Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On this week's External Exam, we will be speaking with doctor Jason Bird. Doctor Bird is a professor and Associate director of the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida's College of Medicine, and he is also a board certified forensic entomologist. Hi, doctor Bird, Welcome The Mother Knows Death.
Hi, thanks for having me on, Thanks so much.
For being here. Before we get started, can you tell us exactly what an entomologist is for our listeners who have no idea what.
You do for a living well. An entomologist is a scientist who studies insects, and an insect is an organism with three pairs of legs, six total three body segments exosculpton of course, some compound eyes, and a pair of antennae. And forensic entomologists are entomologists who focus on insects of forensic important particular species that are in the Carrian community.
And the other thing that we really specialize in is taking this very complex ecology of decomposers in the environment and then being able to a explain it to law enforcement in a way that they can understand how to apply it for casework, apply it to case work to determine things such as post more minerval estimations, movement of bodies after death where the body may have come from geographically, and then post more to movement of remains, attempts to
conceal post more to handling, freezing of remains. All of that will tend to change the insects on a and then finally we have to go into a courtroom and explain all of that to a trier effect be that, you know, just a judge and a judge based trial or a jury, and the courtroom is not the classroom
sometimes a painful lesson. So trying to explain all of that to a jury in a way that they can not only believe you as a scientist, but more importantly believe that your entomology the science can add some credibility to the case and making it not overly complicated for the jury. So if you can tie all of that together, then forensic entomology may be for you.
It's really interesting because I have little kids, and most kids are scared of bugs, they freak out if there's a fly near them or a bee near them. And when you were a kid, were you interested in bugs? Like, how did you get in interested in this?
Well, I grew up on a very large farm, so agriculture, you know, certainly was very familiar to me. And being on a farm, you're not too far away from insects, right, I mean, you have to worry about insect control. You
see insects all the time. So I always thought that they were very interesting, partricularly social insects and their seemingly ability to communicate and have you know, hundreds thousands, tens of thousands individuals all somehow work together to accomplish some common goal for the overall organism, which is the colony. So you know, I was always pretty impressed with that. And the only other thing that I really had an interest in other than you know, the insects, is forensic science.
And I'm not sure why didn't have any forensic scientists in the family, just something that appealed to me. So I was able to merge those two childhood interests into a career in forensic entomology.
So when you were younger and you didn't have anyone in your family that did forensics, and the internet was not what it is now. Obviously when you were younger, what how did you even know about it?
Well, magazine subscriptions, you know, back then there was the Smithsonian magazine was popular National Geographic. There was a weekly science magazine it was Science Digest, well that was published of course, had some subscriptions to those. And then of course the library. You know, go into the library public libraries in the area and going into the science section and just browsing books. And not a lot of people
appreciate it anymore. But you know, encyclopedia sets where I think, so you you can look up stuff in volumes encyclopedias. It may have been very old at that point in time, but encyclopedia's were a wealth of information.
So when you got older and went to high school, did you you know exactly what you wanted to go to college for? And what did you go to college for? At first?
Well, you know, I always maintain the interest in entomology and forensic science, you know, as a kid, I mean all throughout high school. So graduating high school, you know, time to determine what to do. I really wanted to go to college to do forensics, specifically crime scene investigation.
I wanted to be a crime scene investigator. Didn't want to sit in a lab, you know, didn't want to do chemistry or toxicology, and crime scene was something which different each day, you know, outside a little bit of outside work, a little bit inside work. So that was really my goal was to do crime scene And even at the time, really to get on with the State of Florida, with the state crime lab system, you needed a four year to inter natural science or chemistry or
physics biology. So I really set out to just get a four year degree so I could check that box and then apply for some crimson jobs.
And so when you started college, you didn't really did you really know that there was a specialty for forensics that you can combine forensics and your love of insects.
So, yes, I had the idea. I went. There were several colleges that I was looking at, you all, in Florida, I was, I'm a Florida native, and uh, the University of Florida was the land Grant college and you know, had the largest agricultural programs and a very large department entomology as well. So I figured, well, if I'm going to go to college. It's either going to be biology, you know, or something in one of the ad colleges.
