Biography
Dr. France received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1983 with an emphasis on forensic anthropology and osteology. She has been recognized as an expert in forensic anthropology by multiple Colorado and Wisconsin district courts. She is an adjunct faculty member of CSU and is the owner and director of the Human Identification Laboratory of Colorado, an independent laboratory.
She has served almost 18 years on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is a retired fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS). In 2010 she was awarded the T. Dale Stewart Award (the highest award given by the section). Dr. France served eight years on the Board of Trustees of the Forensic Science Foundation.
Dr. France has experience in archaeological techniques, particularly as they relate to recovery of human remains and evidence from outdoor scenes. She has been a member of NecroSearch International since 1989.
Dr. France is the author of five professional books and numerous other publications and is frequently invited to speak in various venues around the world.
In 2004 she was the subject of a biography entitled “Bone Detective: The Story of Forensic Anthropologist Diane France” by Lorraine Jean Hopping, published by Joseph Henry Press/Scholastic Press as one of a ten-volume series “Women’s Adventures in Science” sponsored by the National Academies of Science. As a result, she was invited to speak at the Distinguished Voices at the Beckman Center, sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences.
INTERVIEW
LYNN: Please tell us about NecroSearch International, Inc.
DIANE: NecroSearch is a multidisciplinary, volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that assists law enforcement in the search for clandestine graves. The group also assists law enforcement in the recovery of remains and associated evidence, either from a surface deposition or a grave.
NecroSearch was incorporated in 1993, but we have been searching for clandestine graves as a group since the late 1980s, with about a third of our group in law enforcement, a third in private industry, and a third in academia. We have experts in botany, computer and vehicle analytics, entomology, forensic art, human tracking, scavenging, scent detection dogs, geology, geophysics, hydrology, meterology, archaeology, forensic anthropology, and others. Since 1988 NecroSearch has assisted in over 480 cases in 42 states, Washington D.C., and 7 foreign countries.
LYNN: How are you funded?
DIANE: It is important to note that none of our members is paid for their time. We ask for reimbursement of expenses, but we ask nothing for our time. I calculated how much it would cost law enforcement if we did charge a reasonable and customary fee for our time, and in the one case in Nebraska, it would have cost the agency over $300,000. Instead, it only cost them $300 for our expenses. We rely on donations to buy equipment and to support our work for smaller jurisdictions, so we do not have to forward those expenses to law enforcement.
LYNN: Can you explain a little about your ‘pig farm’ and how it might differ from a body farm?
DIANE: Early in our existence, we buried pigs on a 5-acre plot within the Highlands Ranch Law Enforcement Facility south of Littleton, Colorado. But what we do there is different from a ‘body farm,’ because we are interested in how graves change over time to help us identify ways in which clandestine graves can be located.
Body farms, such as the famous one associated with the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, place human bodies in various situations (unclothed, in various wrappings, or even in vehicles, etc.) to research the rate and pattern of human decomposition. That facility, and the many like it around the world provide information, for example, about things like how long a body has been in the environment in a clandestine situation.
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The FBI's final year-end data on crime in 2023 shows that violent crime has continued to drop, with a record-breaking drop in murders.
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LYNN: How does a case typically come to you?
DIANE: The law enforcement agency in charge of a case contacts us by phone or email to ask if we would be able to assist on a specific case. We only respond to cases from law enforcement or, in some cases, from a coroner’s office. We require requests for assistance from the agency in charge of the case because we do not want to inadvertently compromise a case by getting involved when law enforcement doesn’t know we are there. The only exception to this general rule is if someone asks us to assist in, for example, finding burials in an old cemetery or, in one case, helping to find members of Tzar Nicholas’ family in Russia.
We often receive requests for assistance from family members who are missing a loved one. It is heartbreaking to have to tell a family that we only respond to requests for assistance from law enforcement. In those instances, we request that the family contacts the agency in charge of the case and have them contact us. We do not initially contact law enforcement about a case because we are not “ambulance chasers” who insinuate ourselves into a situation without invitation.
LYNN: How do you assess whether you can help on a request, and if you will take the case?
