce costs of trials by avoiding delays

Safety

The work of forensic scientists has a major effect on safety through their investigations of fires, accidents, and fatalities.  These include investigations that lead to improvements in:

Transportation safety

Workplace safety

Product safety

Automobile safety

Fire prevention and suppression

Safety in public venues such as amusement parks

Medicolegal Death investigation

The duties of medical examiners and coroners (ME/Cs) vary greatly between jurisdictions.  Many times, we are misled into thinking their work affects only the dead, but the vast majority of the work of these offices is on behalf of the living, and affects our lives in ways we don’t always see.  These are a few of the things they may do:

Receive reports of all deaths in the jurisdiction

Identify remains (sometimes working with forensic anthropologists and DNA labs to do so)

Determine the cause and manner of an individual’s death

Determine, within certain limits, the time of death

Notify families of deaths of loved ones

Issue death certificates — families, especially those who have lost a sole breadwinner, may end up destitute if death certificates are delayed, because without one, insurance will not pay out, and none of the deceased’s assets can be disposed of.

Arrange for disposition of the remains of those whose families are too poor to arrange for burial, or whose families are unknown or unwilling to arrange for burial.

Affect public health policy through the data on death certificates — funding is given to those researching diseases that cause the highest number of deaths.

Affect workplace safety through investigations of workplace deaths (and other items listed in public safety, above)

Prepare for and respond to mass disasters

Identify disease outbreaks and other causes of sudden increases in death within the jurisdiction

Identify potential terrorist threats such as anthrax

Maintain records of unidentified remains and enter information into NCIC and NamUS databases

Identify potential hazards to children such as co-sleeping and cords on blinds

Take pro-active steps to ensure community safety by studying patterns of deaths, making recommendations to legislative bodies for preventive measures, and issuing public warnings.

Other work

Military uses include identification of remains, including return of remains of MIA from previous conflicts; identification of toxins; investigation of events which may require military prosecution and more.

Human rights work in discovering mass graves and identification of remains, collection and analysis of forensic evidence which may allow prosecution and conviction of human rights violators.

Homeland security and immigration— biometrics to help ensure that those entering the country are who they claim to be and do not have criminal records; identification of suspected terrorists; response to mass fatalities.

Analysis of explosive materials/explosions

Disaster response

Assist in resolution of missing persons cases

Identification of unknown substances which may be dangerous drugs, biohazards, and toxins

Protection of wildlife through forensic work of Dept Fish & Game, National Park Service

Detection of fraud, computer crimes, art forgery, and much more.

This is just a partial list, but we hope it will give you a sense of how important it is to ensure that forensic science is given the support it needs, and that we also ensure it is of the best possible quality.

Welcome to Our Website — and Our Blog !

Welcome to the newly updated site for the Crime Lab Project and its blog!   To make it easier to keep our site current, we’ve combined the two.

Current news about the Crime Lab Project and forensic science will be displayed here on the front page.    We encourage you to explore the pages of the site:  navigate from the links above.  (If you are using a mobile device to view the site, use the pulldown menu for Pages.)  ”Public Forensic Science Needs Your Help” is a good place to start.

If you haven’t previously visited our blog, browse through it as well.   Let us know what you think!

What can I do to improve public forensic science?

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1) Become aware of the overall problems and challenges facing public forensic science.

Some ways to do that:

Subscribe to the Crime Lab Project’s CLP News. About once a week, you’ll get a set of links to recent news stories about forensic science.  The subscription is free.  Just send a blank email message to

CLPNews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com  or click here.

Read the National Academy of Sciences’ publication, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward This study can be read online for free, downloaded as a PDF for $27.90 (or selected individual chapters, 2.90 each), or purchased as a hardcover for $32.36 plus shipping.

Read ProPublica’s report on death investigation in the U.S., Post Mortem

Read position papers on the Web sites of reputable forensic science organizations, such as the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the National Association of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and the American Society of Crime Lab Directors.   Read the papers of the FBI’s Scientific Working Groups, such SWGGUN, and SWGFAST.

You can find a lot of information about forensic science and its problems and potential on government Web sites, such as the site on the DNA Initiative, the NIJ Forensic Sciences site,  and NamUs, the National and Missing Unidentified Persons System.  The Bureau of Justice Statistics offers free reports on forensic science matters, such as this report on crime labs.  And the FBI site has lots of information about its forensic science work and research, too.

