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When contractors showed up on Park Street in Yorkville, Illinois, on May 15, 2024, they expected to find water pipes in need of repair at their construction site. As workers dug deeper and deeper into their 12-foot trench, though, they uncovered something else—several unidentified bones. The crew called the Yorkville Police Department to report their findings. In turn, the Yorkville Police Department needed help identifying the skeletal remains and ruling out any foul play. To find answers to their questions, they knew who to turn to: Anne L. Grauer, PhD, professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, former president of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists, and the current editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Paleopathology. Grauer began helping local law enforcement in 1998 and the FBI in 2004 to resolve cases through bone analysis.
Forensic anthropology was not part of Grauer’s plans when she began her academic career as a bioarchaeologist. As a PhD student in biological anthropology, she examined human skeletons from the medieval period to gain insight on women’s health conditions during that time. When she moved to Chicago in the late ’80s to begin her academic career at Loyola, she expanded her focus to include research on historic local populations through archaeological excavations associated with former cemeteries.
Grauer occasionally fielded requests from the Chicago Police Department and other local organizations to examine found bones. Her relationship with law enforcement intensified after she became a consultant with an FBI agent to help them recover human remains. Word spread among other law enforcement agencies and police officers, and soon she was leading training sessions and hands-on workshops about human skeletal remains to law enforcement. When the forensic anthropologist for Cook County retired, he recommended Grauer as a replacement, turning her into one of the two go-to bone experts for local and regional law enforcement agencies.
Though bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology share similar approaches, there is a stark difference when it comes to goals. “I’m doing the same types of analyses, but asking different questions,” said Grauer. “In bioarchaeology, my questions are: Who are these people and how did they live? In forensic anthropology, my questions are: Who is this person? And how did they die?”
When Grauer is called to assist on a case, her work begins before the bones even reach her lab. Law enforcement officers who have worked with her in the past know to send a photo of the remains first, even if they are only bone fragments, so she can identify whether they are human or not. Once that is confirmed, she travels to the location to survey the excavation site and look for contextual clues that might reveal information like whether the individual was in a grave, dragged to the burial site, ceremoniously laid to rest, or just placed in the ground. In the case of the Yorkville bones, Grauer noted that their relation to other excavated materials meant the remains had been in the ground for a long time. “It didn’t appear as though this could have been a much more recent cut into the ground,” she explained. “There was enough nonhuman material on top [of them] that was relatively undisturbed.” These soil conditions were her first hunch that the Yorkville bones were not part of a forensic case—that is to say, they were not part of a crime.
Nevertheless, Grauer approaches each case with a blank slate, and she did not rule out its forensic potential on that observation alone. Officials placed every piece of recovered bone in its own bag, numbered it, and sealed it as evidence. They sent the remains to Grauer’s lab at Loyola, where she and a team of undergraduate and graduate students got to work. The first task was to meticulously and gently clean the dirt on every bone, using water and soft bristle toothbrushes, and wait for them to dry. “We never leave human bones out or exposed,” said Grauer. “They are always covered with a shroud out of respect for the individual.”
Forensic anthropology is my public service. By assisting law enforcement, by assisting families, I'm doing whatever I can to bring some kind of peace or closure.
— Anne L. Grauer, PhD, professor of anthropology
Once the bones dried, the team placed them in an anatomical position on one of the workbenches so they could assess if any parts were duplicated. This allowed them to determine whether they were dealing with one individual or more. Grauer concluded the Yorkville remains belonged to one person since there were no two bones that were alike. The team then used the power of observation, as well as metric and statistical analyses, to estimate traits like sex, age, ancestry, and stature. “Most of what we’re doing is macroscopic. It’s through the eyes,” Grauer explained. “We’re not doing any invasive work on the human remains that come into the lab for analysis.” While this approach sounds anachronistic for our high-tech times, bones offer a lot of information to the trained eye. Certain areas of the human body change enough over time that scientists can use those bones to statistically determine the age range of an individual. For example, anthropologists look at different bones and teeth to calculate if a person has reached adulthood.
The team also inspected the bones’ condition. In cases where the human remains are recent, fractures can help law enforcement identify the individual by comparing that information to documents like X-rays from missing people. Signs of trauma can also shine light on events surrounding a person’s death. “I don’t determine cause of death,” Grauer clarified. “Someone could have been shot but die of an embolism. I just provide as much information as I can so that law enforcement in the forensic context can proceed in their investigations.”
The collaborative effort sometimes includes other professionals like geologists, entomologists, and historians. After analyzing the Yorkville bones, Grauer concluded that the individual was a young woman. This key piece of information led Kendall County Coroner’s Office and the Kendall County Historical Society to locate the specific person by poring over historical documents and old records that mentioned a prior cemetery on the current excavation site. They compared the names of the individuals potentially buried there and landed on Lucy M. Crater of historic Bristol. Her remains now rest in the Elmwood Cemetery in Yorkville.
Though the Yorkville bones case resulted in a neat resolution, forensic anthropology often raises more questions than it answers. Though Grauer identifies as a bioarchaeologist first, assisting in forensic cases has made her look at her academic work in a new light. “The work in forensic anthropology uses rigorous tests on modern populations. We use those techniques to assess humans who have lived in the past. One of the things I’ve begun to appreciate is how much we’re not able to answer when we look at the past, and not just build stories or be too deterministic about what we’re seeing.”
For Grauer, forensic anthropology goes beyond intellectual curiosity. It carries a deeper, more spiritual meaning. “Forensic anthropology is my public service,” she said. “By assisting law enforcement, by assisting families, I’m doing whatever I can to bring some kind of peace or closure.”
