TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER is now out!

Whoo hoo! *throws confetti* TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER is now out! The fourth installment of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries throws Matt and Leigh into a case with strong ties to the past. The story brings not only students Kiko, Paul and Juka into the investigation, but also one of our most popular minor characters, Medical Examiner Dr. Edward Rowe, who turns out to be the perfect guide to the world of Prohibition and the Mob wars of the 1930s:

Prohibition was a time of clandestine excess—short skirts, drinking, dancing . . . and death. But a murder committed so many years ago still has the power to reverberate decades later with deadly consequences.

It’s a double surprise for Trooper Leigh Abbott as she investigates a cold case and discovers two murder victims in a historic nineteenth-century building. Together with forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell and medical examiner Dr. Edward Rowe, she uncovers the secrets of a long-forgotten, Prohibition-era speakeasy in the same building. But when the two victims are discovered to be relatives—their deaths separated by over eighty years—the case deepens, and suddenly the speakeasy is revealed as ground zero for a cascade of crimes through the decades. When a murder committed nearly forty years ago comes under fresh scrutiny, the team realizes that an innocent man was wrongly imprisoned and the real murderer is still at large. Now they must solve three murders spanning over eighty years if they hope to set a wronged man free.

Available in hardcover and eBook, you can find TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER on line at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, and Barnes and Noble, and in stores at Chapters/Indigo and at your local independent sellers!

For those wanting some supplemental content to accompany the book, I’ve posted a new picture gallery from my trip to Lynn in November 2013 when we were doing final finishing touches on the manuscript. Many of the real locations from the novel can be found here: /picture-gallery/lynn-massachusetts/.

And for anyone in the Southern Ontario area, we’re celebrating the book’s release on March 8, 2015 at 2pm at A Different Drummer Books at 513 Locust Street in Burlington, Ontario. Hope to see some of you there!

Photo credit: Pixietart

The History Behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: Part 3– Speakeasy Culture

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been highlighting some of the history behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER since it plays a major part in both the case and it’s resolution. So far we’ve talked about why Prohibition started, and the challenges of enforcing the law when not only the criminals but also law enforcement were breaking the law. This week, we want to talk about speakeasies and the culture that flourished around them.

By the strictest definition of the word, a speakeasy was an establishment that illegally sold alcohol during Prohibition. But in reality, that term could apply to anything from the most basic gin joint that sold only the hardest and harshest (including potentially poisonous) of drinks, to the snazziest nightclubs featuring high profile performers. These were permanent establishments, often controlled directly by the mobs, so while competition was fierce, secrecy was key. Unless local law enforcement was already on the take, it was crucial that they were kept in the dark to prevent clubs from being raided. This would not only mean the loss of whatever alcohol was on site, but also the loss of the location as well, all of which added up to a huge financial disaster and jail sentences for anyone connected with the operation.

Many of these establishments tried to hide under the guise of legitimate businesses like cafés, or literally went underground into basements or into upper floors of buildings. Word of mouth was the main form of advertisement, with entrance to the establishment often depending on a whispered password to the goon guarding the front door.

Entertainment at a speakeasy (beside the alcohol) often came in the form of floorshows, especially jazz bands. Jazz was a relatively new musical form at the time and was very popular. So the twin draws of illegal drinks and a hot band was very attractive. Some speakeasies were world class clubs in their own right, and while most closed down for good once Prohibition was repealed, some establishments still exist today. New York’s 21 Club is an example: Originally opened in 1922 as a speakeasy by cousins Jack Kreindler and Charlie Berns, it was raided twice during Prohibition, but Kreindler and Berns were never caught. After Prohibition ended, they turned the club into a legitimate business and continued to own and run it for another fifty years before selling it to new owners.

The following is an excerpt from TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER. In it, Trooper Leigh Abbott and Medical Examiner Dr. Edward Rowe investigate a newly discovered Prohibition-era speakeasy, hidden away for almost eighty years. But then they find something mysterious about the back room…

Stepping away from the wall, Leigh turned off her flashlight and slid it into her pocket as she simply tried to take it all in.

A dark wood bar stood at one end of the room, its long smooth surface dulled by dust and grime. A tall square bottle with a yellowed label lay on its side, cork removed and precious contents long since spilled. At the far end of the bar, a sepia poster reading “Alfred E. Smith for President—Honest. Able. Fearless.” hung over an open brass case with several disintegrating cigarettes still tucked inside.

Plaster columns topped by decorative capitals studded the outer walls. Tables were tucked between the columns, and the chairs around them—some tipped over, several broken—told a tale of rough handling and a rapid exit. A lone shoe—black leather with what must have been a scandalously high heel for the time—lay under one of the chairs shoved against the wall.

A blackjack table stood against another wall, scattered playing cards spread over the crumbling green felt surface, and a stack of chips still in the slots. Behind the table, a mural depicting Roman ruins splashed across the wall: crumbling archways, weathered statuary, and toppled Tuscan columns, all painted in cascading shades of blue.

A single forlorn music stand stood on a small raised dais in the back corner, as if waiting for the band to return.

Leigh circled behind the bar. Underneath, dusty shot glasses were stacked in rows, and two beer kegs were tucked under the long stretch of the bar, brass taps tarnished with age. Leigh grasped one of the smooth wood handles and pulled, but not even a single drop leaked out. Large glass jugs littered the floor behind the bar, some tipped over carelessly on their sides. Several wooden crates labeled by out-of-state wineries were stacked haphazardly in the far corner.

Seeing a slip of paper under one of the kegs, she tried to catch it with her fingertips. It took several tries before she drew out a two-dollar bill. Pulling out her flashlight, Leigh aimed it at the bill to study the details. “Get a load of this.”

She passed Rowe the bill over the bar. He aimed his own flashlight at it, examining it carefully. “Two-dollar bill, series nineteen-twenty-nine.” He looked up at Leigh. “That was the first year those bills were printed at their current size. Before that, they were quite a bit bigger.” He flipped the bill over. “Look at that. Monticello on the back, not the Declaration of Independence. Probably not worth much on the open market, but worth an awful lot to a collector.”

“Finders keepers as far as I’m concerned,” she said, and then purposely turned her back on Rowe to examine a poster from the Salt Lake Brewing Company, extolling its Old German lager as “The American Beauty Beer” and promising a restful night’s sleep, a stimulated appetite, and a “nourishing and strengthening tonic for mother and baby.” That last left Leigh staring open-mouthed long enough that when she turned around, Rowe was standing alongside the blackjack table and the two-dollar bill was nowhere in sight.

Coming out from behind the bar, Leigh stood in the middle of the room. As she turned in a slow circle, she felt thrown back in time, a black and white movie playing in her mind as she scanned the room. A tall, broad man in a dark shirt with a white towel thrown over his shoulder stood behind the bar, backlit by rows of gleaming bottles of golden whiskey and ruby wine. Men in London drape suits holding lowball glasses sat at tables across from sparkling women sipping goblets of wine while brandishing long, slender cigarette holders. In the corner a four-piece brass band was blasting out the latest jazz tune. Women with short hair and shorter skirts crowded the dance floor, doing the Charleston and the Black Bottom. The smoky air was full of laughter and song.

“Abbott, I think you should see this.”

Leigh shook her head and the music died away to a mere echo from the past. Her eyes focused once again on the dim, abandoned room. But there was no sign of Rowe and his voice was muffled, although she wasn’t sure if it was from the music in her head or from his location. “Where are you?”

Rowe poked his head out from a swinging door behind the bar. “Over here. There’s a storage room in the back.”

She followed him into a flurry of tipped boxes and spilled bottles. She stopped in the doorway. “Wow. If we had questions before about whether this place was raided . . .”

“It was raided all right, no question. But I wanted to show you this.” He pointed at the wall at the far end of the room.

Leigh picked her way through the crates to stand as close as possible. “What about it?”

“Did you notice that while the walls out there are plaster, the walls in here are just plain brick?”

“Sure. Why gussy up the storeroom when just plain brick will do?”

“Fair enough. But why is this wall different?”

Leigh stood back to look more closely at the room as a whole. The front and side walls of the room were composed of rough bricks in varying shades. But the back wall was uniform in color and texture, and the mortar was shades lighter in tone. “Good question.” She ran her fingers over the bricks on a side wall and then over the back wall. “These bricks feel different. Smoother.”

