by Jerold Last
Chapter7. Forensic sciences, Alaskan style
The most interesting item in the case file was the pathology reports. The post-mortem examinations of the bodies of Roberta and Francis Roberts by the original Park Rangers who reported the bodies, the FBI agents who responded to the scene, and the coroner in Anchorage who examined the bodies were all summarized.
The Park Rangers had seen the carnage, made a cursory examination of the site, and concluded that everything was consistent with an attack by a bear. The next investigators on the scene, the same two FBI agents we’d met in Anchorage and again today at the National Park, had made an even more cursory examination of the site and rubberstamped the Park Rangers’ conclusions.
The State Medical Examiner’s Office in Alaska is responsible for conducting all medical/legal investigative work related to unanticipated, sudden or violent deaths. In a case like this, the State Medical Examiner’s responsibility included determining cause and manner of death by conducting autopsies and providing consultation to law enforcement. The responsibility for the autopsies is delegated back to each local borough, as counties are called in Alaska, so the local poorly trained coroner in Anchorage, an elected official whose qualifications included either a medical degree or training as a mortician, got this case. There really wasn’t any other qualified Medical Examiner in the region.
By the time the Medical Examiner performed the autopsies the case had been closed in everyone’s minds with a verdict of “death by misadventure”. The pathology findings were death by trauma consistent with severe lacerations caused by multiple strikes from the claws of a large animal like a bear. The rest of the pathology report described two older people in excellent physical condition who seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and died tragically. It was completely consistent with the FBI report, which in turn declared it an accidental pair of deaths. Case closed as far as the State of Alaska and the National Park was concerned!
The second interesting item in the file was a report from the FBI’s local forensics unit, the equivalent of the CSI crime labs made famous on network TV shows, who had routinely examined several lurid photos of the wounds photographed from the bodies of Roberta and Francis Roberts at the autopsy. The conclusion was the wounds were consistent with an attack by a large grizzly bear and actually estimated the height and weight of the bear from the angle and depth of the wounds as shown on the photos.
Gretchen closed her copy of the file, looked up at us, and saw we were also finished reading the skimpy files. “What do you guys think, Roger?”
Discretion won out over valor, for a change. “I think I’ll defer to Suzanne on this one,” I replied. “What do you think, Suzanne?”
“I think this is one of the lousiest examples I’ve ever seen of a crime scene examination, and an even lousier job of follow-up forensic analysis by a bunch of pseudo-scientists who had little or no idea of what they were doing! We have literally not the slightest idea of how the Roberts were killed, or by whom,” she replied.
Gretchen winced. “Do you think it’s possible they might have been murdered, Suzanne?”
Suzanne practically threw the report onto the top of the bed she was standing next to. “At this point I don’t think anything. And I don’t think you should, either. This piece of nonsense doesn’t tell us anything about what could have, or did, happen to the Roberts. We just have to wait for a real autopsy to get a handle on the possibilities. I’m not too happy about the idea that we should sit around doing nothing while we wait for the autopsy results either.”
Gretchen nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have any suggestions about what we should be doing, just in case we find out it really was a double murder?”
Suzanne finished scribbling notes on a piece of paper, what she usually did when she was bouncing complicated ideas around in her head. She looked up at us, turning to the two Kaufman sisters. “Yes, Gretchen, I have a few ideas of things you can be doing if we assume this was a murder while we wait for the new autopsy results. Would you really like to hear them?”
“Sure, what do you have in mind?” replied the FBI agent. “I have a feeling your hunch about this being a double murder is going to turn out to be right.”
Suzanne quickly scanned her notes. “Access to the park isn’t open to everybody. Because there’s just the one road between the park entrance and the crime scene, more than 90 miles away from the entrance, we have a variant of the classical locked room mystery here. The only difference is we’re dealing with a very large locked room, some 6 million acres large in this case. That means our possible suspects are the park visitors, the Park Service employees and concessioners, and everyone who had a backpacking permit valid for the day of the killings. That’s a lot of people, but the records should all be accessible on someone’s computer.
“For the moment at least, let’s exclude the possibility this was a random event by a madman and assume there was a motive for the crime. If that’s the case, I think there’s a reasonably likely motive we can start investigating now. If someone from the Roberts’ past activities as CIA agents recognized them, there could have been a lot of motives for murder. But, it’s a pretty good bet that whatever their motive was, it most likely happened in Chile where they were stationed for most of their careers. So how can we figure out whether any of our likely suspects have ever been to Chile?”
Gretchen Kaufman looked over at her sister. “Any ideas, Barbara?” she asked.
Barbara had also been taking notes as Suzanne was talking. She looked up at us. “A couple,” she replied. “Most of the visitors and all of the employees are citizens of the United States. If we can get social security numbers for all of them we could check passport information at the State Department and find out if they’ve ever been to Chile. For the foreign visitors we should be able to get their home country and passport numbers from the Park Service records. I don’t know what we’d do next to see if they had been to Chile.”
