“OK, now this is a fun one,” forensic anthropologist Kathy Day told an attentive crowd during a lecture last week at DeSales University.
“In a gross kind of way.”
Day, who spent four decades at the Alaska State Medical Examiner’s office and still works with a federal mass casualty response team, was showing crime scene, autopsy and investigative photos of suicides, homicides, natural disasters and other catastrophes when she changed it up with a case about a man who died of natural causes.
The man lived on an Anchorage hillside, in a home so lovely a couple had asked if they could get married there. The man agreed, but when it got closer to the wedding day, the couple couldn’t get in touch with him. Desperate, they went to his home to find him.
“They were looking all around and couldn’t find him,” Day said. “Then they looked in the hot tub.”
She said investigators surmised the man had a heart attack while relaxing in the tub and nobody knew because he lived alone, “so he boiled down to a big pile of guck.”
Some of the emergency workers, outfitted in hazmat suits, were “wretching over the railing,” she recalled. But her duties as a forensic anthropologist meant those human remains would need to be identified. The remains were scooped out of the hot tub and the man was identified by fingerprints, she said.
“This is the kind of stuff you’ll do as a forensic anthropologist,” she told about 100 mostly criminal justice students and other curious guests in the latest in DeSales University’s Forensic Forum lecture series on Thursday.
The forum, coordinated by Katherine Ramsland, a DeSales psychology professor and expert in forensics and serial killers, is an ongoing community educational resource that began in 2001, which has in the past featured forensic artists, FBI profilers, law professors and forensic psychiatrists.
Ramsland said she met Day several years ago at the famed Body Farm in Tennessee, a research facility used by forensic scientists to study the decomposition of the human corpse. Interested in her work in the “Grizzly Man” death investigation, Ramsland became close with Day, leading to the invitation to speak at the lecture series.
During the hour-and-a-half-hour discussion, Day used her gallows humor in talking to the crowd about her adventures as a forensic anthropologist where she gathered and interpreted evidence to assist in the identification of human remains and determine cause of death. Ultimately, she said, “it’s really about identifying the dead in order to provide closure to families and help solve crimes.”
Among the topics Day, who also teaches online courses at DeSales and the University of Alaska Anchorage, discussed was how to determine the difference between human and animal bones, which she did often for state troopers in Alaska. She pointed out that bear bones are the most often confused for human bones.
“We have lots of wilderness, lots of hunters,” said Day, now living in New Jersey.
Bones, she said, can also determine age, gender, height and cause of death.
In a demonstration with her cadaver dog, Tara, Day hid a portion of a human skull in the lecture room, which Tara quickly located. Day and Tara are part of a K9 Search and Rescue team in New Jersey.
For most of the lecture, Day showed photos of some of the cases she’s worked on in Alaska and the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team.
“Don’t look if you’re squeamish,” she warned. “But I think that’s why you all came because you want to see these kind of pictures.”
None of the students left as graphic scenes played out on a projector.
The cases Day discussed included a suicide in the woods of Alaska, the recovery and identification of two torsos, one an exotic dancer identified by a Mickey Mouse tattoo and the other a runaway identified because of a broken and healed rib bone, and other deaths and mass casualty incidents, including the Haiti earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands in 2010.
Day was involved in the investigation of the fire at the Station nightclub in Rhode Island that killed 100 in 2003, and the recovery and identification of 300 bodies at the Tri-State Crematory in northwest Georgia in 2002. The bodies, she said, had been taken to the crematorium for proper disposal, but they were never cremated because the facility’s oven broke and they were instead dumped on the crematorium’s site.
Day ended her discussion, at the request of Ramsland, with the “Grizzly Man” case, the 2003 deaths of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard who were mauled to death by a bear in a national park in Alaska.
Showing images from the autopsy room, Day said she was already sure the cause of death was a bear mauling, but she had to make sure that Treadwell, who was not popular among the locals, wasn’t killed in another manner before he was almost fully eaten by the bear.
Because Treadwell was recording his work with the bears, much of the horror of the attack was captured on audio, Day said. The story of Treadwell’s life and death would later be turned into a critically acclaimed documentary.
But, while Day mostly discussed the dead, she did provide tips on avoiding tragedy, such as having a plan when going somewhere with large crowds.
“In this day and age, always be aware,” she said. “Always know where the exits are.”
Students who attended the lecture found Day’s work fascinating. Among them were Fifi Abdelaziz and Madeline Rivera, both sophom*ores who take Ramsland’s forensic psychology course.
Rivera said that while the lecture was graphic, it’s part of a career in forensics. Abdelaziz, who wants to a pursue a career in Homeland Security, said Day’s approach to talking about her cases made it easier on the crowd.
“I thought it was very interesting, especially how she made it humorous, considering the fact that it was very graphic,” Abdelaziz said.
Trinity Revelsattended the lecture with her older sister Autumn Revels. The two drove from Wilmington, Del., and talked to Day prior to the lecture.
“It’s very nice that they invited potential students because I could see what the school offers,” said Trinity Revels, who is now considering a career in forensic anthropology.
“I want to be able to identify the bones and give closure to the family, that’s my main interest,” she said.