DIANE: These are typical scenarios when we are contacted about a case:
We initially receive a phone call or email from law enforcement, and they may simply ask for the best way to proceed on a case. We may or may not assign a case number to this kind of interaction.
If law enforcement needs additional assistance, we ask them to fill out a four-page questionnaire with details about the case, which we review as a group to determine whether we can assist them further. We ask representatives from that agency to present their case to the group so that we can have a roundtable conversation. Then, we may have suggestions for them on how to proceed, or we may develop a timeline for them or provide other assistance, none of which incurs a charge.
If law enforcement asks us to physically respond to a case, we develop a plan with them to send specific experts to the scene. This is the step in which we request reimbursement for expenses (lodging, meals, mileage).
Every case is reviewed by multiple individuals from different disciplines to determine whether one or more fields of expertise are available and who would be likely to contribute significantly. Sometimes we receive requests when the agency doesn’t have enough information about the case to allow us to search effectively, so we ask them to contact us again when they have additional leads.
For example, to run ground penetrating radar over a field encompassing several square miles is just not practical. Sometimes we are asked to run ground penetrating radar over an area that has already been severely disturbed by backhoes, which would result in multiple anomalies detected that have nothing to do with the crime.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter went unsolved from 1965 to 2022, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report data studied by The Murder Accountability Project.
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LYNN: Do you send a team of people to a case? If so, how do you determine who goes and why?
DIANE: We send at least two people to physically respond to a scene (two heads are better than one!). The people we send must be able to significantly contribute to a case, which means that different experts are sent to different scenes. We always try to keep our costs low, particularly to accommodate smaller jurisdictions.
Sometimes our botanists will look at scene photographs without actually responding to the scene to recommend search areas. Sometimes our dog handlers will respond and flag areas on which their dogs “hit” and then be followed by ground penetrating radar or electromagnetics. Our hydrologist will offer advice if a body was deposited in water.
LYNN: Can you talk a little bit about your non-invasive methods such as ground penetrating radar and botanical analysis?
DIANE: NecroSearch uses the least invasive analyses first, and we then proceed to the more invasive techniques. The reason for that is probably obvious, in that once you do something invasive, you may lose the ability to do something less invasive. An example of this would be if we started excavating an area. In that case, we would lose the ability to analyze the botanical evidence and the benefit of using ground penetrating radar is often lost.
The least invasive methods include aerial photographs, either with a drone or using Google Earth, botany, dog handling, geophysical techniques, hydrology, scavenging patterns, sometimes man tracking, and any other technique in which you don’t penetrate the ground.
We look for anything that doesn’t “fit” with the surrounding environment, such as an invasive plant species that usually populates disturbed soil, depressions or mounds, vehicle tracks, etc. – anything that looks out of place. We make decisions as we progress about what methodology should come next.
LYNN: Have you been surprised by anything at a scene?
DIANE: Every case is a learning experience. For instance, we were looking for a clandestine grave in a mining county west of Denver. The environment was full of rocks, boulders, and abandoned mine shafts. The openings of many of the mine shafts have been filled in because they are very dangerous. But Denver PD had a lead on a homicide case and a tip that the victim might be in one of those shafts. The mine safety engineers went to the mine in question to see how risky it would be for our team to descend, and sprayed orange paint on a small projection from the ceiling, saying “don’t touch that spot or the whole thing could collapse.”
There wasn’t much room. But being one of the smaller people in the group, I was rigged up and an emergency air tube was lowered beyond that danger point. I crawled into the shaft, past the orange spot, about two stories down to where there was a flat spot before the shaft continued to drop further.
After being missing for 22 years,most of the body was resting on that flat spot. The rest of the body was likely farther down the shaft, but it was too dangerous to go lower. In fact, I threw a rock beyond the ledge to the rest of the shaft, and it took a long time for it to splash in the water. The surprising thing to me then (not so much now that we have done several mining locations) was just how well preserved the remains were. The clothes were intact, except for a knife cut in the upper chest area. The bones were pristine and showed the cut marks as well. There was even a little soft tissue left. Based on the evidence, the perpetrator was convicted of the homicide.
LYNN: Diane, thank you so very much. This has been so interesting, and I look forward to the second half of your interview in a couple of weeks.
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