Gretchen smiled at her sister. “Your logic is good, but forget about interagency cooperation from the State Department. Since the media have been playing up the stories about alleged illegal surveillance of US citizens by our own federal government agencies there’s been a big increase in refusal to share information of any kind between the various federal law enforcement agencies. I’m afraid we’d need a judge’s warrant to see passport information and I doubt we’d be able to get one to test a theory or screen a large group of US citizens to look for a crook that might not even be there. And there’s another problem. I don’t think the State Department keeps copies of expired passports, which are returned to you when you renew your passport, so there wouldn’t be anybody’s travel history further back than their last passport renewal.”
I cleared my throat to get everybody’s attention. “I have a few friends who could probably help us match social security numbers to whether or not any US citizen had ever entered Chile, and current passport numbers for foreign nationals to check whether they’d ever been there. It might take some time, but I’m sure they could do it. And, even though I’m sure you could guess who I’m talking about, since it might not be 100% legal you don’t want to ask me who those friends are.”
Gretchen smiled again. “OK, let’s plan on getting started collecting this information. Barbara, can you take care of this chore? You can use Agents Barclay and Culpepper to do the tedious work, but don’t tell them what we plan to do with this information. And if Barclay tries to give you a hard time about his having to take orders from you, tell me about it and I’ll have another little chat with him.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can get both of them to do what I tell them to,” replied Barbara. “Just to make sure, maybe I’ll take Suzanne with me when I explain what we expect them to do.”
It occurred to me there was another possible motive for the double killing, if indeed that’s what had happened here. “I think we have to worry about the possibility of this being a WPWT murder case, too. The Roberts may just h
ave been in the wrong place at the wrong time and seen something they weren’t supposed to see. We probably need to go back and really look over the crime scene and the area all around it to see if anything seems to be going on there that shouldn’t be.”
Suzanne looked down at her notes again before leaning forward. “I’ve been thinking about whether we have any clues to suggest what they might have found that could be a motive for murder. Do you remember the stuff I pulled out of the ashes from the fire pit?”
Gretchen pulled out a small notebook from her pocket and riffled the pages, quickly finding the one she was looking for. “Let’s see. Here it is. You turned up two quarters, a nickel, a penny, a swastika, several buttons, the remains of a zipper, and a key. You also found several small rocks, which Roger thought might be quartz, with little flecks in them he thought might be either gold or fool’s gold.” She closed the notebook and tried to look like a good student who deserved an A+ for her notes taken at a lecture.
Suzanne gave her a look of approval before answering. “As I understand the law in the National Park, panning for gold in the various rivers and streams is perfectly legal since it doesn’t cause any environmental pollution. But you don’t get stones or rocks by panning. You get them by hard-rock mining from a gold mine, which is illegal in the National Park because of the environmental impact of the damage you do drilling and blasting, and because of the mine tailings you create with the rocks and dirt that don’t contain gold you accumulate as a by-product of the mining.
“Do you think it’s possible the Roberts stumbled across an illegal mining operation during their hiking in the area? If they did, we might be able to find the same illegal mine and evidence of fresh activity there if we try to retrace their biking trail between the place they were found and the lodge.”
Gretchen frowned as she thought the idea through. “It sounds like we’re going to be looking for a needle in a haystack, Suzanne. And 6 million acres is a pretty big haystack. But I agree with you that we need to be doing something while we wait for the new autopsy findings. I’d suggest that you and Roger could check this theory out, but it’s too dangerous. If our hypothetical killer could handle two experienced CIA agents, with all due respects what makes you think you’d do better if you found him or he found you?”
Gretchen looked directly at me as she said this, so I answered for Suzanne. “Could we borrow Agent Culpepper from Barbara to help us out here if we think someone’s stalking us? And, could you arrange to have me issued a permit to carry a pistol in the park? I think we’ll be safe enough if we take those steps and stay alert.
“There’s also something else. If someone is mining gold illegally in the park it tells us a lot more about who he is, or who they are. A backpacking permit is good for only as long as thirty nights during any summer season. And it’s a lot shorter than that in practical terms, because a permit is only good for seven nights at a specific campground in a specific area of the park. That’s not enough time to build and exploit a clandestine gold mine. I think we can rule out all of the day tourists and backpackers as suspects if illegal mining was the motive for murder. We should focus on the Park Service staff and the concession employees as our possible bear impersonators. I promise to be extra careful around the staff we meet as we search the area, and I’m sure Suzanne will do the same.”
Chapter8. Revisiting the case
Later that evening, Gretchen and Barbara Kaufman, Suzanne and I, and the two local FBI agents, Barclay and Culpepper, were sitting around a conference table in their largest office, which was less than half the size of our dining room at home. The office was not only tiny, but seemed like it was designed to depress. The grimy green walls reminded me of the hospital walls in a Grade B movie. The view, at least what I could see through the dirt and grunge, from the only window was equally bleak. It looked out over the same boarded up and run down old commercial buildings we’d seen walking over here our first night in town.
