interview with Kathy reichs, Phd

interview with Kathy reichs, Phd by Melissa Hartman

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NY FAN of the TV show Bones knows the name Temperance Brennan. A forensic anthropologist at the fictional Jeffersonian Institute, Dr. Brennan helps FBI agent Seeley Booth solve crimes by analyzing human remains both in the field and in the lab. Her character is based on the protagonist of several books by real-life forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, who started writing fiction because she “thought it would be fun to bring my science to a broader audience.” She has published 12 Temperance Brennan novels; her first novel for young adults, Virals, which features Dr. Brennan’s 14-year-old great-niece as the protagonist, was just released. Here, Dr. Reichs discusses bones, Bones, and the rewards of her many-faceted career.

Dr. Kathy Reichs at the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale, in Montreal, Québec, where she works as a consultant.

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On the TV show Bones, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan (second from left, played by Emily Deschanel) works with a team that includes a coroner, a reconstruction artist, and an expert on insects, chemicals, and minerals.

RichaRd FoReman/FoX

i know that you studied archaeology as an undergraduate.Was that a lifelong interest for you? It was. When I was a kid, I liked to read the Popular Archaeology book series. I loved Thor Heyerdahl’s books, especially the one about the Kon-Tiki and the one about Easter Island. When I went to my 10-year high school reunion and they had listed what everybody had gone on to do, and I’d gotten my doctorate, everyone said, “Oh, yeah, you were always reading those archaeology books in high school.” So apparently it was more of an interest than I even remembered.

so when you went to college, was it with the goal of becoming an archaeologist? Not exactly. After a few other majors—fine arts, graphic arts—I eventually found my way to anthropology, and to archaeology through that. My bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees are all in anthropology.

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How did you get started working in the forensics realm? I graduated from American University in Washington, DC. Some of our coursework—I remember an intensive osteology course in particular—required us to apply our skills to collections at the Smithsonian. There, I met a woman named Lucille St. Hoyme who was doing some forensic work. I saw her do cases, and I guess that planted the seed in my mind. After I earned my PhD, I took a full-time teaching position at Northern Illinois University. A few years later, I came to North Carolina, first to Davidson College and then to UNC–Charlotte. Eventually, the police here just started asking me for help on cases. At the time, there was no formal board certification for forensic anthropologists, so when the police would find bones, they didn’t exactly know who to consult. After they heard that there was this “bones lady” out at the university, they’d call or ask me to go to a scene or to do the analysis on skeletons. My first case was an unsolved child homicide case here in Charlotte.

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Did you need any additional training to do the forensic work? I did, because forensic anthropology requires skills that aren’t necessarily those of the archaeologist—even an archaeologist with a good understanding of osteology and human skeletons. So I did do some retraining, and then submitted my candidacy for certification from the American Board of Forensic Anthropologists. That was a bear of an examination, both the written and practical exam. I think only about 88 people have ever been certified.

The Bones team often encounters remains in unusual states. Here, Brennan, Hodgins (the “bug and slime guy”), and Cam (coroner) examine the remains of a young man found on a sunken ship in “The Shallow in the Deep” episode.

Although technology has advanced since Dr. Reichs started working as a forensic anthropologist, her eyes and calipers are still the tools she relies on most.

Richard Foreman/FOX

What does a forensic anthropologist need to know that an archaeologist wouldn’t know? Archaeologists focus more on demographics, population, and population trends: How many males? How many females? How long did people live? But in forensics, you’re really focusing on a specific individual and a specific death event. Who was this? Can we put a positive identification on a set of remains? Can we reconstruct what happened to that person— either cause of death, or body treatment following death? And forensic anthropologists work not just with dry bones, but with soft tissue remains that have been mummified, dismembered, decomposed, or burned. Forensic anthropologists also have to be concerned with the chain of custody of evidence and how to secure a crime scene so evidence will be admissible in court.

It seems like this kind of work would be pretty exhausting emotionally. It can be, especially the child homicide cases. I’ve got three of them going right now. Those are tough to work on. And I worked at Ground Zero, which was not only physically demanding, but also psychologically demanding just because of the immensity of it. I testified at the genocide tribunal for Rwanda at the United Nations, and again, the scale of it was just overwhelming. But as a scientist, I have to be able to detach and distance myself and observe objectively. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to do my job.