And UF has, you know, the entomology department. So I set up in a point it and went in to talk to the undergraduate coordinator and of course, you know, they have to go through the routine checklist and well, why do you want this degree? And I said, well, you know, I would like this degree because it essentially puts the you know, four year degree checkbox on applications, and I can do forensic science work. And the graduate coordinator said, well, and had you ever been interested in
forensic entomology? I said, well, yo about you know, there are no programs in Florida in it at that time, There's only three in the United States that had programs that you know, I knew about that were accepting students. And turns out that the day that I was in their office, the local newspaper I had a front page article on the university's medical inventory entomologist. And it wasn't focusing on his medical inventary work. It was focusing on
his work as a forensic entomologist. So they slid the paper over I. It was front page. I read the headlines and read the first couple paragraphs, and I said, yeah, that sounds like something that would certainly fit my bill. And they said, well, would you like to go talk to him? He's in his office. Said sure, so his office was really across the hall, went in, talked to him about my interest in forensic entomology. And then by the time I left that day, I had a job
in his lab. I worked hourly as a student employee and completed my undergraduate degree with him in the lab. So everything came together because of a newspaper article that just happened to be the day I was in the undergraduate coordinator's office.
Oh my god, that's such fate, right, So what a cool story.
So I still have the paper.
Oh dare you that's really cool? Yeah you should. I mean, that's like what you got, what started your story. I love hearing things like this because a similar thing happened to me too. How just the whole thing kind of started falling in my lap day to day, just based upon all these people I were meeting at school and stuff. And of course there was no Internet at the time to be able to even know that some of these things were even a possibility. So it's really cool that
that's how you got your start. So's it's also cool to tell people that you originally started school just to get a bachelor's degree, because the same thing happened with me. I just first, I didn't even think I would be a college person, and then I forced myself, Okay, I'll just get an associate's degree, and then I kept going and going. I never expected that I would in a
million years go to grad school. So you're a doctor, Now, what do you have an MD PhD. What did you go to school after your four year degree?
Yeah? So I completed a bachelor's degree four year degree in entomology and the medical inventory entomologist. I had some very large grants on insect a tractancy and developing repellents for industry. And with that grant, you know, he was able to provide me with employment and then which gave me access to the lab so I could do my own research. So I finished my masters in the same lab in entomology, got an undergrad uh a graduate minor
in criminology and law. At the time, I was the first person in u's history to crossover between entomology and criminology and law. Uh, and I completed that master's degree. And during my master's degree, I wrote a grand proposal for funding a PhD in forensic entomology, and then that grant was awarded. So then I shifted my focus from my work from medical entomology and insect repellants and attractments over to just purely forensic science.
I love that. So you have such a great story. I love this. So after you finished your PhD, you became a board certified forensic entomologist. Was there did you have to do a certain amount of a certain training in order to be eligible to take that board examination? And if so, where did you do that training?
Yeah? Well, I mean all of that. So there's a there's a written exam, now a practical exam, and then you your cases are reviewed, so your case work that you have done. Fortunately for me, back then I was board certified forends against coologist number nine. That were not many even without a board CERTI occasion and you could still get casework, you know, because people law enforcement agencies
just needed to help. So it's it's a multiple pronged approach where colleagues peer review your cases to make sure that your analysis and your conclusions are correct. There is a Renten exam which is technical nature, and there's a practical exam which includes insect identification and doing some post more emit estimations and report writing on that.
Can you explain to us when you walk into work? I guess there's all different types of things forensic entomologists can do. But you know, when I'm a PA, I go to work, and if a working in surgical pathology, the specimens come down and I dissect them and describe them and cut them up, look for what caused the disease? What when you go to work? What what do you do? What's what's the environment you look like? Is it a lab? Do you have cases that are just sitting on your desk?
Are you working on cases for multiple months? How does that go?