“I want to try something.” Rowe slipped out of the room, returning moments later with a wooden baseball bat.

Leigh stared at him, dumbstruck. “Where on earth did that come from?”

“Behind the bar. I bet the barkeep kept it around just in case things got out of hand. In the rush to leave, it got left behind.”

“Or after everyone was taken out,” Leigh said. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“I want to test that wall.” Rowe put the bat down, tip to the floor, and casually leaned on the flat end of the grip. “Why would that wall be different?”

“It wouldn’t be if it went up at the same time.”

“Exactly my point.” He picked up the bat, cradling it in both hands and frowned. “An antique Louisville Slugger. Now this is a crying shame.” He tossed the bat in the air, deftly catching it in both hands, choked up, and swung it at the side wall. The bat hit with a loud clunk and a few flakes of brick fell from the surface to tumble out of sight behind a crate.

He moved to the back wall, tightened his grip, and swung again. The bat connected with the brick with a decidedly higher pitch. Rowe’s raised eyebrows gave Leigh an I told you so look and moved on to the third wall, then the fourth.

They had their answer.

TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER — coming soon!

The History Behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: Part 2– Law Enforcement in Prohibition

This week we’re continuing on with our series of posts on the background behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, out next week in both hardcover and eBook.  Last week we talked about the reasons for Prohibition that led to the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution to the United States. This week we’re going to look at the actual legislation and the considerable challenges this legislation raised regarding enforcement. We’re also going to share a few tidbits from the novel, in this case, trivia bits that come from the chapter titles that hold some fascinating pieces of information.

The legislation behind the 18^th Amendment was the Volstead Act, also called the National Prohibition Act. While the Amendment proper banned the production, storage, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, the Volstead act provided for its enforcement. According to the act, any beverage with greater than 0.5% alcohol was included. Of note, personal ownership of intoxicating beverages and actual consumption was not illegal.

The sudden termination of sales of alcohol through legitimate business afforded the black market and the mob a huge opportunity. These were people who had no interest in obeying the law in the first place and realized the incredible potential for commerce. The government might not allow the sale of alcohol, but the truth of the matter was that people still wanted to drink and would go to great lengths to do so. As we showed in last week’s excerpt, people were willing to roll the dice and take their chances with death for the opportunity to escape the dreary reality of their Depression-era lives. It was also a well-known ‘secret’ that many within the realms of government, the same people who legislated the Volstead Act, were not willing to cease drinking themselves. But these were people who could afford to purchase safe—but incredibly expensive, black market alcohol—and had the connections to arrange the transaction. It was the poor, scrambling to find anything to fill the gap, who died in the attempt.

Transgressions began as soon as the Volstead Act became law. The very first documented infringement occurred fifty-nine minutes after the Act became law when a train was robbed of $100,000 of ‘medicinal’ whiskey. Backdoor deals, violence, and robberies became the name of the game. Rival mobs would often try to steal from each other, and murder and crime rates soared. Gangsters like Chicago’s Al Capone first became rich on proceeds from their illegal activities and then became superstars in the public’s eye when they often used their ill-gotten gains to open soup kitchens for the starving and impoverished. A whole industry sprung up around the transport of international alcohols into the U.S. overland across borders from Canada and Mexico, and by water into any available port.

Even within law enforcement, drinking was not verboten. In the following excerpt from TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, we see that two of the crack members of the U.S. Prohibition Unit were not above enjoying the fruits of their labours:

Chapter Twelve: Izzy and Moe - a very effective team of Prohibition agents. While disguising themselves as vegetable vendors, gravediggers, streetcar conductors, fishermen, icemen, opera singers, and Democratic National Convention delegates, Isidor “Izzy” Einstein and his partner, Moe Smith, made 4,932 arrests and confiscated an estimated 5,000,000 bottles of illegal alcohol. After a busy day rousting Prohibition scofflaws, Izzy and Moe liked to sit back and enjoy their favorite beverages—beer and cocktails.

Companies also found some interesting ways to get around the letter of the law. The following excerpt illustrates an ingenuous example:

Chapter Five: Wine Bricks - a method to skirt the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment. Producing wine at home for personal consumption was not illegal during Prohibition. Wineries and vineyards dehydrated grape juice and compressed it into bricks. Buyers were reminded not to place the reconstituted juice in a cupboard for twenty days because it would ferment and turn into burgundy, sherry, claret, or some other type of wine.

It was completely legal to make up to 200 gallons of in-home wine per year, and many took advantage of that loophole in the Act.

We'll be back next week with our last post in the series as we take a look at how speakeasys became the social center for many during prohibition. But it was a mixed blessing for many:

Chapter Two: Blind Pig - an alternate name for a speakeasy. Possibly called a blind pig because the establishment turned a “blind eye” to Prohibition, or because consuming the often-contaminated illegal alcoholic beverages sold there sometimes caused blindness.

See you then!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The History Behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: Part 1 – Prohibition

Throughout the month of February, we’re going to be previewing TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, which releases on February 18^th in both hardcover and eBook.

The history behind the story is fascinating. While set in modern day, the case is unexpectedly thrown against the backdrop of U.S. Prohibition which took place during the 1920s and 1930s. Prohibition was not strictly an American concept—it has, in fact, been enforced in many countries from Asia, Europe, South America, and Oceania. In North America, both the U.S. and Canada had Prohibition, but, Canada’s was never a national law. Instead, provinces instituted their own short-lived laws, and Prohibition was a thing of the past for Canada by the early 1920s—just about the time the U.S. was getting started. As a result, Canada became one of the pipelines of that fulfilled black-market needs.

Since most North Americans only consider Prohibition to be an American phenomenon, and since that’s the background used for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, that’s what we’re solely going to discuss over the next few weeks.

What is Prohibition in the larger sense? Opposed to the commonly held belief, Prohibition did not outlaw the consumption of alcohol. Instead, Prohibition made it illegal to produce, store, transport or sell alcohol to the consumer, who was then legally free to drink it.

Was it a universal law? There were exceptions to the law because alcohols were still used in some manufacturing processes (including dyes and fuels) and for religious rituals, while poisonous denatured or wood alcohol was used in scientific research.

Why was Prohibition needed? Prohibition was a concept that came out of the Temperance movement in the U.S. which began in the 1820s. In its original form, temperance promoted moderation in alcohol consumption, especially in hard spirits, and while they encouraged abstinence from alcohol (called teetotalism), it was not a requirement. But as the years progressed, the movement shifted towards total abstinence, backed by legislation as required. The movement was mostly led by women, who along with their children, had suffered at the hands of husbands who drank away their paychecks or abused their families while drunk. They also claimed that ‘demon alcohol’ was responsible for poverty and destitution, crime, and ill health.

When did Prohibition start? Several states made early attempts at legislation. Maine was the first state to ban alcohol in 1851 and it later served as a model for several other states. During the American Civil War, both the North and the South needed duty from alcohol sales to finance the war effort, so many states repealed those laws. Following, the Civil War, the temperance movement intensified, especially after the formation of the Anti-Saloon League.

How was Prohibition legislated? Prohibition became federal law in the United States in 1920, mandated by the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The legislation itself was called the Volstead Act. We’ll look into that in more detail next week as we also look into law enforcement’s challenge to enforce it.

