When she is not teaching University of South Florida students the finer points of forensic anthropology, Erin Kimmerle, assistant professor of anthropology, works some of the world's most notorious crime scenes, looking for evidence that will help identify a newly discovered set of bones.

 

When he is not out at a crime scene, looking for evidence that will help lead to a murder conviction, Tampa police Detective Charles Massucci uses his considerable skills as an interviewer trying to get into the minds of killers.

Over the summer, Kimmerle and Massucci, along with USF professors Elizabeth Bird and Fraser Ottanelli, will travel to Nigeria to help teach medical students the basics of forensics investigation techniques.

And help Nigerians unravel the mystery of Asaba, where hundreds of men and boys were thought to have been massacred in October 1967 during the nation's bloody civil war.

It is no academic exercise, says Kimmerle, a world-renowned researcher who has taken part in many well-publicized local forensic investigations. The subjects included Abraham Shakespeare, the Florida lottery winner who was killed in April 2009; Sandra Prince, a social worker missing since 2006; and Lisa Mowrey, whose bones were recently located along Interstate 75 after she disappeared in 2004.

Forensics, Kimmerle says, "is a foundation of human rights."

In Nigeria, those rights have been lacking, Kimmerle says.

"In the past two years, there have been more than 1,000 extrajudicial killings of suspects, innocent civilians, multinational oil workers and politicians by the police, the military forces, vigilante groups and armed militants in various parts of Nigeria," she says. "All of judicial reform is based on forensic sciences. What good is law if you cannot enforce it?"

Source: Web