Yeah? So for the entomology thing, I mean every day for me, I wear a slightly different hat. But for the entomology, law enforcement may drive a case up or they may collact and send it in. So we received the case, we go through what we log it into our laboratory management system which helps us tract evident Then I kind of triage the case. I open everything up and look at it. Some of the collected insects will
be alive, you know, so they need care. So we may have to set them up in environmental chambers or cages, give them some feet water. Well, they may be preserved. And even if they are preserved, they may not be preserved properly. These insects can still decompose and a preservative if they're not fixed first. So I make sure that everything is properly preserved, that the live insects are taking care of, and if there are live insects, we just sit and wait wait for those insects to complete the
live cycles. We document when the insects change their life stages, we document when the adults emerge, and then the insects have to be identified. So we have to identify them to species if possible, if not to possible, at least to the genus. So I will try to do a live microscopy identific just using morphology, and you know, if that does not work, then I have a genetics lab, so I hand it over to the geneticists to be able to do some genetic identification of the species. That
usually gets it down to species for me. And once I know the species then I can gather the weather information. You have to go back, you know, weeks or months to determine what the temperature may have been at the scene at the time, and then compare with laboratory data, whether it's my own data that I generated or other scientists data, and then that comes up with an estimate of you know, how old those insects are. And then once you know that bit of information, and that would
be the you know, approximate time of colonization. We call it when the eggs or larvae or deposited on the body. And then once I have all that information, I run it up in a report and then send it off to law enforcement and they just incorporate that is the supplementary information in their investigations.
It's so cool. Are there ever times that you get to that they call you to go on crime scenes?
Yes, you know, it's difficult due to my schedule and and it's budget right, I mean, they can't have people sitting around at the crime team just waiting on, you know, me to show up. So I spent a lot of my time training crime scene investigators how to make collections, you know, if they're properly equipped and properly trained, they can make it certainly a reasonable collection at the scene.
You know, it's procedural at that point, and then they sent it to me, and then you know, the expertise that I have is getting the identifications made in the determining aide. But I do. I mean, the longest time I've had a law enforcement agency hold a scene essentially was three days. Just took me that long to get there because it was out of the country. But they were pretty insistent that you know, I get there and I do the collections because it was a large case
for them. But yeah, I mean, if I can get there, then I will. If not, hopefully they've been in one of my classes before, and to make the collect actions and just drive it up to the lab, which probably happens more frequently than anything else.
That must be fun for you to go to different countries and see insects that you don't typically see every day in this country. Is that pretty exciting for you?
Yeah?
It is.
You see different species, but you also have to be somewhat cautious because there may not be as much developmental information on some of these species as we would expect, and just because it is a species that I may be familiar with. We may have the species here, they may have it somewhere else. Does not mean that there's not some genetic drift on which has resulted in some
different developmental times and different behavior. So just because it's the same species doesn't mean that it's doing the same thing.
I know that some insects can cause some serious pathology if you get bit by one. Have you ever worked with a species that you would consider to be dangerous?
Well, I mean, you know, we get being in the College of Medicine, of course, you know, we get asked to sometimes help out with some hospital cases. So we have a number of cases where you know, people have gone into shot being bitten stung by insects, and there's a chance to try to identify the insects pieces that is responsible for the death. You know, so through the hospital system, that's not too terribly uncommon.
That's really interesting. Do you have a specific species that you could think of that people I mean, obviously in Florida there's going to be more insects that are common to bite people and cause serious injuries. But do you have an example of one.
Oh, well, for us, you know, the the well, there's always the threat of the Africanized be being out there. But I mean for us, one of the common things that are the yellow jacket nests. You know, they nest underground and can make very large caverns, and not unusual
for someone to actually fall in and nest. I guess it's been quite common for you know, farmers, land clearers, people operating you know, tractors and bush hogs to you know, the way of the tractor collapses in a nest, and then due to the depth of the nest, you know, that the tractor becomes stuck. Uh, and then the you know, tractor or equipment operator becomes overwhelmed with all of the
stinging insects. And even though you may not have a particularly particular sensitivity, you can't survive that many insects things when you get them.
You said that sometimes when you get them to the lab they're alive or they're special precautions you need to take when you're handling those.
No, not really the insects that we deal with for the most part at forensics are you know, non biting insects. Most of the adult flies have spongy mouth parts and you know, not not typically a threat and not usually invasive, although we we did have a case recently of an
innforted species that isn't supposed to be here. The primary screwware So you do have some instances where you may have to take some additional steps for biological control because we get cases in from numerous locations and the people collecting them, of course aren't expert entomologists. They don't know what they are, so they may accidentally send in some
species that may be a biological control problem. Yeah, so we just have to make sure that our lab is you know, a BL two certified, and make sure that you can contain the insects that come in.
My only experience with insects really working in pathology has been getting maggots that are on legs with Gangreen and when I was at the Medical Examiner's office doing autopsies with lots of maggots, lots and lots, and I always, I mean, this is just my thing, I guess. But after I go home, even though I know that I'm clean and it's all done, I just have this crazy creepy crawley feeling in my skin and I have to
take a shower right away. I just have this fear that one jumped on me somehow or got in my hair. Do you I guess you never have that feeling happen to you work working in this field. But have you ever had anything like that happen that you're scared you brought home something from work?