How was Prohibition ended? Despite all the good intentions that started Prohibition, it proved to be immensely unpopular and essentially impossible to enforce. On top of that, crime rates and urban violence soared as the Mob and other gangsters used the black-market to fill the gap previously filled by legal manufacturing. Corruption within law enforcement proved to be an ongoing problem that may have been the final nail in Prohibition’s coffin. According to Chicago’s Chief of Police, an estimated 60% of his officers took part in the illegal bootlegging of alcohol. As a result, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to the United States repealed the 18^th Amendment. To this day, the 18^th Amendment remains the only constitutional amendment to have ever been repealed.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going highlight short snippets of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER that illustrate some of the history we’re discussing. The following excerpt occurs when Leigh enters Matt’s lab at Boston University to find medical examiner Dr. Edward Rowe discussing the case with Matt. To the surprise of the team, Rowe turns out to be a local history buff and he becomes their guide to the 1930s:

     Leigh crossed the room toward them. “And once again, I didn’t expect to see you. You’re like a bad penny—you keep turning up,” she said to Rowe, returning his grin as he set the clavicle back into place.
     “I’m playing hooky.” Rowe raised a gloved finger to his lips. “Don’t tell.” He waggled bushy eyebrows at her and turned back to the remains.
     “Wild horses couldn’t drag it from me. Actually, I’m glad you’re here so we can pick your brain. Does the term ‘blue ruin’ mean anything to you?”
     Rowe straightened, the T-12 vertebra cupped in his left hand. “Sure does, especially if you mean in reference to the speakeasy. It’s an old slang term for what was commonly known in the twenties and thirties as ‘bathtub gin.’”
     “Bathtub gin? Isn’t that a slang term in itself?”
     “Not as much as you’d think. Bathtub gin was basically homemade booze. In its simplest, non-distilled form, it only needed a day or two to age, so you could make it and drink it fairly quickly. It’s a method called ‘cold compounding’: mix grain spirits with something for flavor, like juniper berries—thus the reference to gin—and maybe something as exotic as citrus peel if you had it, and then dilute it out by adding tap water. But they made it in such large containers, they couldn’t fit the bottle under the kitchen faucet, so they’d use the bathtub instead. Thus, ‘bathtub gin.’ If you had the equipment, you could distill this same mixture, which was much safer. If there was any methanol contamination in the mix, it evaporated first during distillation.”
     “It sounds awful.” Leigh wrinkled her nose in disgust.
     “It was awful, but it could get worse. For many, if they couldn’t get their hands on grain spirits, they used denatured alcohol.”
      Now it was Matt’s turn to wince. “That could be a death sentence.”
      “For many it was. Or you could get off lightly and just go blind.”
     “People were that desperate for alcohol they’d drink poison?” Leigh asked.
     “A lot of them didn’t know they were drinking poison. But many of them knew they were taking their chances and did it anyway. It’s hard to describe the desperation of people back then, especially during the Depression. The chance to escape the misery of their daily lives, even if only for a little while, was simply too big a temptation. The worst of it was the Feds got involved in it too.”
     “How?”
     “They knew what was going on. Distilling alcohol was illegal under the Volstead Act but it happened anyway. But because alcohol was needed for scientific research and the production of dyes and fuels, the Feds knowingly poisoned some of that alcohol to discourage it from being used for human consumption. People drank it anyway and died by the tens of thousands. And then the Feds had the nerve to label them ‘deliberate suicides.’”
     “Unbelievable,” Matt muttered.
     “Believe it.” Rowe set down the vertebra and pulled off his gloves. “It was a different time back then and the Feds had the power to do whatever they pretty much wanted.”

See you next week for our next bit of history—law enforcement during Prohibition.

Photo credit: Library of Congress

The Serial Podcast

Ann and I must have been under a rock during the late fall of last year because we both managed to miss the original airing of Serial, a new podcast from the creators of NPR's This American Life. It came to my attention after Christmas through one of my Feedly blogs and immediately intrigued me. I downloaded all 12 episodes to my iPod, but then didn’t have a chance to get to it for a couple of weeks. But once I got started, I binge-listened to the entire series—nearly 12 hours long—in three days because I was hooked.

Ann and I are big on research (HUGE understatement there) so the podcast as a whole was fascinating from a process standpoint. Journalist Sarah Koenig, a producer of This American Life, researched and hosted the program. During the course of her research, she was granted access to not only the case records and photos through the Freedom of Information Act, but also audio records from police interrogations and from both trials (the first ended in a mistrial). Many of those clips are included in the podcast, giving the listener the effect of being immersed in the case as it progressed. Ms. Koenig and her team followed old leads, rechecked stated alibis, researched 1990s architectural plans, and even drove the route driven by the suspect that day to confirm timetables. It was a very in depth analysis of a single case.

This is the true story behind the podcast: On January 13, 1999, eighteen year-old high school senior Hae Min Lee disappeared in Baltimore, Maryland. She was last seen at Woodlawn High School, but both she and her Nissan Sentra went missing after leaving the school. She was supposed to pick up her six year-old niece, but she never arrived. On February 9, her body was discovered, buried in a shallow grave in Leakin Park. She had been manually strangled.

Three weeks later, seventeen year-old Adnan Syed, the ex-boyfriend of the victim was arrested for first degree murder. The case was put together based almost solely on information gleaned from police interviews with a friend Adnan spent the afternoon with, and cell phone call records from that day. They even determined the time of death based on those call records—Hae was killed during a 21 minute interval during the afternoon. The friend, Jay Wilds, reported that Adnan had shown him Hae’s body in the trunk of her own car after strangling her in a Best Buy parking lot. He also said that he helped Adnan bury the body in Leakin Park. It was Jay that led police to Hae’s car, weeks after her death and after her body had been recovered. When the case went to trial, Adnan was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

One of the great challenges of the program is the time elapsed since the events. People were asked to recall back fifteen years to events that happened in 1999. I don’t know about you, but often I have trouble remembering what happened at a specific time last week, forget about more than a decade ago. Most people had to admit that unless there was something specific that happened that day to make it stand out, memories of that time were vague and consisted of details like ‘I’d usually be in class at that time’. Adnan himself admits that he isn’t sure of his exact whereabouts that afternoon.

An interesting aspect of the podcast series was that it wasn’t recorded and then aired. They were working on later episodes as earlier ones were airing. Because of this, people who were familiar with the case or were personally involved started to contact the producers. Some of these were people who had never been contacted by police and had new information to contribute.

There were several areas of the case that certainly left the listener feeling as if they were not getting the whole story. For instance, a classmate of Adnan’s reported seeing Adnan at the library next door to the school during the 21 minute window when he was supposedly murdering Hae. If so, it's a physical impossibility that he could have crossed town to the Best Buy location and committed the murder. But did Adnan’s lawyer ever contact this classmate to bring her in to testify at either trial? She did not. Also, there is the matter of Jay’s constantly changing story to police. Each time they brought him into interview, his story changed—some aspect of where they went that afternoon appeared and then disappeared from the narrative, or the location of important actions, like Adnan showing Jay the body, changed with each telling. When Ms. Koenig drove the route Jay testified he and Adnan had taken the afternoon of the murder, the locations didn’t match the cell phone calls that took place at the same time (based on the physical location of towers pinged during each call). In my mind, this makes Jay about the most unreliable witness possible, yet the entire case was built upon his version of the story told during trial.

As someone who is interested in forensic science, the aspect of the case that horrified me most was the lack of evidence to support the case. The entire case rested on Jay’s testimony tied to records of cell phone calls from the afternoon. But while samples were taken from the victim, DNA testing was never done. DNA samples were taken from under the nails of a victim who died by manual strangulation while likely struggling for her life, and it was never tested for evidence of the killer's identity? Even a rape kit was done and while they tested for the presence of sperm, they never actually tested for DNA. Considering the lack of sperm, any DNA recovered would likely only belong to Hae, but it should have been tested regardless. Hairs were taken from the victim’s body, macroscopically compared to Adnan’s and found to be a mismatch, and then never pursued further. A liquor bottle was found near the body and collected. But it was never tested for DNA, something that might have pointed them toward a different killer, or confirmed the suspect they had in custody. This was 1999, well after the O.J. Simpson case; DNA testing was not new at the time. There’s no reason why this evidence was never explored.

As the podcast series ended, to the surprise of many listeners, there was no dramatic reveal or the unveiling of an alternate suspect. One of the police consultants the producers brought in described the case as ‘a mess’ and that was how it remained. There was no conclusive evidence one way or the other to exonerate Adnan or confirm his guilt. Many listeners were unhappy with the close of the podcast, but this is real life in the legal system—sometimes a case doesn’t have a neat ending tied with a bow like you see on TV.

As a result of the podcast and the attention it drew, the case is now in the hands of The Innocence Project, a group that works to exonerate innocents who have been convinced of crimes. They claim there is another suspect outside the investigation who might be responsible. Ronald Lee Moore had been in prison in Baltimore for sex crimes in 1999, but was released from prison just days before Hae disappeared. DNA samples previously collected from Moore, who killed himself in 2012, will be tested against the DNA evidence taken from the victim. Other suspects will also potentially undergo comparison DNA testing. They will also look into the possibility that Adnan’s lawyer, suffering from MS at the time (she has since passed away), botched the case. So the story of Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed may be far from over.