There are other views of forensic science available from The Innocence Project, this latent print examination site, and many other places on the Web.

If you want to study forensic science with the hope of having a career in it, please be aware of the accredited colleges and universities listed here. These are programs that had to meet high standards of forensic science education.  Unfortunately, not all colleges and universities offering forensic science coursework are using qualified individuals to teach their classes, so it is worth your while to look into the credentials of faculty, and to find out if graduates are finding work in the field.

2) Write to your Senators and Member of the U.S. House of Representatives to ask for support for funding the Paul Coverdell National Forensic Sciences Act.  These are funds that help labs and medical examiners offices.  They are not earmarked, they are available to all states and U.S. territories.  You can learn more about these grants here and on the NIJ’s Website.

3) Learn about the condition of forensic science labs in your state and local area.

This is probably one of the most important steps you can take.  Here are just a few of the questions you should ask your local political leaders, criminal justice offices, and forensic science providers:

a) What is the average wait for test results in our local crime lab?

b) Is our lab adequately staffed, equipped, and funded?  Do we have high staff turnover?  Do we pay competitive salaries?

c) What tests can our lab perform?

d) Is it accredited? Does it meet ISO 17025 standards?

e) How old are the facilities in which the crime lab operates?

f) How many lab workers have advanced degrees in forensic science?  Of those without degrees, how many are certified through professional organizations?  How often are workers sent to professional seminars for additional training?

g) Does the director of the lab report directly to the chief of police?

h) Is our death investigation system  a coroner system or a medical examiner system?

i) What qualifications are required (especially training qualifications) of our local death investigation official (the coroner or medical examiner)?

j) What percentage of death investigations are autopsied per year by our local ME/C office?

k) Is our ME/C’s office accredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners?

l) How old are the facilities in which the ME/C operates?

m) What forensic science testing is done by our ME/C office?

n) Does our ME/C office have working Xray capabilities?

o) Does our ME/C office participate in NamUs?  What procedures and policies have been adopted on retaining biological samples, fingerprints and other identifying records for unidentified remains?

p) How is evidence tracked, secured, and stored?

q) Is evidence storage adequate?

r) Are there backup power systems for refrigerated evidence storage units?

s) Are fingerprints taken by scanning?  Is there a backlog in uploading scanned prints to the FBI database?

t) Is our lab able to make use of CODIS, NIBIN, and AFIT?  Are there backlogs in these areas?

u) How many untested rape kits are stored in evidence?

v) Does anyone from our lab attend meetings of professional societies such as AAFS?

w) What is the city’s/county’s/state’s plan to ensure that our labs and ME/C offices stay current with new technologies and research?

x) How is our community supporting new research in forensic science?

y) How old are the computer systems in our labs and ME/C offices?

z) What training is available for law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, judges and others who need to know more about forensic science and crime scene investigation?  When is the last time such training was held?

Become an advocate for your lab and for improved death investigation in your community!

Keeping checking back here for more ideas and information.

Twenty-one years of heartbreak: two stories illustrate why we can’t wait

Among those who died in 1990 were two women whose cases would receive new attention just this past week, in March 2011.  The women lived and died more than 1200 miles apart: one in Cincinnati, Ohio, the other in San Antonio, Texas.  Their cases began about a month apart, and recently each came a little closer to resolution.   One other similarity:  in addition to the tragic loss of a loved one, the families of each woman was given a torturous and unnecessary wait while evidence was ignored for years.

On March 22, 1990, Lillian Curtis was found raped and beaten to death on Republic Street  in Cincinnati.  She was 51 years old.  Although DNA evidence was not then in use to the extent it is today (nor were labs anywhere near current DNA capabilities), and the FBI’s CODIS database was not yet in existence, biological evidence that held DNA was available in the case.  Later, it was submitted to CODIS.  In 2002, CODIS returned a match.  The man whose DNA matched that of her attacker had been seen with her, and was a suspect at the time of the crime.  He is in prison, serving a sentence for killing another woman three months after Lillian Curtis’s murder.  He is currently eligible for parole in nine years.  The possibility of his getting paroled may change now.