Oh? Well, yeah, actually yeah, we do a lot of civil cases as well. It's not all criminal, so cases of bedbugs. You know, being in a hotel, you have to go to the property and inspect, so you know, you're always worry about And did I bring some bed bugs home with me? Crime scenes are not always clean. Some of them have massive roads infestations, and you know, he may be in tie back, but you still have roaches crawling all over your tie back and all over
you know, the equipment that's seeing. So now, roaches still give me the ev GBI's Magats and flies don't bother me too much, But don't like roaches. Not a big fan. Yeah.
I used to work at a hospital in the city of Philadelphia and we had such a bad roach problem, and especially the more is in the basement and they used to come up out of the dream but they would be in the light fixtures, you know, like the fluorescent lights you would see in the hospital, and they just were all over the place all the time. And one of the secretaries was working in an office on the second floor and one fell from the ceiling out of one of those lights onto her jacket. It was
like this huge, this huge scene. They're just I don't know what it is about them, They're so gross, but living. I live in New Jersey, which is twenty minutes away from Philadelphia in the burbs, and I never saw a bug like that until I started working in the city. And I can't imagine just like having one of those things in my house. It would freak me out so bad. All right, So let's get on too. You're an educator.
You're a professor and associate director of the William R. Bapel Center or Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida's College of Medicine. So I have a couple questions about that because I used to work with pathology residents, and when they decided that they wanted to go into forensics, they would go get a they would do their residency and pathology, and then they would go get a fellowship in forensics. So most of them they either went to
the Philly Medical Examiner's office. Some of them went to New York or Miami and they would go there for a year or two to do a fellowship to become eligible to take the board exam to become a board certified forensic pathologist. Do you teach medical students like that in your program or do you have programs for other levels of education like crime scene texts, crime scene investigators, things like that.
Well, we're trying to cover all of that and plus so, I mean we are in the College of Medicine, so you know, our department of course has anatomical and clinical pathologists that you know, go other places and do the residents. As you're talking about, we do have residents come here. We do go down and give lectures to Miami and their residence. That's one of the things that we do quarterly.
I've been doing that for a number of years. But you know, in our veterinary program, we also have veterinary pathologists that we teach. We're starting a residency program for those as well for the animals. But you know, we also teach non non MD bound people. So we specialize in training medical legal death investigators in crime scene techniques, and some are certain aspects of forensic medicine and forensic mythology, so we focus on those who want to be medical
legal death investigators as well. And uh, you know a lot of our students are interested in forensics as an undergraduate, and because it's you know, essentially a STEM approved curriculum, they go to many places. You know, you have them go to ved school on the med school of course, it's the normal thing. He'll go on to psychiatry law program. So our students really go everywhere once they finish their masters, if they don't go straight into employment.
You're also you have the most impressive resume I ever saw. By the way, after I read all the things that you do, I'm like, well, I'm such a loser anything. But you're also you're involved with the educational program. You're the actual administrator for the University of Florida's Vet Science
forensic program. And I got to thinking about that a lot recently in the past month because in one I found the case of a dog that was shot to death along with his owner and how they used the animal in order to collect bullets from him and do a forensic analysis. And that really got me thinking because I never really I've never really thought about that that an animal would get a forensic autopsy two and I started looking into it, and last week I actually interviewed
a veterinarian pathologist who also does forensics as well. She does both medical and forensic or necruptcies on these animals. Is that what you teach them how to collect evidence and how to perform a necropsy on these animals, because I'm sure it's done a little bit differently than you would do for to look for a tumor or something like that.
Well, I mean the process is very much the same. I mean it's for a legal case, right, You're going to go to court, so you want to make sure that you're not just doing a medical exam, you're doing a forensic documentation. So yeah, we have our boarded veterinary pathologist. We'll do the ney cropsies. You know, the problem with the veterinary forensics in general is you never know what
species is going to happen. Right, So with our forensic medicine program that focuses on people in your training meta legal death investigators, they're going to be doing human crime and our vet and wildlife program, it could be companion animals, farm animals, any wildlife species. We have a huge program with marine mammals now and trauma that it is being afflicted to marine mammals and trying to figure out, you know, who is actually doing them, what types of weapons are
they using. So, yeah, it becomes a very different application when you're dealing with animals, but that forensic exam and the level of documentation that you want to perform is much the same whether it be an animal or a human.