Did any of you listen to the podcast? If so, what did you think?

Forensic DNA Phenotyped Facial Imaging

On January 9, 2011, in Columbia, South Carolina, Candra Alston and her three year-old daughter Malaysia Boykin were brutally murdered. When no one heard from them in over three days, Candra’s father went in search of his daughter and granddaughter and discovered their bodies inside their own apartment. A computer, an expensive designer purse, and some children’s clothing were the only missing items. There was no sign of forced entry, leading the police to believe that Candra had known her assailant. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime and very little evidence was recovered from the scene. Police have released few details about the crime regarding the types of evidence or even the method of death beyond describing it as an “extraordinarily violent manner”.

Candra had a wide circle of ‘in real life’ and virtual friends over several social networks. Columbia police have interviewed hundreds of people from South Carolina and a number of other states. Over one hundred and fifty DNA samples were taken from possible suspects. Unfortunately, not one of the possible suspects has matched DNA recovered from the scene. More than three years after the fact, the case has officially gone cold.

But this past week, the case took an interesting twist. Enter Snapshot, a brand new, cutting-edge technology created by Parabon Nanolabs with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. Snapshot is a new tool not only for law enforcement, but also for national defense organizations. Dr. Ellen McRae Greytak, the director of bioinformatics at Parabon, likens the technology to a DNA blueprint as opposed to the DNA fingerprint of typical sequencing.

Snapshot analyzes the DNA of a given sample, looking specifically at known gene sequences that affect our appearance, and then compares those specific sequences against a database of 10,000 subjects of known appearance. From these complex algorithms, Snapshot is able to produce a virtual likeness of an individual based on their DNA in a process called ‘forensic DNA phenotyping’. It not only predicts ancestry (even if mixed), but skin, hair and eye colour, face shape, and even the expected amount of freckling. The picture above was released only a few days ago by the Columbia, South Carolina police, revealing a potential representation of the suspect in the Alston/Boykin slayings. This is truly groundbreaking technology.

Currently, Texas is the only state to allow forensic DNA phenotyping. As often happens, acceptance of groundbreaking technology comes with skepticism and caveats. Foremost is how accurate the results are if this type of evidence is being used in criminal cases. The image to the right shows an example of one of the database subjects, both the virtual prediction based on the analysis of her DNA and her actual picture. While not exact, it’s a fair representation of the subject, enough in a criminal investigation to delve deeper with established gold standard techniques like DNA profiling.

Where Snapshot is at it’s most useful is through exclusion. Looking at the same image to the right, you can see that it has the highest statistical confidence in excluding the groups the subject does not belong to. Even if the system does not give a 100% accurate estimate of the suspect, just knowing who he/she is not still gives law enforcement an immense investigative lead by narrowing the suspect list and allowing investigators to concentrate on more likely individuals. Imagine a killer leaves skin cells under his victim’s nails during an attack. Given a set of exclusions, it might be determined that the killer was a male of Southern European decent with olive skin, black hair, and brown eyes.  This kind of information would progress a case by leaps and bounds in the absense of an eyewitness to the event.

The virtual estimation of the man above was released by the Columbia police in hopes it would generate additional leads. Time will tell, but with a little luck, maybe Candra and Malaysia will find justice after all.

Photo credit: Parabon Nanolabs and the City of Columbia, SC Police Department

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We're coming to the end of our giveaways and only have a few copies left. Don't miss out on one of your last chances to get the new paperback version of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT or an advanced copy of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER. Enter now!

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Dead, Without a Stone to Tell It

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends January 31, 2015.

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Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends January 31, 2015.

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The Million-Mummy Cemetery

Welcome back to the blog! Ann and I would like to wish you a very happy New Year and all the best for 2015. It’s going to be an exciting year for us, with the latest release in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries next month and hopefully a few announcements along the way.

Here on Skeleton Keys we like to talk about forensics and forensic anthropology, but an offshoot of that is archeology. A big announcement in the field of archeology was made in December when we’d already gone on hiatus, so we wanted to make sure we took the time to talk about it when we came back. A team of Egyptian archeologists from Brigham Young University in Utah announced that they discovered new and startling details concerning a cemetery estimated to date back to between the 1st and 7th century A.D. This isn’t just any ordinary run-of-the-mill ancient Egyptian cemetery, if there is such a thing—this is a cemetery containing an estimated one million mummies.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider that. One. Million. Mummies. That’s 30% more than the current population of Boston, all in one cemetery. Truly mindboggling.

The cemetery is located on the Fag el-Gamous necropolis in the hot desert climate of the Faiyum region, sixty miles south of Cairo. The cemetery itself is not a new discovery—it was first revealed about 30 years ago—but for the first time, scientists are beginning to understand the scope of the find. So far, only 1,700 bodies have been excavated from the deep troughs cut into the limestone terrain, but the breadth of the cemetery is known, allowing them to estimate a total population size. The bodies are buried in dense groups: in a section of land only five meters square and two meters deep, an average of forty bodies are found. In some sections, the limestone shafts go down as deep as 23 meters (that’s 75 feet for our American readers). Do the math over the entire 300 acres and there could be a total of one million mummies.

There are some definite curiosities about the cemetery. The first being that there aren’t any nearby cities that would have produced such an immense number of deceased persons that didn’t already have its own burial ground. So where did the dead come from? It’s clear that these were not upper class Egyptians. While effort has clearly been put into burying the dead with love and care, the internal organs are almost always still intact (removal was an important step in the full mummification process of the rich and powerful), and the dead were buried with few, if any, grave goods. Instead of being buried in coffins, the bodies were wrapped carefully in linen or reeds and laid into the hot desert sands. It is the climate, rather than the burial process, that mummified the remains.

The burial pattern is also interesting. The remains are found grouped together by hair colour—blond hair in one section of the cemetery, red in another. Another group all had excellent teeth, an unusual trait for the time. It appears likely that families with strong genetic ties were all buried together.

One of the most telling burials discovered to date is that of an 18-month old girl. Lovingly wrapped in a tunic and linens, she was found almost completely preserved, indicating that her loved ones had done their best to start the mummification process for her. She wore a necklace and two bracelets on each arm, signs that she was buried with most of the family’s meager wealth as a sign of their love for her. She was found with several other bodies, likely family, but genetic testing will hopefully tell archeologists more.

The Fag el-Gamous site is clearly a cemetery of the common man during a time of Roman and then Byzantine rule in Egypt. The people who buried their dead were not the rich and powerful; instead they were the families that buried their loved ones with care and all their small wealth as they were able. Items such as small glass pots, glass beads and colourful woven children’s boots have been recovered. It says much about the people of the region.

Photo credit: Kerry Muhlestein, Brigham Young University

Forensic Case Files: Richard III’s Unexpected Surprise

We’ve been following the fascinating story of Richard III for over two years. From the discovery of remains in a parking lot suspected to be the long lost king, to the confirmation of the identity of the remains, to the legend of the Princes in the Tower, and to how Shakespeare coloured the way society regarded him, Richard has been a regular visitor to this blog. We thought the story was pretty much complete, but last week a new and surprising detail was announced by the scientists studying Richard III’s DNA: somewhere in his lineage there was an unrecognized illegitimate birth of a ‘royal’ son. Although we’ll likely never know where the break in legitimacy occurs, the implications could impact Britain’s history, right up to the present day.

When the remains were first discovered in Leicester, archeologists were cautiously optimistic that they’d discovered Richard III simply from the physical properties of the remains—the spine of the skeleton showed significant scoliosis and curvature. Shakespeare introduced the image of Richard as a hunchback (‘that foule hunch-backt toade’; Richard III, Act 4, scene iv), but back in Richard’s time, contemporary writings only make note that one of the Richard’s shoulders was higher than the other—a clinical symptom of scoliosis.

