dark-brown leg hair.
Had the leg not been amputated, they might have been able to look at the anterior curvature in the shaft of the femur, which, as I had learned in grad school, is a fairly reliable indicator that can be used to separate Whites and Blacks. In this case, though, the femur stopped just above the knee. Then Dr. Ubelaker and Dr. Snow remembered the paper I had written on racial elements in the bone structure of the knee-and that's where I came in.
Meanwhile, the defense was making as much as possible of the leg's discovery. Thinking they might be able to blame the entire incident on this enigmatic leg, they began very early in the investigation to refer to it as the leg of the “real bomber.” They went back to the initial reports about John Doe #2-who had been reported as a husky dark-haired man wearing a baseball cap. This mystery man, the lawyers argued, was the culprit who deserved the death penalty, not their client.
Jones and his defense team built up an elaborate defense based on this mystery leg. First, they pointed out, the leg had been found at the epicenter of the blast-the most likely place for the “real bomber” to be. Second, the initial forensic exam had indicated that the leg had probably belonged to a White male-the most likely profile for such a bomber. Since the bombing seemed to be the work of white supremacists and militia supporters, it seemed highly unlikely that either a Black person or a woman would have been the “real bomber” in such a crime-if only because it was so unlikely that McVeigh would ever have taken orders from anyone other than a “superior officer,” who in the ranks of the right-wing militia would most likely be a White man.
Thus, when the FBI issued their second opinion, suggesting that the remains were more likely those of a Black female, the defense called this a transparent attempt by the federal government to win its case against McVeigh. The FBI's laboratory analyses were under particular scrutiny because, ever since the O. J. Simpson case, whistle-blower Dr. Frederick Whitehurst had been accusing the Bureau of falsifying laboratory results in favor of prosecutors.
Besides, the defense pointed out, the leg couldn't be linked to any of the victims who had been recovered and identified. If there was in fact an “unknown” victim, he or she must have been someone who didn't belong in the Federal Building -further suggesting that the leg belonged to the “real bomber.”
So a great deal of the case came down to the mysterious John Doe #2, the husky dark-haired White male in a baseball cap whom several witnesses had claimed to see with McVeigh in the days before the bombing. The defense was doing everything it could to prove that this leg belonged to John Doe #2, while the prosecution was working hard to prove that it didn't. The defense seemed to be ready to accuse the prosecution of falsifying results so that it could cover up the identity of the “real bomber” and convict McVeigh in his place.
That's why determining the race and sex of this leg became such an issue. A high-level group of people, including Clyde Snow and experts from the medical examiner's office, the FBI, and the Smithsonian, held a daylong meeting to determine their next course of action. At the end of that day, they called me at my office in Frankfort, Kentucky.
Dr. Doug Ubelaker, the FBI's top forensic anthropology consultant at the Smithsonian, explained the problem. He'd just read my article in the
Of course, I was flattered and said I'd do what I could to help. After checking with my employer, I called back the next day and agreed to fly out. After just a few hours in the air, I got to the medical examiner's office and was first introduced to Dr. Larry Balding, the Oklahoma City forensic pathologist who had done most of the analysis of the parts found in the building, and the one with whom I would be working. I had enormous respect for him, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jordan, and of course Dr. Snow-all of these people were heroes in my eyes, and I thought it might be a bit unnerving walking into a strange morgue and working with them on such a high-profile case.
But the sounds and smells of the morgue were reassuringly familiar. I'd been on staff in Kentucky for more than a year, and by now an autopsy suite was home ground. I spent a grueling but satisfying day examining every inch of the leg, analyzing tissues, measuring x-rays, and taking detailed handwritten notes.
As the day wore on, Dr. Balding, Barry, and some of the other FBI agents began hovering over my shoulder, eager to hear some preliminary conclusions. I was reluctant to do my standard “thinking out loud” until I was pretty sure of what I was seeing, though, because this case was complicated and controversial enough already. The last thing I wanted was for one of these high-level people to take down a premature conclusion and begin to run with it, only for me to have to tell them at the end of the day that I had changed my mind.
But by the end of the afternoon, I was ready to go on the record. I called the other investigators together and shared my opinion that this leg had belonged to a woman-a woman who was undoubtedly Black. At this early stage in my investigation, I told them, much of my conclusion was not based on peer-reviewed research. Rather, it grew out of my experience of observing thousands of knee reconstructions and repairs on athletes from all racial groups, and from dissecting and analyzing literally hundreds of amputated legs at the Hughston Clinic. However, just as I had that late night in Dr. Bass's lab at the University of Tennessee, I just
Of course, in my written report I'd follow Bass's teachings and limit my conclusions to facts and figures that would stand up in court. Even so, I had enough solid scientific information to corroborate the FBI's determination that this individual was female, with a significant amount of Negroid ancestry. We agreed that I'd return to the morgue the next morning to continue documenting my findings. By the next afternoon, I'd be flying back to Kentucky.
Barry offered to drive me to my motel, and as soon as we were on the road, we returned to an engrossing discussion of this case that fascinated both of us. I was looking straight at him, absorbed in my explanation of why I could only include the scientifically sound material in my written report, leaving out the impressions I got from feeling and seeing subtle contours in the bones, ligaments, and menisci.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of blue-then my head and shoulders whipped left and then right-and then things simply went dark. Either I blacked out from the force of the whiplash, or else I'd closed my eyes in reflex. The next thing I saw was open air on our right as we teetered on the brink of an overpass while the huge tractor-trailer rig on our left slammed against us a second time, ripping into the steel at Barry's shoulder.