Yeah, that was something that I was talking to her about how really knowledgeable a vet has to be because with humans, you're just dealing with one species. Well, I guess it's the same with your job too, and when you're working with animals or insects, you just have to know so many more things about anatomy and the different diseases they can and everything. It's it's just it's all just very interesting to me. There was a show, oh go ahead.
No, I mean the harsh reality of that is is, you know, you may not know as much about one species, you know, like we as entomologists may not have as much developmental information about a particular fly species, so it may not be able to provide the level of detail in one case that we had did on a you know, we had performed by another case. So the same thing in the vetinary forensic world. You just may not have a data on the animal to give.
Law enforcement what want when you take these samples from animals. I know what happens with humans that they go for trace evidence and they go for toxicology and just the medical examiner look at the microscopy. What would you send those specimens to the same labs or are there specific vet specific forensic labs.
Yeah, we send them to different laboratories, so the histology to different labs, the toxicology will go to a different lab. So yeah, your laboratory support for the most part, between humans and animals is somewhat divided. Like our pathologist doesn't send the histo in toxicology out to the same labs that you know, our medical examiner's office does here in town. It's a very different support system.
So you are also an administrator of the Wildlife Forensic Science Laboratory for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservatory Commission. And it made me think about this episode I saw years ago on this show called Autopsy, which was one of it was on HBO. It was one of the original forensic shows with Doctor Boden, and I thought this
was a really cool case. It was about this famous elk that lived in Yellowstone National Park named Charger, and in the episode they were saying that someone came and a poacher killed and killed the elk, and throughout the investigtion gation on this episode they were showing it was really cool. I mean, it was a sad story, but it was cool how they were able to figure out who killed this elk and catch them and here it
was there was an award given. I believe to the taxidermist that the person brought this elk to is that something working for a commission like this? Are these Are they the kind of cases that you guys work on?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, so our Wildlife lab is somewhat split. We have a Wildlife Forensic Laboratory who will take in cases from anywhere, and in addition to that, we have the Wildlife Lab that supports the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, and that lab supports approximately eight hundred law enforcement officers around the state of Florida, and we will help them with a forensic analysis on
any case they have. Sometimes it is identification of the animal species, you know, if they have and to see some you know, meat that has been field dressed or processed, the sex of that species, you know, whether it's a male or female, determined, whether it's taken out of season or not. So it's usually species determination and sex determination. A lot of time with illegal take, it may be a size determination of the animal. A lot of that
may be a photograph. You know, people like to post everything on social media, so even if you're doing a crime, then they take a picture of the animal that they have poached and put it on social media. Typically with fish, everybody likes to hold up the trophy fish right for the for the picture. So a lot of it may be doing some photogrammetry to determine what size that fish may be because there may be limits on size. It
may be too small, may be too big. So a lot of it is just illegal take analysis and trying to decide whether that is applicable with the law or not. And that's where that stops. And you know, other efforts like our vet forensic scientists do and the other part of our wildlife forensic lab where gets into maybe mistreatment of animals and animal cruelty and how long do the
animals suffer and all that, you know, starvation cases. You know, those are all have to be split out at a laboratory because we have different different experts to be able to handle the different cases depending on what you're trying to prove or what species you're dealing with with wildlife.
That's interesting. I never really thought of how much more complex that all gets with social media and things like that, because how do you even stay on top of that or there has to be a whole entire unit dedicated to just taking care of that type of stuff.
Yeah, they do. They have an entire Internet crimes unit and the investigators, so we just provide them support as needed. But yeah, they're doing traditional law enforcement investigations and we're just a small part of that overall investigation for the agency.
This episode is brought to you by my book, Nicole and Jemmy's Anatomy. Do you have my book yet? If not, you better get it because it's really awesome. It is an A through Z journey of the human body and everything that could go wrong with it. Get it now at thedorramodern dot com slash book. Now we're going to talk about something else that you do on your list of millions things that you do. This is really cool.
