KATHY REICHS
I started out in archaeology. I was doing ancient remains. Eventually police started bringing cases to me. In working on these cases I found it somehow more compelling, more attractive, more fascinating, more relevant that I could actually have an impact on families, and on the legal system. I find it very rewarding to be able to give a family (of a victim) closure. To testify as an expert witness. And to be able to take some of these people (offenders) off the streets.

HBO.COM
What is your educational background? And what kind of specialized training is required to become a forensic anthropologist?

KATHY REICHS
Most forensic anthropologists come into it with Ph.D. in anthropology with a specialization in physical anthropology, skeletal biology and human genetics, human variation. Some people come through an MD route. But most of us have a Ph.D.. My undergraduate was at American University. With a Masters and Ph.D. at Northwestern. You then have to have three years of post doctorate experience on casework. And then you can apply for candidacy and take your board exam to become certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.

HBO.COM
Although there is no such thing as a "routine" examination, give us an overview of what generally happens and what you look for in an examination?

KATHY REICHS
Well, I'm usually brought into cases by medical examiners and coroners, or law enforcement agencies, or occasionally by private parties. And it's cases in which the body is compromised. It's mummified. It's burned, decomposed. It's dismembered. It's putrefied. It's just a torso out of the river. It's just a skeleton. So the normal autopsy is having problems. And there's two primary questions: One would be who is it - the identity question. And the other would be trauma. Looking at bone trauma to figure out manner of death. Or sometimes to figure out what happened to the body after the person's death. And the common denominator is always the bones.

HBO.COM
Let's talk a little bit about reconstruction. What is involved in that process?

KATHY REICHS
Construction or reconstruction can take place on a number of different levels. It might be that I physically, literally have to reconstruct. Take fragments and glue them back together. Or put the pieces of bone back together. I've also reconstructed in the sense of reconstructing a biological profile. The age, the sex, the race, the height. Indicators of past medical history. Anything that would be helpful in identification. I construct then what I think of as that profile. What I look at depends on what I'm focusing on. If I'm looking at determining sex, the most useful part would be the pelvis. The male pelvis is different for obvious reasons than the female pelvis. The skull is useful. Males have bigger muscle attachment, brow ridges. All the bumps and ridges on the male skull are much more prominent.

For age it depends on the age of the individual when they die. With kids you can see more precisely because they're still developing and growing. You look at the development of the teeth. The long bones are not finished until sometime in puberty or late teenage years. So you're looking at those little bumps and crests and ridges and things and they fuse to complete the adult bone. So because kids are still growing and developing you can be pretty precise. With adults you can't be nearly as precise. You have to look at degenerative changes, breakdown. Some things occur at a regular rate. Changes in the ribs where they attach to the sternum, the breastbone, in front. Changes in the two parts of the pelvis where they meet in front. What it will look like at a particular phase in adulthood. So you're probably going to be able to age adults maybe plus or minus five years or ten years. With kids you can estimate plus or minus months or a year or two. For race, really the only useful area is the skull. I observe features of the shape of the skull. The mid-facial region is very good. There are a few dental features that are good for determining people of African and European versus Asian ancestry. I also take measurements and put them into a computer program which places my unknown relative to measurements that have been collected from known populations - black versus white versus Asian for example.

So that's what I do in constructing the biological profile. I rarely do a positive I.D myself. Those are done with dental records, medical records, DNA. But what I do is I give the detective the profile. We can then match that to missing persons to come up with a name. Once you've got a name you can then go to the dentist, you can go where the medical records might be.

Facial reconstruction is something else, probably best called facial approximation. It's really when nothing else has worked. You've got an "unknown." You cannot figure out who this person is. And as a last ditch effort, you might want to do a facial approximation. Get a sketch out to the media, see if someone recognizes it. You can do it by the old fashioned clay on the skull, three-dimensional technique. That's time consuming. It's also fixed. You can't change it once you've done it. You can do it two-dimensional, where you're doing line drawings of an individual based on the skull using other tissue standards. From these techniques you might come up with a line drawing.