Has the technology changed in the field since you started working in it? Are there things you can do now that you weren’t able to do when you first started? The big advance was DNA. Also, microscopes have gotten much more powerful, and so has computer analysis based on databases, which allows us to make statistical statements about whether an unknown individual might have belonged to a particular population.

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When I went to my ten-year high school reunion and they had listed what everybody had gone on to do, and I’d gotten my doctorate, everyone said, “Oh, yeah, you were always reading those archaeology books in high school.” So apparently it was more of an interest than I even remembered.

But the basic tools of the trade are still visually inspecting the skeleton and measuring the skeleton using calipers, the same kind of measuring instruments that have been used for hundreds of years.

is the tV show Bones pretty faithful to the science that you practice? We try to make it that way. As a producer on the show, I work with the writers. They come to me with questions—What would be the fracture pattern if somebody fell out of a helicopter from 800 feet?—and I’ll give them that information. And I read every script and give them feedback, mainly on the accuracy of the science. It’s television, so there has to be a good story, and every story has to have a resolution, which doesn’t always happen in real life. But we don’t make anything up. The characters don’t get DNA back in 22 minutes, and they don’t use technology that doesn’t actually exist.

you’re a consultant to a lab in Montreal. is it typical for forensic anthropologists to work as consultants? Most of us work at universities or museums full-time and consult on the side to the local medical examiner or coroner. There are exceptions: there are 30-some anthropologists employed full-time at the military’s Central Identification Lab in Hawaii. And many states and cities do have full-time forensic anthropologists—I know that the Manhattan medical examiner has one, and so does Kentucky. But most of us are at universities and consult.

What skills or qualities do you think are necessary to succeed in your field? You have to be very good in science. When kids visit

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my website, they often get very excited about the forensic end and brush over the science end of it. You need a good background in chemistry and biology, and then you need to go on and major in human genetics or microbiology, or forensic chemistry, or toxicology, or whatever field really interests you. But don’t just take a program in forensic science. That will teach you about the field, but it won’t give you the skills you need to function in a forensic lab. You also need the psychological makeup to be able to deal with this work. If you’re going into pathology, homicide investigation, or forensic anthropology, you need to be able to deal with death—and often violent death—on a regular basis.

Can you give me an example of a case that was particularly rewarding to you? Any case we resolve is rewarding. Usually this means one of two things: we identify the remains, or we figure out what happened by doing a trauma analysis. Any time we do either of those, it is satisfying. If it is a homicide, and then someone is arrested and I’m able to testify in court, that’s really rewarding. The first book I wrote, Déjà Dead, is based on a serial murder case in Montreal in which I was able to analyze saw marks in the bones and connect them to a suspect. It was very gratifying to be able to take him off the street.

you’ve probably taken quite a few people off the street. Well, I’ve contributed. I don’t do it by myself. I work as part of a team that might include the ballistics people, the DNA people, the forensic dentist. I do one little piece of the puzzle. And my piece happens to be looking at the bones of the victim. i

Learn more about forensic anthropology Forensic anthropology is the analysis of human remains for use in public proceedings, such as criminal trials and tribunals. The cases that forensic anthropologists work on vary widely; some specialize in identifying war dead, while others, like Dr. Reichs, consult with law enforcement agencies. Still others work with historic or even prehistoric remains. Here are our recommendations for further exploration:

books Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science by William Bass and Jon Jefferson (William Morrow, 2007). Bone Detective: The Story of Forensic Anthropologist Diane France by Lorraine Jean Hopping (Joseph Henry Press, 2006). No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America’s Oldest Skeletons by Jeff Benedict (HarperCollins, 2003). Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist by Mary H. Manhein (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2005).

Websites American Board of Forensic Anthropology www.theabfa.org ForensicAnthro.com www.forensicanthro.com Kathy Reichs’s Forensic Science Page http://kathyreichs.com/forensic-science Dr. Midori Albert’s Forensic Anthropology Page http://people.uncw.edu/ albertm/#forensic_anthropology Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake http://anthropology.si.edu/ writteninbone

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