The group of scientists from the University of Leicester studying the remains wanted to confirm Richard’s identify in several ways:

• Archeological: Richard’s remains were suggested to have been buried beneath the quire of Greyfriars Abbey. The abbey was destroyed in the 16^th century, but its location was loosely known. The remains were found below where the quire would have been in the 15^th century.
• Osteological: The remains belonged to a man in his late 20s to early 30s, who suffered from scoliosis, showed signed of healed battle wounds, and had died from terrible fresh wounds presumably acquired in battle.
• Radiological: the remains were dated to have come from 1456 – 1530, bracketing Richard’s death date of August 22, 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

The only method left at this point was to identify the remains by DNA, definitively connecting the long-dead monarch to modern living relatives. There were numerous challenges in this process however. First of all, it would be the oldest individual identification ever attempted on remains 527 years old. Also, Richard died with no living offspring, so all connections would have to be made through his sister Anne’s line.

The two types of DNA they wanted to examine were mitochondrial DNA—DNA passed down in near-exact copies through the female line— and the Y chromosome—the male sex chromosome. Two modern relatives, one a 16^th cousin twice-removed, and one an 18^th cousin twice-removed, were used for comparison. Scientists also analysed the sequences for both hair and eye colour to determine what the individual looked like.

They determined the DNA from the remains would have shown the characteristics of a man with blue eyes and blond hair. Although Richard was always portrayed with blue eyes and brown hair, they proposed that he was blond as a child. As a result of this analysis, they feel the painting that best portrays the monarch is the oldest surviving portrait, displayed at the Society of Antiquaries (see above).

The mitochondrial DNA proved to be an exact match between Richard and the female relative, confirming the same mitochondrial DNA passed to Richard from his mother was also passed to his sister and then down through the intervening generations.

But when they looked at the Y chromosome, an interesting disconnect arose. Due to issues around partial Y chromosome recombination, scientists only considered the retained/non-recombining sections of the chromosome. But even within those segments, a match could not be made between Richard and the male relative. A ‘false paternity’ event had occurred, interrupting the true family line. Three additional modern male relatives were subsequently tested and none of them matched Richard.

Overall, a complete Bayesian analysis of the skeletal DNA sequences report a 99.999% chance that this is indeed Richard III. So scientists are confident without a doubt now that their identification is complete.

But the big question remaining concerns the false paternity event and, more importantly, when it happened. If it happened in the line following Richard III, the royal lines remain unaffected. However, if the line happened before Richard, the royal line as we know it might have been affected. If the illegitimacy goes back to Edward the III and his son John of Gaunt three generations before, then it actually disqualifies Henry IV, V, VI, VII and VIII, and from there the entire Tudor and subsequent lines from the throne. The final supposition of which is that Queen Elizabeth II should not be on the throne and the royal line should instead have gone through Lady Jane Grey.

It is almost a certainty that we’ll never know the truth of where this break in the royal line occurred, and English history will remain as we know it, but it certainly makes for some interesting speculation when you wonder what England would have been like without the powerhouse of the Tudor dynasty. The Tudors were responsible for dynamic changes in world exploration and colonization, they brought about cultural change during the Renaissance, and had a huge impact on world religion when Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. It makes one wonder how world history might have changed if they had never come to power.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons 

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends December 11, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Human Origins in Europe

Human bones can reveal many secrets—information pointing to identity, evidence of trauma or murder, or genetic information about origins. It is this last that we’re going to discuss today.

The common concept of Europe’s origins and the modern people who now inhabit it revolves around the themes of travel, invading armies, conquest, and population mixing. But a recent paper published in the prestigious journal Science suggests that understanding may be incorrect.

In 1954, human remains were found outside the city of Voronezh—in Voronezh Oblast, Russia—at the Kostenki excavation. Excavated by a Russian team, the remains were dated at 37,000 years old, making them some of the oldest skeletons ever found in Europe. The femur of one particular set of remains, a male identified as Kostenki 14, yielded DNA suitable for sequencing. And what researchers found has changed what we know about early man's population of Europe.

Thirty-seven-thousand years ago, humans banded together in hunter-gatherer populations. Agrarian living and the advent of farming that then led to the rise of civilizations didn’t occur until approximately 10,000 – 15,000 years ago. It wasn’t until the development of agriculture produced a surplus of foodstuff for local populations that individuals were able to take on jobs different from farming and hunting. Civilizations were born as positions such as bureaucrats, lawmakers, medical personnel, clergy, and the military were created.

Approximately 74,000 years ago Mount Toba on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra erupted catastrophically in one of the worst volcanic eruptions in earth’s history. The Toba catastrophe hypothesis holds that this caused six to ten years of global volcanic winter and may have triggered an ice age. The severe cooling decimated or completely eradicated many of the earth’s species including man. It is estimated the human population dropped from possibly up to sixty million to a mere several thousand. Evidence of this near extinction exists in our DNA and in the traces of a genetic bottleneck at that time.

During this crisis, all human life was situated in Africa. Once the species began to rebound, humans spread out of Africa as hunter/gatherer populations foraged in search of sustenance. Populations spread into the Middle East and from there went west to populate Europe, east and south to populate Asia, or east and north over the Bering Strait to populate North and later South America.

When the genetic sequences of Kostenki 14 were compared to modern European sequences, a surprising correlation occurred—the ancient sequences were remarkably similar to modern DNA. The implication is that unlike the expected sequences indicating waves of discrete migrations, the genetic results show that the modern European developed by a constant flow of incoming populations with gene flow moving in all directions. The theory of groups moving into an area, killing off the previous inhabitants and then taking over has been disproved.

Another interesting point is that Kostenki 14’s genetic makeup is significantly different from those of ancient Asians or Australeo-Malaysians, indicating the genetic split between these groups that occurred as the groups separated after leaving Africa occurred before 35,000 B.C.

Photo credit: Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera)

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

Giveaway ends December 11, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Where Do Stories Come From?

The second most common question I get concerns where ideas for our novels come from (the most common questions concern what it’s like to write with a partner). Do we dream up the basic storyline out of nothing? Do we rely on news stories or personal experiences? Do other people suggest ideas? As it’s often a mix of all of the above, I thought it might be fun to look at where some of our ideas have come from.

Ann and I have the two-heads-are-better-than-one advantage and our storylines often start small and then bloom as each of us takes suggestions from the other and builds higher. But that teamwork has to start with an initial idea. So, without spoilers, because we don’t want to give anything away for anyone who hasn’t read the books (and those of you who have will know exactly what we’re talking about), where did our ideas start?

DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT: A large part of the storyline for this novel was based in the setting. We were starting a new series and wanted to set it firmly in Essex, Massachusetts. Since a significant portion of history and life in Massachusetts, especially in that coastal region, involves the ocean and it’s shoreline, we picked the location of the body dump site and worked backwards around where the bodies exactly were found, what state they’d be in and why they were there.

NO ONES SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL: This story started with the details of the extremely specific bone injury involved. Because this kind of damage was so characteristic of a certain culture, the rest of the story fell in to place behind the type of abuse the victim portrayed.

A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH: We can thank our good friend and fire captain Lisa Giblin for this book. There are two arms to this story and she was behind both of them. The osteological angle in this story came from a suggestion after Lisa watched a TV documentary on it. As soon as she introduced the idea (one that we were unfamiliar with up to that time), we knew we had to find a way to set a book around it. And Lisa offered to be our consultant if we ever wanted to write a book about fire and arson. As any victim recovered from a fire would be prime consulting material for Matt, we jumped at the chance. We couldn’t have written this book without Lisa’s incredible knowledge and willingness to get into the trenches with us, right to the extent of mapping out all our fire scenes and rescue attacks, teaching us a huge portion of what she knew, and reviewing the manuscript multiple times to make sure we had our details correct.

TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: The main story idea for this book actually came out of a side discussion of a very minor point in NO ONES SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL. Ann and I were discussing how the perp might be caught and Ann made an offhand comment about basements. I questioned whether buildings in that area had basements (because not all do, depending on terrain and other surrounding conditions). Ann replied that of course they had basements; that’s how they managed to hide a large number of the speakeasies during Prohibition. I kind of wish someone could have snapped a picture of the stunned look on my face and the light bulb over my head in that instant as the driving theme behind TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER was born.