The third technique - and it's the current one really or modern one - is using computer-generated models where you scan your skull in and then you lay the tissue on. The advantage to that is you can change it. You can make the person older, younger, heavier, lighter. Put glasses on, take glasses off, change the hairstyle.

But the goal of all the work - and they work in different ways - some of them work using databases of pre-existing features: eyes, nose, chin shape, etc. Others generate the face using mathematical formulas and laying the flesh on. So you've got the three techniques. Three-dimensional, the two-dimensional drawing and computer generated. They're all used as a last ditch effort. Again - I've had cases where - I had one case, I did a test. I had seven different facial approximations done by different people with different techniques. They were all different. So it's an art not a science.

HBO.COM
OK, so now we move on to the question of the National Disaster Medical System DMORT team and how you became involved with them and what your practices and procedures are as a member.

KATHY REICHS
DMORT is Disaster Mortuary Operational Recovery Team. And part of the National Disaster Medical System. DMORT deals with mass fatality. Where you've got a plane crash, a train crash, cemeteries that have floated up and you have to figure out who goes in what casket. That happened here in North Carolina and Georgia.

So the DMORT teams exist permanently but they're only deployed in these emergency situations. They're made up of anthropologists, pathologists, dentists, funeral directors, computer specialists, data entry personnel, etc. They rely on a program called VIP, which tracks the progress of remains, stores all data, and facilitates the comparison of antemortem and postmortem information.

When families bring ante mortem records - dental records, photographs, descriptors, jewelry descriptions, blood type, anything - it's entered into the program as ante mortem data. The pathologists and the anthropologists and the dentists examine the remains they enter that are post mortem data and, hopefully, the unidentified bodies or body parts get matched up based on those pre-existing descriptors. It can also print out a hard copy report. It can also handle graphics like X-rays, dental x-rays, photographs. All that can be scanned in and be on file for each individual.

HBO.COM
You have also acted as an expert witness.

KATHY REICHS
Mm-hmm.

HBO.COM
Tell us a little bit about what that entails.

KATHY REICHS
I rarely have to testify about identity because usually they stipulate that, they don't question identity. More often than not what I've testified to is trauma. Either cause of death or body mutilation after death. And that can be as simple as examination, cross-examination. Or it can be far more complex depending on the case.

HBO.COM
Can you discuss a specific case?

KATHY REICHS
One case took place way up in northern Quebec, Canada, hundreds of miles north of Quebec City, which is really getting up there. And it was a native reserve where two young men had drowned accidentally. A government commission was formed because the tribe was unsatisfied that it was accidental and felt they were killed. So all kinds of evidence was brought before this commission. One piece of which was the physical, actual remains. So we did an exhumation. I looked at the - you know I had to clean everything down under the watchful eye of the tribal representatives, which took about two weeks because they were badly mummified. And then testified to the findings, which did not contradict the original autopsy findings.

HBO.COM
You also were involved with a case with Doctor Baden?

KATHY REICHS
Yes. When you do an exhumation you never know what to expect. So often it's the pathologist and the anthropologist. If it's a fresh body case, like the one Michael (Baden) and I did one out in Kansas in 1998. When we did this - it was 104 degrees - it was so bloody hot. That body was completely preserved. So I could step back. I looked at some of the trauma from the gun shot wounds in the bones. But Michael did a regular autopsy. The other end of the spectrum would be where you have a completely skeletonized case. Actually Michael and I did one of those. It was a policeman that had died back in 1967. And the coroner determined it was suicide, gun shot wounds to the chest. But his family felt he had been shot in the back. So again thirty years went by before they formed a commission and we dug him up. And in that case it was completely skeletonzied. Just bones. So that's a case where the anthropologist's expertise predominates.

HBO.COM
On the subject of what is often called "junk science," what are your thoughts as a certified forensic anthropologist and a board member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences?

