ABSTRACT
In 2009, a woman walking her dog in the area known as the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico, discovered human bones that eventually lead the police to the skeletal remains of 11 bodies (plus one fetus) believed to be prostitutes. In 1991, a fully clothed skeleton was found lying on an open-coil box spring mattress beneath the front porch of a house in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. In the basement of a burned-out house in Tennessee, a charred skeleton was discovered among the debris left from a fire. In 1979, the partially skeletonized remains of a young adult male, exhibiting a crushing blow to the side of the skull and cut marks to the bones of the thorax, were recovered from a wooded area in the Midwestern United States. Despite the differences in time and geographic location, all of these cases had one thing in common: one of the most important persons involved in the investigation of these remains was a forensic anthropologist.