So you serve as a medico legal death investigator with the National Disaster Medical System Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team or d MORE Region for and serve as a commander for the Florida Emergency Mortuary Operations Response System. That's a mouthful. Can you Can you explain to us what these organizations do and give us an example of any kind of deployments that you've been on.
Sure, So, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response System is the federal Mass Fatality Teams. Essentially, they are all organized under the National Disaster Medical System and historically there's been ten regional teams and those teams can be deployed anywhere where the United States government needs mass fatality assistants and femores. Which is the Florida Emercy Operations Response System is Florida's state Mass Fatality team of which I'm the director and commander.
The two are not related. One of the state team and one is the federal team. On the federal team, I have been lucky enough to serve as a medical legal death investigator for many years. And you know that team that's deployed to Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and
they send assessment teams out all the time. They responded to the wildfires in Hawaii, and then the assessment teams determined whether a you know, a full response is needed, and if a full response is it needed, and then exactly what experts may be needed or what equipment may be needed. But that is all operated essentially with the Department of Health and Human Services, with our federal government. It's it.
My husband is part of the New Jersey Task Force one. It sounds like it's a similar type of thing. He gets deployed on things. He's been to a couple of the hurricanes in Florida actually, and of course he was there a couple of years ago. He was deployed to the surf Side condo collapse for a couple of weeks. And when he got home, obviously I had a million questions for him because he was there retrieving bodies unfortunately, and I had so many questions like what did you
do next? Like who was there taking care of it? And he's just like Cale, I don't know there was a refrigerator there. We brought the body. It's the end of it for me. So is that thing that that one of those teams that you work for would do in a case like that, where there's going to be multiple people that didn't survive an accident, you would actually set up kind of a morgue on site.
It depends. We did the surf side collapse. We assisted the Medical Sailor's Office in Miami DAPD. So these teams do a number of things. They may help with the family assistance aspect of it, which we typically call. You know, our microcosm is the victim Information center. We need to collect any order data right now. You need a missing person's list essentially, and then from that list you start vetting it down to who the potential victims may be.
And then you have to do interviews. Right you know who's missing, you know what what if their hair color, eye color, natural nails, artificial nails, you know, the whole thing that makes that person a person, surgical scars, so on and so forth. Get a DNA sample, maybe that DNA samples from siblings or a biological parent, and that builds up your anti mortem database, and then your post mortem database are the identifiers that come in from the
forensic examination of the remains. We may be able to do that in an existing medical examiner's office, which is what happened with the surf side collapse. You know, the medical Examiner's office in Miami has a tremendous capacity. That office wasn't impacted at all, so they're still able to use their facility. We just provided people and you know,
additional expertise. But for like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Ian, where the medical examiner's offices themselves are impacted, we have the ability to bring in basically a mobile more that has all the cooling capacity, all of the forensic stations, all the equipment. We basically set up a portable medical examiner's office for the duration of the response until that medical examiner's office gets back to capacity and
is operational. So both the National Disaster Medical Site Stone has that capability and Florida has that capability. Our equipment is very similar. The equipment often comes from the same vendors. It is packed the same, it's often numbered the same, and we do that on purpose because if we need the federal teams is backup. We don't want to have
to train those individuals on our system. We want our system to be very familiar to them so they can come in have all those zero just in time training, they walk in that environment and they should feel very at home because everything looks the same to them. The equipment's in the same spot, and they can literally come in and just start to work. And that was very
important to Florida's disaster preparedness. We are a team of about two hundred and fifty people and you know at times the DMOORT teams are around twelve hundred, so they have much more reserve capacity than we do. So trying to interface those two systems is seamlessly impossible was very important to us.
That's interesting. I never really thought that you would have to talk to family members and god get that kind of information for them. Is that hard for you to have to have those conversations with people?
It is very difficult. You know, they're in their maximum time of grief. So we have a special team who trains on being able to do these interviews and that's really all they do. And then we make sure that the people who are conducting the family interviews and being with the families and the relatives and friends are really never in the morgue capacity. We make sure that those
two worlds are separate. So we have a distinct victim information team that handles all the anti mortem stuff and then a forensic science team that handles all of the post mortem, and then we have essentially a disaster site recovery team who was there at surfside as well. We are not technically trained to get on rebel piles, so that is where a lot of these others, very specialized teams come in to be able to assist with that.
But once they come off the rebel pile and you know, they were in a safe environment, and then we take over. And then our specialty is conducting the forensic identifications to help that medical examiner of jurisdiction or corner of jurisdiction the thing on my state you're in, you know, made that confirmatory identification.