Abbott and Lowell #5 (unnamed WIP): We have a lot of things to manage in our current manuscript. Not only do we have the full case that will push the story more into thriller territory than straight forensic mystery, but we have the long arc storyline that started in A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH that needs to be resolved. So it’s a busy book. But as far as the main case goes, the most important victim detail came from listening to a podcast featuring Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass (better known together as the writing team of Jefferson Bass). Dr. Bass made a comment about something found in every forensics lab and we realized it would be the perfect way to hide our victim in plain sight as well as reintroduce Matt’s nemesis readers were briefly introduced to in concept in DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT.

Abbott and Lowell #6 (planned): Even though we’re still writing book 5, we already have a good idea where this book is going. The main story line will actually be crafted to fit where we need the team to be emotionally in this book, a state that drives the majority of the story and will push them into what we have conceived for book 7.

Abbott and Lowell #7 (planned): This book has been planned since the series was born. The character of Juka Petrović was put in place in the very first book to allow for the horrors this book will examine. It’s a history that has touched us with its tragedy and infuriated us with how the situation was handled. It’s a story that isn’t known nearly well enough, but this will give us the opportunity to highlight it and inform our readers through our fiction.

Abbott and Lowell #8 (planned): Ann brought a news story to my attention this week, and that story line may very well turn into the plot for book 8. It’s got everything we need—a mystery, tragedy and the bone clues we need to hang our hat on.

So that’s a quick rundown of where the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, past and future, have come from. For the other writers in the group, where have your ideas come from?

Photo credit: Kamil Porembiński

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It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/116827-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 30^th, so don’t miss out!

Jack the Ripper Revisted (or not, as the case may be…)

Before we start into this week’s blog post, Ann and I wanted to give a little shout out to Kirkus Reviews who has once again reviewed our upcoming novel, saying of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: “Leigh's fourth is a complex case loaded with forensic and historical detail, the authors' best so far.” For those who are interested in the full review (warning— which comes with some spoilers), you can find it here.

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Two months ago we covered the supposed revelation of the identification of Jack the Ripper more than 125 years after the Ripper’s final kill. It was a story that made a very big splash and was carried on almost every news outlet in the English-speaking world (and beyond). It also accompanied Russell Edwards’ book on the same topic, Naming Jack the Ripper. In our response to the story, we outlined all the reasons we were more than skeptical about the identification. However, we didn’t have access to the samples to be able to put data-driven science behind our opinion; we simply logicked through the information provided and were entirely unconvinced that Aaron Kosminski was the Ripper.

The original case naming Aaron Kosminski as the Ripper rested entirely on the discovery of a shawl that was posited to belong to Ripper victim Kate Eddows. According to Dr. Jari Louhelainen, the scientist working with Edwards, the shawl was matched to Karen Miller, a descendant of Kate Eddows, and thereby to Kate herself by showing an extremely rare genetic connection—a gene called 314.1c—in the mitochondrial DNA passed down through the female line of the Eddows family. Due to the scarcity of this gene in the general population, it was deemed that the shawl must have come from Eddows. The entire case rested on this one point.

Last month, in a story that barely made a ripple on the vast ocean of current media, it was announced that other scientists got access to Louhelainen's data, and science simply doesn’t support the Ripper identity claim. What was declared to be the rare gene 314.1C (occurring in only 1 in 290,000 people), was, in fact, the extremely common gene 315.1c (occurring in 99 out of 100 people of European decent). Four well-known and respected experts in the field of DNA analysis and fingerprinting all agree that there is no ground for a direct match between the modern family member and the scarf.

It has been stated that Dr. Louhelainen used an ‘error of nomenclature’ when doing his analysis and carried that error into announcing his findings. But the bottom line in this case is that nearly anyone could have left the DNA on the shawl that is attributed to the victim of Jack the Ripper. Without this crucial link, the rest of Edwards’ case for Aaron Kosminski falls apart.

With all the fuss and furor over the revelation that Jack the Ripper had been identified, it’s a shame that the news disproving this claim has hardly been noticed. For us, at least, this was no surprise considering the previous analysis. But for the majority of the world, I suspect they still believe that the Ripper case has been closed.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/115336-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 20^th, so don’t miss out!

Paperback Cover Reveal – DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT

More than a year ago, our debut novel and the first in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, released in hardcover and eBook formats. Last spring Harlequin Worldwide Mysteries purchased the mass market rights to the novel and will be releasing this version in January. Recently we were treated to some details of their version of the book, from a brand new cover to a different version of the back cover copy.

Here is the all new version of the mass market cover:

We always write out own back cover copy for our Five Star releases, so it was interesting to see someone else’s take on the book in the HQN version of that same copy:

Dark Tide… Her past is as troubled as the storm-battered marshes near her Massachusetts town. Still, for State Trooper Leigh Abbott, those brutalized by crime will always matter more than her reputation or career. So when a single human bone turns up in a beaver dam, she has no problem skirting the rules to consult forensic anthropologist Dr. Matthew Lowell. His skills and her persistence lead them to the grimmest of discoveries—a mass grave of the tortured and murdered going back years…

But a near-fatal attack on the desolate shoreline tips Leigh that the serial killer they’ve interrupted is anything but scared off. As she and Matt carefully excavate the nameless victims’ lives and secrets, their quarry is using their deepest vulnerabilities against them. Now it will only take one insidious misdirection, one lethal chance to bait a trap that could sweep them both away without a trace.

So, what do you think? How do you like the brand new version of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT? And there’s more to come in this series from Worldwide Mysteries as A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH is set to release in mass market format in April….

It’s giveaway time! TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER will release in February of 2015 and we’ve got ARCs to give away months beforehand. Want a signed advanced reading copy of Matt and Leigh’s next exciting adventure? Sign up here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/115336-two-parts-bloody-murder. The giveaway is open until 11:59pm on November 20th, so don’t miss out!

Traveling This Week…

 

I’m in New Orleans this week frolicking in the French Quarter attending The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene for our annual international dengue investigators meeting. But I’ll be back next week with an all new post! See you then…

Photo credit: David Ohmer

Forensic Case Files: A Look at Gladiator Diets, 2000 Years Later

In past Forensics 101 posts, we talked about the use of radioactive isotopes to establish the geographical origins of remains, the date of death post WWII, and the date of death for remains older than 100 years (i.e. Joan of Arc). Recently a journal article was published by PLOS One, an open source scientific journal that anyone can access (most scientific journals are paid content only). In the article, the authors used isotopes to look back at the gladiators of ancient Rome in an attempt to discern their diet.

Texts from the time derogatorily describe a ‘gladiator diet’ of beans and barley; a diet quite different than today’s protein-heavy regimens for muscle building. But using the tools of both stable isotopes (carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur) and inorganic bone components (calcium and strontium), the authors of the article tried to analyze gladiator remains to see if they could compare their diet to that of upper class Romans of the time.

Their research is partly based on the phenomenon of C3 carbon fixation in plants as opposed to C4 carbon fixation. Carbon fixation is a part of photosynthesis, leading to sugar metabolism, and the production of energy with oxygen as a waste by-product. C3 fixation is used by such plants as wheat and barley with carbon dioxide and a sugar as the starting materials. C4 fixation, a newer evolutionary pathway exploited by plants such as millet and corn, starts with the same sugar, but uses malate as the source of carbon dioxide, instead of the surrounding atmosphere.

Also in the authors’ research toolbox is the nitrogen found in bone collagen that indicates the amount of animal protein consumed. Sulfur, co-located in that same collagen, can indicate a living environment where higher sulfur levels correspond to a sea-side location, often tied to increased seafood as part of the daily diet. We have previously discussed how strontium levels are measured and how they indicate location. The ratio of strontium to calcium corresponds to the plant-to-meat ratio in the diet.

While some gladiators were voluntary Roman citizens, the majority of them were slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war. Through winning combat, even the lowly could be raised up to the equivalent of Roman rock star status, and the promise of gladiator school was reintegration into normal society. . . if you won.

It's rare to discover remains of actual gladiators—skeletons with the characteristic trauma patterns that match descriptions of combat. These kinds of remains tend to be very few and far between, but an entire gladiator graveyard was discovered in Turkey, on Panayirda Hill, in 1992. Gladiator remains were sampled from this location; normal Roman citizen remains were excavated from a number of nearby cemeteries. All the gladiators were male, while the Roman citizens were a mix of male and female. The researchers sampled a total of 88 individuals dating back to the 1^st to 3^rd century A.D.