By now Barry's car was up on its right side, skidding along on two wheels, and I was looking straight down into what seemed like an abyss. I just knew we were going to die.
The screech of metal on metal seemed to go on forever as we were shaken back and forth, crunched between the truck on one side and the guardrail. Finally, Barry managed to maneuver the car back to an upright position, locking it under the chassis of the semi's trailer. The truck continued to drag us along until we were off the bridge, where we broke free and stopped. The truck kept rolling for several yards until it, too, managed to stop.
The driver of the truck had gotten out, approaching us with an aggressive swagger. Then Barry put his blue light on the dash and pulled out his FBI badge. The trucker's posture changed immediately, and he headed back for his truck. As he walked away, I noticed with a shiver that he was a husky man with dark hair, wearing a baseball cap. The local police took over from there, and I don't know what happened after that.
Luckily, neither Barry nor I was seriously hurt, but my right arm was bruised and swollen. By morning my neck was stiff and sore, and my head ached so much that I had to cut short my plans to complete my report before I left town. Though I hadn't liked to give in to my suspicions, some of the folks at the morgue started teasing us, hinting that Barry and I had been deliberately targeted by the “others unknown”-the mysterious heroes of those who enthusiastically believed that the bombing had been the work of a huge and powerful team of conspirators determined to bring down the federal government, one piece at a time. Since Barry was one of the key investigators and I was there to cast doubt on the identity of the leg, we were logical targets.
I didn't put too much stock in the teasing and neither did Barry. Still, I was glad to get on the plane for Kentucky that afternoon. I'd had enough for one day.
Later, when Jones published his book, he criticized the Oklahoma City medical examiner and the FBI for having the temerity to send a young, inexperienced, recent graduate to help sort out the case. I found his description ironic-I think Jones and I are about the same age and, of course, at that point I'd had nearly twenty years experience analyzing amputated human legs and skeletons. He was right about one thing, though: I
Jones also wrote that he submitted my report to Dr. Bernard Knight at the Royal Infirmary in Wales. According to Jones, Knight was skeptical about my report, concluding that the leg had to be from the “real bomber.”
Knight was wrong, however, and by February 1996 Dr. Jordan and the FBI were able to prove it. Once the forensic experts were certain that the leg belonged to a Black female, they were able to confirm it was the left leg of a young African American woman named Lakesha Levy.
Lakesha was a twenty-one-year-old Airman First Class at nearby Tinker Airforce Base who had been killed in the blast while applying for a Social Security card, leaving her husband a widower and her five-year-old son without a mother. Her body had been identified during the first few weeks of the investigation and she was now buried in a New Orleans cemetery-with someone else's left leg.
The authorities were able to get the other leg exhumed and return it to the Oklahoma City medical examiner's office, where experts were trying to identify it. The initial mistake was understandable. Mass fatality incidents usually involve significant destruction of soft tissues and commingling of bodies and body parts, so unless someone makes a concerted effort to separate all human remains at the site, this type of separation must be done with precision at the morgue.
In this case, an unattached or “unassociated” left leg from someone else had mistakenly been linked to Lakesha at the crime scene, an error that had somehow slipped by at autopsy. The human body is simply not designed to withstand the physical forces that come from massive explosions or collapsing buildings; such powerful energies tear bodies apart and mangle the remains, making it extremely difficult to determine what belongs to whom.
That's what had happened to Lakesha and the owner of this second leg. Although this other mystery leg was still unidentified by the time McVeigh went to trial, examiners now almost universally agreed that the leg mistakenly buried with Lakesha had once belonged to a White female. The defense team tried to suggest perhaps this second leg had belonged to the “real bomber,” but by now this theory had lost a lot of credibility. If simple human error had caused the first mix-up, it seemed likely to be responsible for the second, as well.
Nevertheless, after McVeigh's conviction, Drs. Jordan and Balding asked me to return to Oklahoma City to examine this second leg. My analysis simply corroborated their opinion that the victim was a White female.
My second trip to Oklahoma was an opportunity to work with and stay with Dr. Snow and his wife in the nearby town of Norman. Dr. Snow shared with me how devastating it had been for him and his colleagues to deal with such a tragedy there on their own turf. The community was so small, he told me, that almost everyone had a personal connection to the bombing. It had been painful enough dealing with the families of the “disappeared” in Argentina, but coping with this kind of event in his own backyard was overwhelmingly sad.
I left Oklahoma City with a powerful sense of sorrow, as I thought of the murders I dealt with in Kentucky and the mass fatalities I'd seen in Waco and Oklahoma City. It all seemed part of a terrible cycle of violence, especially since most investigators believe that the Oklahoma bombing was at least partially an act of revenge against the federal agents who had laid siege to the Branch Davidians at Waco. My work had given me a painfully close look at the kind of people who tried to force people and governments to accept their values by violence-and an even closer look at the shattered lives they leave in their wake.
8. WorldTradeCenter
– EDGAR ALLAN POE