KATHY REICHS
Most of your legitimate practitioners are members of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences: chemists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, entomologists, pathologists, you know they're multi-disciplinary. If a complaint is lodged either for ethical reasons or reasons of competency it goes before the ethics committee. And then those cases are brought to the board of directors, of which I am a member. So I do hear about complaints, some of which are legitimate, some of which are found not to be well grounded. Most forensic sciences have a certifying body to make sure that they regulate the qualifications and the behavior of their members. If a renegade is out there practicing who's not certified, there is no control over that person. If a board certified individual acts or testifies inappropriately that can be submitted to his or her board and the case would be evaluated. So that's part of the reason for certifying boards.

The other part is to make sure that people can put the letters after their name. So that relevant agencies, whether it's a prosecuting attorney or law enforcement or coroner, will know who it is that's qualified, you look for somebody who's certified. One of the things the American Academy of Forensic Sciences is in the process of doing right now is establishing a certifying board that will be in charge of certifying the certifying board itself, which in turn will help to establish a certification process within the forensic sciences field.

HBO.COM
Last couple of questions: what is one of the most unusual cases you've been involved with?

KATHY REICHS
Well I had an interesting one in Illinois. A woman died back in the late sixties in an automobile crash. And thirty years later her father came back and said, how is my daughter's homicide investigation? Of course many of the leading officers were dead. But it was an open file. And they checked, they looked into it. The police got very interested in it because nothing added up properly. The case was reopened. And they eventually brought charges against the husband thirty years later for homicide. I was asked to do the exhumation, which we did. And I found the coroner had put down cause of death as severe cranial injury. I found no cranial trauma. But I did find a classically fractured hyoid bone.

HBO.COM
Ah, strangulation.

KATHY REICHS
Yes. So that was an interesting case.

HBO.COM
Why would the medical examiner put down that the skull had been crushed when it was - ?

KATHY REICHS
It was a coroner case, not a medical examiner. It was thirty years ago. And he put - there was no autopsy - he put "severe cranial trauma."

HBO.COM
Many corners are glorified funeral directors, aren't they?

KATHY REICHS
I think he was a funeral director. [LAUGHS]

HBO.COM
[LAUGHS] You were also involved in a serial murder investigation that you helped solve.

KATHY REICHS
That was the case of Serge Archambault. He had killed two women. Following the second one, he used her bankcard. The police were eventually able to track down the transaction and arrested him. He had admitted to having killed a third victim two years earlier and cut her body up and buried it in five locations. So that's the case I came into. I helped with the identity in that case and also the way he had done the dismemberment. It was quite unique and showed a lot of skill going directly into the joints. I was able to say you're looking for someone who knows something about anatomy - an orthopedic surgeon or butcher. And it turned out he was a butcher.

HBO.COM
And what year was that case in?

KATHY REICHS
That was in 1994. I had just finished that case and he had just been convicted of three counts of first degree (murder) when I started Deja Dead and I drew on that. That's the kind of core idea.

HBO.COM
In terms of your work as an author, tell us what's that like in that you're both a highly regarded forensic anthropologist and author. How and when did that happen for you and how has it impacted your work?

KATHY REICHS
Well I started writing fiction in 1994, shortly after the Archambault trial. I had made full professor at the university and I felt that I wanted to try something different. And so I decided to write the novel. I had written textbooks. And didn't want to do another textbook or a journal article. I thought I'd try fiction. I find that my forensic experience continually influences my writing.

Death Du Jour was based on an episode with a murder-suicide cult in Quebec -- the Order of the Solar Templar. We did the autopsys at our lab. Deadly Decisions was based on murders that had taken place as a result of a biker war in Quebec and I worked on several of those victims. How has it impacted me? It's funny, I was testifying in one trial, shortly after that book came out. And we had talked about whether that would be an issue you know, "Dr. Reichs is that fact or fiction?" And sure enough as soon as I took the stand, I looked down under the defense counsel's feet was a copy of Deja Dead. And I thought, oh, great, here we go. But he never mentioned it. He just wanted me to sign a copy after the trial was over.

HBO.COM
[LAUGHS] Kathy Reichs, thank you very much for your time.

KATHY REICHS
You're welcome.