Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist

2. The Lady from the Gulf

The Lady from the Gulf T was early July when the lady from the Gulf was brought to my laboratory. Occasionally, the mornings were still cool with a pleasant breeze from the southwest, directing the heady scent of magnolia blossoms my way and making early summer in south Louisiana almost tolerable. Spring semester had ended severalweeks earlier, and all of the graduate students had gone home or were off working on their summer research projects. For a brief period, I had no papers to grade, no marathon discussions on proposed thesis topics, no deadlines for a thesis defense, and no constant knocks on my door. July was the time when my assistants and I began our own summer research and prepared for a well-earned week or two of vacation. Inevitably, however, summer was also a time when we received several calls for assistance in forensic cases. Anthropology graduate students wait expectantly throughout the year for opportunities to participate in field retrievals and analysis of forensic cases. Yetmost of the cases seem to come during the summer or between semesters when the students are gone. That's the way it was in 1999, when we were asked to consult on a case being secured at the Jefferson Parish morgue. Jefferson is a sprawling parish of more than 450,000 people..It spans both the east and west banks of the Mississippi River and encompasses , among others, the city of Metairie and other parts of greater New Orleans. The Jefferson Parish coroner's office has a large morgue facility, which is shared by other parishes that surround Jefferson, including Plaquemines Parish, a narrow peninsula a few miles south of New Orleans . On that late spring day in 1999, Anthony Buras, senior coroner's inI 2 12 T R A I L OF BONES vestigator for Plaquemines Parish, called and asked if I would meet him at Jefferson's morgue to review the case of a man they had found on the bank of the Mississippi River the day before. Unfortunately, the Mississippi River gives up bodies on a regular basis, especially those of young men. Though sexand probable race of this most recent victim were determined from preserved soft tissue, the autopsy had not revealed enough information to lead investigators to a positive identification. The identity of the young black man from the riverbank was easy enough once we examined him in our laboratory at LSU in Baton Rouge. Our Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) Laboratory handles cases from all across the country. In the Plaquemines case, careful examination of the decaying body revealed a tattoo on the young man's forearm. It had been obscured by the rigid position of his limbs and the discoloration of his skin tissue resulting from desiccation of his remains on the river's edge. "Sam," a nickname he had used for many years, was revealed clearly when we dabbed a small amount of diluted household bleach on the leatherlike skin. But it was the visit to the morgue to review Sam's case that day that ultimately brought the mysterywoman to our lab. Sam's accidental death when he fell from the boat on which he was working, while tragic in its own right, would be a far simpler case than the one to which we were about to be introduced. While waiting for permission to release the river case to us, Terri Kinney , coroner's investigator and morgue manager for Jefferson Parish, asked if I would like to see a case they had autopsied earlier that year which remained unsolved, including the identification. It is not at all unusual in our line of work to travel to a morgue for consultation on one case and end up with multiple cases. Of course, I agreed. This Jane Doe was found on February 4,1999, floating in the salt water approximately fifteen miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico. Grand Isle is a sleepy little fishing village of about 1,500 people that actually is a barrier island located off the tip of Louisiana's marshy coasdine—one road in, one road out. In the nineteenth century a popular resort on the island attracted vacationers from all across the The Lady from the Gulf 13 country. Today, the hotel is long gone, any evidence of it and many other landmarks destroyed by a hurricane in 1893. However...