Scattered Episode 32: Forensic Realism – Interview with Pf. Victoria Gibbon & Dr. Devin Finaughty

Professor Victoria Gibbon is a biological anthropologist at the Department of Human Biology’s Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology at University of Cape Town, South Africa. She leads a transdisciplinary team of researchers in the Western Cape Cold Case Consortium (W4C) to assist with improving investigative outcomes and forensic identification more generally. Dr. Devin Finaughty is a forensic anthropologist/taphonomist with a particular interest in the decomposition ecosystem. South African-born, he is a centennial postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In this episode we talk about:

• Their research has focuses on “forensic realism”, experiments that replicate common case scenarios, like single, clothed bodies, to help address gaps for local police cases.
• Their goal is to provide investigative leads for police, not just identification. Recovering all remains and personal items can help give closure to families.
• Finaughty is now applying his expertise to wildlife forensics through a postdoc, developing forensic entomology protocols to help investigate poaching cases, and to help address South Africa’s poor prosecution rates for poaching cases.
• Both researchers emphasize the importance of engaging with stakeholders to understand real-world problems and tailor their research for practical applications.
• Both researchers see their greatest impact coming from policy changes informed by their science, rather than the science alone.

Find more about the work Devin and Vicky and others on the team have done together:

https://health.uct.ac.za/anatomybioanth/forensic-taphonomy-identification

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Notes from the start

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Transcript

Yvonne Kjorlien: So, I’m gonna get you each to say your names because I don’t want to say your names incorrectly. So, Devin let’s start with you since you have the name I’d probably end up saying incorrectly.

Devin Finaughty: Okay, so it’s Devin Finaughty.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Finaughty, all right. Vicky.

Victoria Gibbon: Victoria Gibbon.

Yvonne Kjorlien: and you are both, not currently located, Vicky, but you are both teaching in South Africa. Is that correct?

Victoria Gibbon: I can speak for myself. Yes. I am a university professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Devin Finaughty: And I am a centennial postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in South Africa.

Yvonne Kjorlien: However you want to start, maybe Vicky if you want to start with your academic background and then we’ll bring in Devin and then Devin you can go through your academic background. How did you get involved, I guess, with forensic taphonomy. What brought you to this place?

Victoria Gibbon: Yeah, so for me, I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and I went on to do business, actually, at the University of Manitoba and swiftly realized that was not my path and I moved over to anthropology which I was very passionate about. It took me a little bit of time to decide whether I wanted to work on stones and go more into archeology, or whether I wanted to focus on bones and move into biological anthropology. And then after getting my undergraduate degree, I had an opportunity to do a Master’s degree in South Africa, and I came over to Johannesburg.

And I did my PhD at the University of Witwatersrand and there I did a PhD in archaeogenetics when it was very very new and I developed a new method for molecular sex determination, that was also good for forensic cases. And then after that I did a postdoc in colorectal cancer genetics because that paid the bills. And then I did a few other postdocs and moved around. So, I did a postdoc at Indiana, at Purdue University in bioarcheology, and then eventually I got full-time work at the University of New Brunswick.

And then I came into the position I am now at the University of Cape Town. So, when I was at the University of New Brunswick, was the first time that I was classified as a forensic anthropologist. And there was basically no casework for me to be engaged in. I did very little my services weren’t needed but when I came to the University of Cape there was already an established service provider, the forensic anthropology Cape Town’s forensic lab. And we do casework with the local police and forensic pathology services. And so, it’s really moving to Cape Town where it became a more central focus within my research program.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Because it is…every institution every area every city region is different and whether or not or to what degree they involve I guess academics and in those forensic investigations. And how they involve or if they involve academics in their investigations, isn’t it?

Victoria Gibbon: Absolutely, and also so in New Brunswick there weren’t very many people who are missing and murdered. Whereas — so in Fredericton, where it was a very small number — whereas in Cape Town that number is very large. So, on average we have about 10% of the individuals that come into our mortuaries remain unidentified per annum.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow.

Victoria Gibbon:  and the closest mortuary to us at the University of Cape Town has an average intake of around 4 to 5,000 bodies a year. So we’re looking somewhere around two to five hundred people locally who remain unidentified per year and across the country that expands to somewhere between 8 and 10,000 South Africans. So the need is much greater and due to the need it is a direct fuel for research, right? Because where there’s need, research can help fill gaps and maybe improve identification.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow, okay. There’s a few things that I want to touch on, but I want to get to Devin first. But yeah, I want to come back to how you’re involved in all that kind of stuff. So, Devin, how did you come to work with Vicky.

What’s your academic path?

Devin Finaughty: So, I grew up in Johannesburg, where I’m now based and when I finished school, I moved to Cape Town to study at the University of Cape Town and I did the whole hog at UCT. So undergrad honors, Master’s, which I then upgraded to PhD under Professor Emeritus Alan Morris, who’s also Canadian. During my Master’s, started to my honors, but then mainly into my Masters and PhD, I had the privilege of being able to work on forensic cases through FACT, the laboratory that for Vicky spoke about, initially as a member and then later as a senior postgrad as a senior member.

And that mainly involved just assisting the senior forensic anthropologists on cases. I hadn’t initially set out to do forensics when I first went to university. I actually wanted to do medicine. I knew about forensics. When I was in high school, I had job shadowed a forensic pathologist at the Hillbrow Mortuary in Johannesburg, which was a very eye-opening experience, as you can imagine. And funnily enough, I was at the mortuary the other day and it hasn’t changed since 2007. It looks the same and it smells the same.

Victoria Gibbon:  Shame.

Yvonne Kjorlien: They probably all have the same smell.

Devin Finaughty: Yeah. Mortuaries in South Africa are something interesting. But I didn’t get into medicine; my maths marks wouldn’t good enough. So, I did a general Bachelor of Science degree instead and it was a lecture by Professor Morris in my second year on forensic anthropology or lecture series — he gave us three lectures — that really caught my attention and I sat back and I thought that is a job I would love to do. And I went up to him after the lecture and I said, “your work is amazing. How do I do this?” And he said, “it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. What are you studying for?” and I said, “I’m trying to get into medicine,” and he said, “oh, stick to that.”

Yeah, but I was not to be deterred and I discovered that there was an honors program in biological anthropology. Had never heard of biological anthropology before, but through my own research realized that that’s the foundation for forensic anthropology. And so, I set myself and getting in there. I was able to get in and then I just carried on right through to PhD.

For my Master’s upgraded to PhD research, I established the first taphonomic research program in Cape Town. So, it was clear through the work that I was able to participate in that we didn’t have a very good understanding of the decomposition processes in Cape Town.

And Cape Town is a globally unique biogeographic environment. It’s the Cape Floristic Kingdom, which only occurs in that part of the world. There are thousands of unique species of plants and animals and that, together with a very unique geography, me