Gretchen sat at the head of the table with Barbara on her right and Suzanne on her left. I sat next to my wife, while Barbara had Jason Culpepper sitting to her right. Ed Barclay sat at the foot of the table directly across from Gretchen who called our little meeting to order. “Suzanne doesn’t think very much of the work that’s been done on this case thus far, either at the crime scene or the follow-up forensic analyses. In fact, she thinks the conclusion this was just a tragic accident is open to question.”
The pompous lead agent Ed Barclay blustered, “We’ve got incontrovertible evidence from the claw marks they were attacked by a bear. Who the hell do you think you are to question the forensic science done at the FBI?”
Bad move on his part. Suzanne isn’t usually very good at suffering fools graciously, and is even less tolerant of fools who try to intimidate her. She ignored Barclay while turning to her right to ask, “Gretchen, are you familiar with the Department of Justice and National Institute of Standards and Technology panel report on just how unscientific forensic sciences is in the United States? And what areas they were most critical of?”
“No, but I assume I should be,” she replied.
Suzanne had just read an article on this topic in one of the major scientific magazines, and was up to date on the issues. I almost felt sorry for the hapless FBI agent, who was about to learn a valuable lesson in humility. “It’s a big issue, Gretchen,” Suzanne commented. “If your pompous ass here wants to pretend he understands what he’s talking about, he really should be reading more. Let me share some of the background with you then tell you how I think it relates to this particular case.”
“Thanks, Suzanne,” Gretchen replied. “I think we have the time to try to get this right, especially after you told me enough to realize the Roberts family weren’t typical tourists and weren’t likely to have been surprised by a bear out in the woods.”
Lead agent Ed Barclay tried for the final time to stick his foot deeper into his mouth. “What’s this? Have these two civilians been withholding evidence in a federal case? That’s a crime punishable by 5-10 years in jail.” He reached into his pocket for a pair of handcuffs, which he dangled in Suzanne’s general direction.
Barbara Kaufman, who’d been silent until now, took the lead this time. “If anyone’s obstructed justice on this case up until now, it’s been you, Agent Barclay. You’re not particularly good at listening to people, much less asking them the right questions. Put your handcuffs away before I let Suzanne, who you should be addressing as Professor Bowman, take them away from you. And if we hear anything else from you until someone asks you a question, I will arrest you for interfering with an FBI agent in performance of her duties. Now sit down and shut-up!”
Barclay mumbled something under his breath and sat down. I thought I saw a small smirk quickly pass across his partner Culpepper’s face, but it was gone before I could be sure.
Suzanne stood up and faced the group around the table. “The US Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just assembled a US national commission on forensic science. This is the first time something like this has been done, and a lot of experts think it’s long overdue. It’s a panel of scientists, lawyers, forensics practitioners, and law-enforcement officials. They’ve been asked to advise on government policies such as training and certification standards for law enforcement personnel in CSIs and other so-called scientific agencies that specialize in crime scene analysis and scientific methods for identifying criminals like DNA testing. NIST will also set up a parallel panel, a forensic-science standards board, which will set specific standards for the methods used in crime labs.
“The reason for this activity is because the National Research Council (NRC) released a major report a few years ago. It was very critical of US forensics practices. According to their report, nearly every analytical technique used by the forensics laboratories, from hair-sampling methods to those used in arson investigation, is unreliable, with too much variability in test results. The NRC was also
concerned about forensics lab training. In 2009, only 60% of publicly funded crime labs employed a certified examiner. The report called for standards to ensure that all labs evaluate evidence in the same way. Very often, it said, two labs analyzing evidence from a crime scene came up with different results using the same method.
“I could go on,” Suzanne continued, “but I think you can get the big picture here.”
Barbara thought about what she’d just heard for a moment. “I assume you’re saying that the TV portrayal of CSI as quick and perfect isn’t accurate, and that contrary to all of the FBI propaganda, neither is our famous laboratory.”
Suzanne smiled. “That just about sums it up. Thank you, Barbara. Now let’s talk about what might have been a double murder in the National Park. I’d guess there’s not a lot of literature on the forensics of bear attacks. But there is quite a bit on something similar, human bite marks found on victims of homicides. This is a method sworn by experts in court testimony to absolutely identify the person who made the bite by comparison with dental casts from a suspect. But they’re sometimes absolutely wrong! According to the Innocence Project, which examines old cases where there may be reasonable doubt with modern scientific methods, at least 15 people whose convictions involved bite marks and who served time in prison have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1993. There really is very little evidence that bite marks on a crime victim’s skin allow reliable identification of the perpetrator.”
