A student reacts in disgust after digging up pig intestines as part of a two-day course in evidence gathering put on by the Lewis County Coroner's Office on Wednesday afternoon in Chehalis.
A skull that was dug up in a mock crime scene investigation sits on a piece of paper next to the dig site during a evidence gathering class put on by the Lewis County Coroner's Office on Wednesday afternoon in Chehalis.
Law enforcement officers attending a two-day course in evidence gathering look at bone fragments that were dug up in a mock crime scene on Wednesday afternoon in Chehalis.
A student attending the Lewis County Coroner's Office two-day evidence gathering course sifts through dirt searching for human bone fragments in a mock crime scene on Wednesday afternoon in Chehalis.
Attendees of a course put on by the Lewis County Coroner's Office dig up bones in a mock crime scene on Wednesday afternoon in Chehalis. The two-day class, which was attended by 29 people from 19 jurisdictions, covered subjects such as bone identification, evidence collection, entomological evidence, warrants and other information.
The skeletons law enforcement officers dug up in a field south of Chehalis this week were plastic, but that might not always be the case.
“You don’t want to learn on an actual case,” State Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Kathy Taylor said.
Finding a bone sets off a legal chain reaction, from the formal identification of the bone as human or non-human, to the process of writing a search warrant and of recovering remains and other evidence.
For the third time, the Lewis County Coroner’s Office sponsored a course on Buried Bodies and Evidence/Entomology Recovery course, teaching law enforcement officers about finding clandestine graves, identifying bones, collecting evidence and more.
Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod said 29 law-enforcement people from 19 jurisdictions around the state participated in the two-day course held on a private farm property south of Chehalis. McLeod said the course is unique in Washington.
“It’s the only course of its kind offered in the state. We are the sole sponsor of it, our office,” he said.
The course’s instructors were Taylor, Detective Kathleen Decker, of the King County Sheriff’s Office, and Sharon Ward, a volunteer human-remains detection dog handler. Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer also gave classroom instruction Tuesday on requesting search warrants for clandestine graves.
Taylor works in King County but is able to assist jurisdictions in all 39 counties with digs.
Often, forensic bones are found by family pets, or after a hand or foot works its way to the surface of the grave, Taylor said.
McLeod said his office’s first step after finding bones is to email a picture of a bone to Taylor to definitively learn if it is human or animal. She can also tell if the bone is forensic, or fairly recent, or historical, meaning much older, he said.
“We need to know that as soon as possible because if it’s human and forensic, it’s a crime scene,” McLeod said. “If it’s historical, you can walk away.”
The most common bones to be mistaken for human remains are bear paws, McLeod said, noting the bone structure is very similar to the bones in a human hand.
On Wednesday, Taylor sent several teams of officers out on the Chehalis property with a few instructions on how to best identify the mock graves scattered in the yards, horse pastures and wooded areas.
“There is no step by step instruction — every scene is different,” she told the course’s participants.
Officers need little instruction on how to process the scenes, she said, but can practice the skills in the training.
“These are all law enforcement professionals,” she said. “These guys know what they’re doing, and they’re very good at what they do.”
On Tuesday, the first day of the training, participants sat through eight hours of classroom instruction, covering bone identification, tracking, writing warrants and other topics, using real cases as examples, McLeod said.
On Wednesday, officers and instructors got out in the field, starting early in the morning working to recover samples of insects and evidence from pigs’ heads left to decompose for four weeks and beef livers packed in the Coroner’s Office’s resident skeleton Fred, to simulate a more recent death.
They also worked with Decker to learn the fine points about tracking suspects by finding minute details.
“It’s not as important that they learn it, in my opinion, as it is that they are aware of the resource,” she said.
Tracking people is a skill that takes years of dedication to master, Decker said.
“It has to be something that you’re passionate about,” she said. “What I really ask of them is to at least become aware of what tracking can do for them.”
Ward, an attorney based in Portland, volunteers her time as a search and rescue dog handler. She brought two-year-old Rottweiler Vali to demonstrate their skills during this week’s training.
“My heart is in search and rescue and I do crime scenes as a public service,” she said.
The coroner’s office previously hosted the training twice — first in 2015 and again in July. Last year’s class was free and only open to local agencies, but the July class opened up to other agencies and maxed out its space with 38 people from 23 jurisdictions, McLeod said. The course currently costs $100 per participant, but McLeod said that might be increased in the future.
The short course can’t impart all of the expertise of its instructors, but can give officers much needed hands-on experience in a training setting, rather than a real case.
“At the very least, it’s to raise awareness for what resources are available,” McLeod said. “They need to know they can reach out to Kathy Taylor … They can reach out to Kathy Decker.”