So keeping all the possible isotopes in mind, what did the researchers actually discover when they compared the gladiators to the upper-class Romans?

Carbon: Both groups consumed wheat and barley as a staple part of their diet.

Nitrogen: This was where the researchers found the greatest deviation within the gladiator group itself, suggesting that some gladiators were meat eaters, contradicting the original hypothesis of a uniform gladiator diet. But between the two groups overall, there was no statistical difference.

Sulfur: Both groups were surprisingly low on average, indicating that even though the two groups lived near the Aegean Sea, as a population, they were not seafood eaters. Any outliers in both groups are postulated to be immigrants from other areas since they tended to sit outside the normal range for multiple isotopes.

Strontium/calcium ratio: This is where the largest difference occurred between the two groups with the gladiators having levels nearly twice as high as their Roman contemporaries (statistically highly significant). Overall, a high ratio indicates a plant and vegetable heavy diet, while a low ratio suggests a better balance between the green foods supplying the strontium and dairy products etc. supplying calcium. The higher gladiator ratio implies that contemporary upper class Romans had a more varied and dairy-rich diet. Another possible explanation for the high values in the gladiators is the post-combat consumption of a drink that included plant ash as an ingredient, commonly used as a spice in cooking and as a pain killer. Yet another suggestion is that due to their training, gladiators had increased calcium metabolism and turnover in their bones. This would lead to a more constant level of strontium and a decreasing level of calcium, resulting in a higher ratio value.

The overall conclusion drawn is that the gladiators did not overall have a greatly different diet than their Roman contemporaries. There is the possibility of a difference in dairy consumption, but it is just as likely that it was their physiological state that lead to any differences in the trace elements. Hats off to the authors for some interesting detective work almost two thousand years after the fact!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

What's in a Title?

Ann and I are in the last few weeks of working on a new series proposal and we’ve hit that time, that dreaded time, when we have to come up with . . . a title. *cue scary horror movie music* You might think: It’s a title. How hard can it be? But when you consider what rides on a title—it needs to not only reach out and grab a reader’s interest, but also convey the tone of the book—it’s actually a key part of any novel and can’t be taken lightly.

Normally, we write the entire book first and have the luxury of settling into the story, so a title comes to us mostly organically. Ann is the title master; throughout the overwhelming majority of our writing together, she’s come up with both our book and chapter titles (and explanations). We tend to take our titles from other works, mostly poetry, using material in the public domain, or with express permission of the author or their estate.

The title for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is a line of poetry from an 1865 Civil War poem called Behind the Lines, about a Union soldier, wounded and near death on a battlefield. He fears that he will be buried in an unmarked grave and remain forever unknown:

Dead? and here—where yonder banner
Flaunts its scanty group of stars,
And that rebel emblem binds me
Close within those bloody bars.
Dead? without a stone to tell it,
Nor a flower above my breast!
Dead? where none will whisper softly,
"Here a brave man lies at rest!"

We changed the punctuation around a bit, but felt it was the perfect title for our debut novel. Admittedly it’s a mouthful, but for those of you who have read the book, you know exactly how well suited it is for the burial ground in the story.

The poem Until I Fall by HaliJo Webster, is the source of the title for NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL, a story about loss of identity and how we fit into society, our own and the larger society around us:

I shout and no one seems to hear.
I dance naked and no one responds.
I wow my "self" and stand higher
than any mountain I have stood on before!
No one sees me.
Not till I fall.

A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH was the trickiest title for us so far, as we tried to link the concepts of fire and death in the same line of text. When we finally discovered the 1923 poem Fire, written by Australia’s Dorothea Mackellar, we knew we’d finally found what we were looking for:

This life that we call our own
Is neither strong nor free;
A flame in the wind of death,
It trembles ceaselessly.

The title for the upcoming TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER was the earliest title we matched with a novel. Ann found this little gem in a book called The Devil’s Dictionary. Originally a series of satirical newspaper columns written by Ambrose Bierce between 1881 and 1887, it was published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book before taking on its final title in 1911.

BRANDY, n. A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave, and four parts clarified Satan. Dose, a headful all the time. Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes. Only a hero will venture to drink it.

An aspect of the storyline for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER centers around Prohibition, so the combination of murder and alcohol implied in the title was simply perfect for us.

So what makes a good title? A title needs to be clever, but not so clever that it is misunderstood by the reader. It needs to not only identify the intended audience, but sometimes more specifically the exact series it is a part of. A good title is memorable and sets the tone for the story it encapsulates (Okay, the title for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is maybe not memorable because of its length and structure, but it totally sets the tone for the book!).

Will a publisher keep the title you’ve worked on so diligently once they’ve purchased your manuscript? Not necessarily, but we’ve had excellent luck so far since every one of our titles has been accepted without question. Will that luck continue? Not necessarily, but an author certainly hopes so when she puts this much work into finding the perfect title. As far as we are concerned, we work at this aspect of storytelling assuming the title will be a keeper because if it suits so well, perhaps our editor will agree with our choice. Wish us luck…

Photo credit: Dustin Gaffke (photo has been cropped from original size)

Ethnic Burial Customs

Malagasian traditional 'dancing with the dead'Last week on the blog we talked about the Parisian catacombs and the mind-boggling six million sets of remains found under the city of Paris. For many people, the sanctity of the original gravesite is paramount and this kind of redistribution of human remains is nothing short of sacrilege. For others, it’s a sensible solution to a real and pressing problem, and every effort was made (and continues to be made) to honour and respect the dead.

Late last week, Ann sent me a link to a Washington Post article entitled “Reburying the Dead in Guatemala”, concerning the Guatemalan custom of reusing crypts that are no longer supported financially by the family or the community. Crypts are not bought, but leased, and if payments on the lease lapse, paid grave cleaners break open the crypt and remove the remains. If the remains are claimed by the family, they are boxed and put into a central ossuary. If the remains are not claimed, they are bagged in clear plastic with magic marker identifications and added to a mass grave.

Frankly, the article left me gaping. Mummified remains are carelessly manhandled and tossed on the ground. They’re carried under arms like packages and left propped against walls. Bags of remains and uncovered mummies are transferred to mass graves with forklifts. For me, it was the attitude of disrespect for the dead that appalled. But how much of that is simply my societal views of how the dead should be treated? Clearly this is an accepted practice for the people of Guatemala.

It made me think about burial culture and how we as North Americans don’t hold the only proper ideas of how the dead should be laid to rest. Different cultures and different time periods have/had different customs:

• In the Victorian era, before photography became a common tool of the masses, the deceased was dressed in their finest and photographed, often with live family members. This would often be the only image of the deceased the family would ever have.

• Hindus believe cremation is the most spiritually pure way for a human soul to depart. The deceased is burned in a public ceremony and the pyre is lit by the eldest male in the family. The traditional custom of Sati involves the burning of an Indian wife on her husband’s funeral pyre, sometimes voluntarily, often not. Various laws have been passed in different countries, with India finally criminalizing the practice in 1987.

• Cremation is strictly forbidden for Muslims, as is embalming. As a result, burials must take place within only a few days of death. Autopsies are also forbidden unless required by law.

• The Baha’i believe that death is only the beginning of a great spiritual journey. Baha’i dead must be buried within an hour’s travel of the place of death, and may not be embalmed or cremated.

• Several cultures—the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Vikings—have buried their dead with everything they might need in the afterlife, including sometimes their live servants or wives. For the rich and powerful, this often meant burial sites of great size.

• Sometime the dead are treated in certain ways to protect the living. During the Renaissance, those suspected of vampirism were buried with a stake through their heart, decapitated and buried with their head between their knees, or with a brick between their teeth to prevent biting their way out of their shrouds.

• The people of Tibet traditionally practiced Jhator, or sky burials, where the dead are cut into pieces and left on the top of the mountain for carrion birds to feast on. The practice was both practical and spiritual. Due to the local rocky terrain, the digging of graves for burial was practically impossible, and the lack of trees to provide fuel for fires meant that cremation was not an option. From the spiritual side, the Tibetans believe the vultures are ‘sky dancers’ that will carry the soul of the departed to heaven. The body is simply considered an empty shell after death, so there is no need to preserve it.