Well, we're I'm going to crime con which we will talk about you going there as well. My husband's going with me, so I'm sure he's going to want to talk to you about this because it was it was a lot for him to be there that was physically mentally it was very it was very hot. They were doing a lot of hard work in the sun, and
just very emotionally taxing. It just was But he would be interested in speaking with you, I'm sure because I did ask him last night, do you do you buy a chance to meet this guy when you were there? But he doesn't, you know, he doesn't remember. Oh yeah, exactly. But so let's talk about crime Con. I have your book Forensic Entomology behind me and I'm going to bring it with me so you could sign it when I meet you in person. But so you're going to crime con.
What what are you going to be doing at crime Con? Are you presenting a lecture?
Yeah? For for crime Con, we often will present a lecture on a particular forensic topic or case. And then you know, like what we did with the last crime Con is set up the mock crime scenes for the teams to be able to go through. You know, we try to make it a competitive environment as to who saws the who done it aspect of that, and set
up some mystery cases. So we're our initial plan is to really go and kind of do what we have done before when we set up a mock crime scene see which teams can collect the most evidence, uh and and really get the who done it aspect of it correctly. And then we're planning on some of our faculty at least giving two lectures on a forensic specialization.
That's awesome. I can't wait to sit in on those. You're you're doing so many things, are you, I mean, you're doing crime clime, You're doing You're just in charge of all these really great things that are helping so many people every day. Are you working on any other kind of projects or events that you have coming up?
Well, I mean, we do a lot of grant work in research. It's not just me, it's the entire team here at the University of Florida, lots of people involved in you know, probably one of our most rewarding things right now is trying to work with marine mammals, trying to be able to get information on their decompositional times.
A lot of the post mortal rtffacts that marine scientists are seeing on these animals, we're trying to determine if they're naturally occurring because of the you know, the organism the fish or the mammal coming into contact with something in its environment, either before death or after death, or rather it's something that's human induced that is causing these
what appears to be you know, obvious trauma. A lot of them are shot pretty good, but they have penetrating injuries and some blunt force trauma that you know, could be ships strike, but it's so isolated on some of them it looks like, you know, maybe they're being clobbed with some sort of an instrument. So just trying to give some forensic expertise and some data to the you know, the Breen mammal community where they try to conserve, conserve these species and and and solve what could be crimes
against federally protected species. It is very rewarding to us.
That's interesting we I think in New Jersey we kind of have something like that going on because all of
these marine animals keep washing up. I think it seems that there's a little bit more than usual, and there's all this talk of did all of these wind things that they just put up or is it causing I don't know much about it, but I've been hearing this back and forth of it may be causing a problem for the ant and then they're trying to just investigate to see if it if the timing is just coincidental, or if it actually is Is that something like that you would work on as well.
Oh, absolutely, you know, I mean we have single stranding events all the time, so very important to determine, uh, you know, the cause. But then you have mass strandings, you know, so it's pathology. You know, you have to understand what is natural before you can start to understand the unnatural. So you know, we have to rule out disease processes, environmental causes. Maybe you know, algae blooms. You know, red tide happens down here in Florida, you know quite
a bit. So you know, is it environmental and in natural or environmental and is becoming more pronounced because you know our environment is changing or rather, you know, this
is something that's actually human induced. Pretty easy to see if you know the stranding networks out there, if they see, you know, a marine animal is entangled in a net or anything like that, you know, and they monitor the animal, they try to assist the animal, but you know, they may find an animal with scars and is that from a prior entanglement? Is it from encounter with another marine organism. You know, sharks attack dolphins quite a bit and leave
some very interesting scars on these dolphins. Or you know, is it indeed, you know, human aduced with some of these penetrating injuries that we see. So we're trying to figure that out and then give some reliable scientific information to our colleagues in the marine mammal world and marine biology and maybe they can help answer these questions for everybody.
Do you guys have your team, Do you have a website or do you do any social media with any of the subjects that you talked about today?
Yeah, we do. I can go to the University of Florida homepage and search for the Maple Center So it's Maple's Hypencenter dot ufl eu and that has all of our classes, our training, and links to our social media pages. You can see what we're doing.
