Bone Remains: Cold Cases in Forensic Anthropology

by Mary H. Manhein

Overview

Over the past thirty years, forensic anthropologist Mary H. Manhein has helped authorities to identify hundreds of deceased persons throughout Louisiana and beyond. In Bone Remains, she offers details of twenty riveting cases from her files -- many of them involving facial reconstructions where only bones offered clues to an individual's story.
Manhein takes readers into the field, inside her lab, and through DNA databases and government bureaucracies as she and her team tirelessly work to identify and seek justice for those who can no longer speak for themselves. From a two-thousand-year-old mummy, to Civil War sailors, to graves disturbed by Hurricane Isaac, Manhein presents both modern and historic cases. Her conversational accounts provide a fascinating look into the stories behind the headlines as well as sometimes heart-wrenching details of people lost and found.
Manhein shows how each case came to her team, how they used scientific analysis to unravel the secrets the bones had to tell, and how facial reconstructions and a special database for missing and unidentified people assisted in closing cold cases long believed to be unsolvable. She also discusses several mysteries that still elude her, further reflecting the determination and passion central to Manhein's career for over three decades.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807153253
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	09/09/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	1,065,201
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Mary H. Manhein is the author of The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist; Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist; and the mystery novel Floating Souls: The Canal Murders. She is director of the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) Laboratory at Louisiana State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction 1

1 In the Deep Woods 10

2 Long Journey Home 19

3 A "Princess" of Thebes 25

4 A Matter of Concealment 35

5 The Power of Tattoos 46

6 The Power of Fingerprints 53

7 A Son's Transgression 58

8 Man Overboard 63

9 A Child from the Past 67

10 Cat's Paw 77

11 In a Cotton Field 79

12 The USS Monitor and Her Crew 83

13 Victims of the Ku Klux Klan 90

14 Hurricane Isaac 93

15 Cold-Case Database 104

Epilogue: Cases 1 Always Wanted to Solve 114

Acknowledgments 123