• On the island of Madagascar, the tradition of Famadihana, or dancing with the dead, has been practiced since the seventeenth century. Also referred to as the ‘turning of the bones’, it is a celebration, a time for family and friends to gather to reconnect with each other and those who have gone before. The bodies of the dead are exhumed from their tombs and rewrapped in fresh, costly grave cloths. A band plays while the shrouded bodies are lifted up onto shoulders and danced around the tomb before being laid back to rest. Within the community, it’s seen as a way of honouring their family members, and as an act of love.

These are just a few of the cultural traditions around death. Do you know of any others not covered here?

Photo credit: Hery Zo Rakotondramanana

Forensic Case Files: The Parisian Catacombs

Paris is often called The City of Light. But deep under the city, another world exists, a world of darkness and death—the great Catacombs of Paris. Holding the remains of more than six million dead, over two hundred miles of underground tunnels stretch under the city in a labyrinthine sepulchre.

For over a millennium, Parisians buried their dead in cemeteries inside the city walls. But even by the twelfth century, the cemeteries were already overflowing with no room to expand. Parisians attempted to manage the issue by exhuming the oldest of the remains and burying them packed together in mass graves. This helped for a period of time, but, by the eighteenth century, things were getting desperate once again. Finally, after the weight of the mass grave caved the contents into an adjoining residential basement, a radical plan was concocted and acted upon.

Paris was built on top of a series of limestone mines, many which were excavated to supply the city with stone for its rapid expansion. Coincidentally, as the cemeteries were being closed, those same mine tunnels were being renovated to ensure the stability of the streets and buildings above. It was the perfect, if somewhat creepy, solution to dual problems: the mine shafts could hold the remains, while the bones of the dead could help support the great city where they’d once travelled above ground. A number of cemetery headstones and sculptures were also moved underground and slowly, the mausoleum was formed. It took over two years to move the dead of Paris underground, and an additional four years to arrange the bones into their current arrangements. The ossuary opened to the public in 1814.

A map showing the extensive catacomb plans:

Entry to the catacombs (translation: Stop! Here lies the Empire of Death):

Bone sculptures:

Cemetery sculptures and artefacts:

The first time I saw the cover for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, I knew they’d used the Paris catacombs for some of their material. Needless to say, it’s hard to get photos of skeletal remains at actual crime scenes as they are evidence and must be protected. So the cover designers had to go to accessible photos to include real bones. Even knowing where the material came from, I still thought it worked beautifully.

The catacombs hold a more varied history than simply the home of the dead. During World War II it was home to the French resistance, who used the system of tunnels to traverse the city in secret. At the same time, a section below a high school in the sixth arrondisement was used as a German bunker. But the catacombs’ impact on the city is lasting—due to the presence of the tunnels under the city, tall structures cannot be supported in Paris. As such, tall, modern skyscrapers will never grace the cityscape and Paris will forever retain its historical appearance.

Photo credit: Cesar I. Martins, Wikimedia Commons, Shadowgate, Adam Baker, Julian Fong, Americano, Will White, Sharat Ganapati, Fraser Mummery, Tommie Hansen, and Randy Connolly.

Forensic Case Files: Famine and Death at an Irish Workhouse

The Irish Potato Famine took place between 1845 and 1852 when a severe potato blight ravaged Northern Europe. It is believed that potatoes carrying the microorganism Phytophthora infestans carried the blight from North America’s eastern coast to Europe in 1844, where it then spread. In 1845, half of Ireland’s single strain potato crop was lost to the blight; three quarters was lost in 1846 and the first starvation deaths were recorded. A staple food for both the farmer and the poor, some families depended almost solely on the potato to stave off starvation. Paired with the vitamins and protein in milk, the twelve to fourteen pounds of potatoes consumed per person per day provided a relatively balanced, albeit uninteresting, diet. But with their crops dying by the acre, many families had no chance of survival. And even though the majority of Ireland’s lands produced enough grain to feed its starving people, this was considered a cash crop and Ireland continued to export thirty to fifty shiploads of food to Britain daily while their own people died by the thousands. By the time the famine finally ended, over one million Irish had succumbed to starvation and related diseases, while another million had emigrated, many coming to North America.

In 2005, a worker for a local archeology consulting firm, Kilkenny Archaeology, discovered human remains on the site of the old Kilkenny Union Workhouse. Excavations started the following year, and 63 mass graves were uncovered, each holding the remains of 6 to 27 deceased for a total of over 970 dead. Out of that 970, 545 were children under the age of 6.

The Kilkenny Union Workhouse opened in 1842, following the creation of the Poor Law Act. It became home to over 1,300 poor souls, providing food and shelter in exchange for backbreaking and brutal labour producing clothes and blankets by hand. But as the famine continued, the number of people seeking refuge at the workhouse skyrocketed, and by 1851 it housed over 4,300 inhabitants—more than three times its intended maximum population.

With so many residents housed inside its walls, the workhouse buildings were extremely overcrowded and became a prime incubator for diseases such as cholera, typhoid and consumption. The final stressor came when a typhus outbreak struck in 1847. Because of a recent ban from burying paupers in local cemeteries, the workhouse constructed an unconsecrated cemetery on their own property. Due to the number of inhabitants dying each day, there was no choice but to use a system of mass graves to manage the dead, creating and closing one grave per week.

Over half of the recovered remains show signs of scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C; for the Irish, this need would have usually been filled by the potatoes in their diet. Without that component, the bones showed a range of characteristic clues:

• severely low mineral content

• thinning of the cortex (the hard outer layer of bone that provides the majority of structural support)

• epiphyseal separation in young victims (a reversal of the normal process of epiphyseal fusion)

• holes in the skull at the temples and around the teeth.

The bones tell a heartbreaking story of starvation and suffering. But they also speak of redemption, as many of these osteological signs only come about during the recovery from scurvy. Clearly many of the dead had survived near starvation to begin their recovery at the workhouse, only to die from typhus in their still weakened state in the overcrowded ranks of the workhouse.

One thing to note about the mass graves—the dead were buried with care. Compared to mass graves in war zones like Srebrenica, where bodies were carelessly tossed on top of each other, the Irish remains were carefully shrouded and laid in simple pine coffins. The coffins were then neatly stacked in the mass graves before being finally filled in. Sometimes family were buried together, a parent and child or siblings interred together in a single coffin.

In May 2010, a reburial ceremony was held, consecrating the ground as part of the new Famine Memorial Garden.

Photo credit: Bioarchaeologist Dr Jonny Geber, University College Cork

Word on the Street Toronto 2014

This past Sunday I took part in Word on the StreetToronto, Canada's largest book and magazine festival. Celebrating its 25th year, Word on the Street has everything for the book lover—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, publishers, booksellers, libraries, literacy groups and much, much more.

This was my first Word on the Street, but what a fabulous festival! Every genre and taste was represented for every age. Despite the doom-and-gloom weather forecast for severe thunderstorms, the sky cleared during the festival and Toronto residents responded, coming out in droves.

I was part of the crew coming out from the Crime Writers of Canada and helped man booth 147. Along the way I met some of our existing readers, some new readers, and had great discussions with readers and authors alike. It was a really wonderful experience being immersed in a crowd of people who were all there for one reason—a universal love of reading.

Here are a few pictures from the afternoon...

Queen's Park Circle shut down for the festival:

Rick Blechta and Terry Carroll selling books and signing at the Crime Writers of Canada booth:

Jonathan Bennett, Jeramy Dodds, and Michael Lista in the ‘New Narratives’ tent:

Gail Gallant, Lucy Leiderman, and Lesley Livingston specializing in spoken word poetry in the ‘This Is Not the Shakespeare Theater Stage’ tent:

The Toronto Public Library booth was hopping with both kids and adults:

Penguin Random House's Author Solutions was out with several of its authors doing signings:

The Kobo Writing Life booth:

Toronto Book Award finalist Anthony De Sa, talking about his novel Kicking the Sky:

The ‘Amazon.ca Bestsellers Stage’ tent, introducing Andrew Pypers' The Demonologist:

Ottawa firefighter John Kenny with his debut novel The Spark:

And what's a festival without a beer tent?

Joan O'Callaghan and I manning the Crime Writers of Canada booth, meeting new readers, talking up the CWC and signing books:

Thanks Word on the Street for a great time. Looking forward to seeing you again next year!