That's awesome and that's great for people. I always want to introduce people to all of these different professions because they're just so cool, and I think I hear a lot of younger people, some of my friends, kids that are in their twenties that go to school and they're just getting a degree in biology and then they graduate and they can't do anything with it. So I want them to know there's all these cool opportunities that they can do with that degree, maybe with additional training.
I think a degree in the forensic sciences is it's an excellent path for students. Well, to me, it's interesting, but if you're interested in anything, there's a forensic application to it. I mean, forensic accounting, forensic meteorology, there's forensic engineering. It just encompasses so many areas of study, and I think it's important to let these students know that mean you can you can find employment in it. You know, it's not just a pathologist standing in an authosy cable.
There is, you know, a small army of forensic scientists out there with you know, an imaginable specialization that they have acquired in techniques, and we it's very employable and we certainly need, you know, more students coming into it because we have to replace ourselves, you know. So it's one of my activities and my jobs to talk to student groups and try to get them interested in forensic science.
We have lots of students who have over one thousand students in our programs right now, so it's been very successful to us. In the flip side of that coin is forensic science, in at least in the universities I've been involved with in some of the data I've seen her for first year incoming students has a fairly high attrition rate. You lose a lot of first year students
because I think the CSI effect hits right. They watch too much TV and true crime and it is very interesting, but there's a lot of science behind it, and you really can't get away from the science and the field work and the data analysis. The most common questions that I get from concerned first year students as well. I like the forensics part, but I don't like the science part.
So how do I do forensics without science? So you know, the harsh reality is it's not cut out for everyone because you can't get away from a lot of the sciences. But if you can get through the science aspect, it's a very rewarding career and very employable.
Forensics is science. How do you I don't even understand. I do know what you mean, though, because while I was and I didn't specifically go for forensics. I went for pathology, but there was a lot of the chemistry and learning about moles and doing algebra problems and organic chemistry and this and that, things that don't necessarily apply to what I ended up doing for a living, but you.
Have to get through that.
But a lot of it does apply. I try to tell my kids that all the time. With math, that it stretches your brain and it helps you problem solve. And with forensics especially, you really need to be able to think about things because everything isn't always going to be how it's presented, you know.
Yeah, there's a reason why you suffer through the physical chemistry, using the organic chemistries and the algebra and calculastic It does have application. May take you a while to realize it, of course, but there is an application for it. But yeah, physic science I think is a highly suggested career for you know, students looking for their place.
Yeah. I think that the CSI shows and stuff, they make everything look so glamorous and that it's very easy to solve something in a half hour. And then you go into a real morgue in the city and just think, Okay, that medical examiner isn't some hot chick, and this office doesn't have any shiny stainless seal walls. It looks like the nineteen seventies in.
Here, and yeah, we don't work in the dark either, you know, yeah, good lights really bad. Yea. So the you know CSI and all of this editions, you know, Miami, Las Vegas, New York, I mean that it there. Uh, there's a lot of negativity around that because a lot of people think that it doesn't play, you know, portray forensic science accurately, of course, and it can't, right, I mean,
it is entertainment. And there are several people have now done dissertations on the CSI effect, you know, and the unreasonable expectation that sometimes the public has and what we can do. But the flip side of the coin is it is made the word forensics kind of a household name, right, Lots of people talk about it, lots of people are interested. But you know, the show CSI wasn't the first time
we had it. I mean Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes and then we had Quincy Medical Examiner or television show.
Uh.
You know, each generation has its you know, attachment to that type of type of work, and it's a if you watch old episodes of Quincy, there's a lot of similarities there and how they portray stuff. But yeah, I mean if you get through that and really get down into what is it, uh, I think it still has interest for a massive out of people.
I always tell people that with my Instagram that because so many people want to end up doing what I do as a pathologist assistant. And I say, like, the actual job isn't as exciting as I make it out to be because I just show you the really cool stuff. But if you just recorded me at work all day disecting surgical smess, evens, it might be kind of boring,
you know. I mean, there are definitely fun part for me because I'm a science nerd and I just think everything is exciting, but I think it wouldn't be entertaining to the mass public. That's what I think anyway.
I amend you exactly right on that.
All right, well, awesome, thank you so much for being here today, and I can't wait to meet you.
Right thick Air and I'll see you at crime Con.
I'll say yeah bye, thank you for listening to mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or
alive without the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge of those subjects at the time of publication.
If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks the job, A little w