In 2002 the coroner’s office noticed the match and notified police.  And nothing happened for eight years, when a cold case detective picked up the file and realized that for unknown reasons, no one had acted on the CODIS hit.  New procedures are in place to prevent this happening in the future.  But during the years that passed from 2002 until now, her family was not told that her killer had been identified, and spent those years believing the case was still unsolved.  Also, during those years, the community could have easily been endangered. If her killer had not been arrested in the other murder case, if his sentence had been for a lesser crime that resulted in less time served, or if the file on this cold case had not been reviewed, he could have been free to commit other crimes.  You can read the WKRC story on this case here.

On April 26, 1990, in San Antonio, Texas, Lupita Cantu disappeared. She was 41 years old.  She was seen leaving her home that morning with a stocky, bearded man, who drove the family van.  Police believed she was forcibly abducted.  Her van was later found at grocery store on Hillcrest and Bandera Road.  She had been married for twenty years, was a devoted mother of four children, and was close to her family.

One month after she went missing, Lupita Cantu’s twin sister, Mary Guzman, put a large banner on a shed in her backyard, facing Highway 90.  ”Find Lupita Cantu” it read, and offered a $5000 reward and gave a phone number to call to leave information.  It stayed up (replaced only once) for twenty-one years.  For many in the San Antonio area, it became a haunting part of the local landscape.

On Friday, March 4, 2011 authorities told the family that Lupita Cantu’s remains had been found.  In fact, they had been found in Pearsall, about 60 miles away, shortly after Lupita went missing.  They were not identified at the time or connected to the missing person’s case in San Antonio.  So for twenty-one years, Lupita has lain in a pauper’s grave in Frio County.  Her case is now a murder case under investigation by law enforcement. (You can read more here, in the San Antonio Express.)

Texas has a mixed medico-legal death investigation system.  There are no coroners. Those duties are delegated to the justices of the peace.  There is no central repository of death investigation records from its 254 counties. In 1955, the state passed a law allowing counties with a population of more than 250,000 to establish medical examiner systems if they wanted to — Bexar, San Antonio’s county, was one of the first to do so.  In 1965, the law was changed to mandate a medical examiner system in counties with a population of over 500,000. (For more on the history of these dual systems in Texas, see this article in The Handbook of Texas Online.)

Pearsall is in Frio County, currently with a population of about 16,000.

I don’t know enough details of this case to know the reasons why it took 21 years for someone to connect these unidentified remains with Lupita Cantu’s disappearance.  But I can make some good guesses.  Some of the information initially seen online leads me to believe that it is unlikely that a forensic anthropologist worked on the case in 1990.  Some people who try to explain the delay will talk about advances in DNA, and speak as if 1990 were the stone age.  Without a doubt, the improvements in forensic DNA testing in recent years have helped to yield identifications that would have been close to impossible in 1990.  But there were fingerprints, dental records, and other means of identifying John and Jane Does even in 1990.

The truth is that a distance of 60 miles, county lines, and a few months would have been enough to make identification less likely — even now.  Many coroners offices are still on paper systems.  A 2004 Department of Justice survey found that with over 13,500 unidentified remains on record, only half of the country’s C/ME offices had policies regarding retention of records on those remains.  It found that 80% of those offices seldom or never used NCIC UP/MP, a federal database available to help match information on unidentified remains with police missing persons records.  (In 2004, 42% of the entries in that database came from California, which had passed laws mandating its use in that state.)

I wish that this was the first time I had heard of stories where lack of procedures or failure to follow procedures, lack of funding, and lack of concern by the public for death investigation  likely led to decades of misery for families of the murdered and missing.  Family members and friends of such victims suffer in a way few of us can begin to imagine.

What can you do?  Plenty.  Take the time to find out about the situation in your own county.  Are you on a coroner system?  What are the requirements for someone to be the coroner or medical examiner?  What are the training requirements?  Find out if the local death investigation office — whether coroner, justice of the peace, medical examiner, or some mixed system — has received the budget it needs for training its workers and equipping its office.  Find out if it has adopted the National Association of Medical Examiners’ Best Practice Guidelines for Identifying Unknown Decedents, which is available as a PDF on the NAME Web site.

That document opens with a quotation that is worth repeating here:

“Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the law of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.”

~ William Gladstone (1809-1898)

Posted by Jan Burke 03/09/11