W rNESS4

4 1Al I JAI,DEATH

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SOONER MAGAZINE

By DON STEWART

O n June 25, 1876, Gen . GeorgeArmstrong Custer led 210troopers ofthe 7th Cavalry on

their last charge at the Battle of theLittle Bighorn .

In 1984, Clyde Snow examined onesoldier's skeleton and found he hadbeen wounded in the shoulder by anarrow and stabbed in the chest beforehis skull was crushed by a club .On February 7, 1979, a lonely 68-

year-old widower, supposedly Swiss,drowned while on a beach outing nearSao Paulo, Brazil .

In June, Clyde Snow examined theman's skeleton and said the chanceswere 99 percent that the remains werethose of Nazi war criminal JosefMengele .A doctor of anthropology, connois-

seur of art and literature, friend tosnakes and spiders and one of the pre-mier forensic scientists in the world,Snow immersed himself in the Custerbattle and the Mengele controversywith characteristic elan .

"I call my work `osteobiography,' "said the slightly rumpled scientist ."There's a brief but very useful andinformative biography of an indi-vidual contained within the skeletonif you know how to read it ."Whether probing a skeleton, relax-

ing with his small zoo of pets or con-versing with fishermen, congressmen,soldiers or rural sheriffs, the Univer-sity of Oklahoma adjunct professor ofanthropology is a man possessed bycuriosity. Friends say he is an absent-minded professor, a man so cerebralthat he often is cheerfully unaware ofhis surroundings .

"To really know Clyde Snow," saidState Medical Examiner Fred Jordan,who hasjoined Snow for several Carib-bean fishing trips, "you have to seehim traveling . He looks like he cameout of a whirlwind . His glasses aredown on the end of his nose ; his coatis unbuttoned ; hiscigarette is hangingout ofhis mouth with a three-inch ash ;and his shirt could be on fire, and hewouldn't know it ."There are other sides to 57-year-old

Clyde Snow. He is a devoted reader ofWilliam Faulkner and John Donne, anart enthusiast and Gilbert and Sulli-van aficionado.His inquiring mind has taken him

from a career as a physical anthropol-ogist to a researcher for the Federal

Aviation Administration and the onlyfull-time forensic anthropology con-sultant in the country. Along the way,he has supplied answers to some ofthemost famous murder cases, disastersand historic riddles of the past 100 orso years .Snow did not set out to acquire such

a reputation .He was born in 1928 in Ralls, Texas,

28 flat and dusty miles east of Lub-bock . After graduating from NewMexico Military Institute in Roswell,he became interested in the naturalsciences and graduated with abachelor of arts degree in biology fromEastern New Mexico University in Por-tales . He then got his master's degreein zoology from Texas Tech . In 1959,he joined the FAAs Civil AeromedicalInstitute, the research center in Ok-lahoma City charged with investigat-ing commercial airline crashes .Snow had been in Oklahoma a

month when he was introduced toforensic anthropology, the courtroomapplication of his science . "Somesheriff came in from Dustin, Ok-lahoma, with a skull," he recalled ."Then another agency brought in askeleton . I had never done much worklike that before, and I was really in-terested . The FAA figured itwas a com-munity service and gave me time toinvestigate . I started getting casesfrom out of state ."By the time he retired from the FAA

in 1979, Snow had become an expertwitness and consultant to a numberofjurisdictions outside Oklahoma . Hiswork with the FAA in Chicagoimpressed local officials, and he wasretained as a consultant by CookCounty.Snow said in addition to the Cook

County cases, he decided he could han-dle those in Oklahoma that were refer-red to the Oklahoma state medicalexaminer."Beyond that I take cases from wher-

ever they come," he said .His first major case as a consultant

was identifying 273 people who diedin the 1979 Chicago crash of an Amer-ican Airlines DC-10 . It took Snow andhis colleagues four weeks to assemble10,000 to 12,000 body parts and iden-tify the victims . In 1980, Snow wascalled back to Chicago to assist theCook County medical examiner in theidentification of 29 bodies Chicago

Forensic anthropologist Clyde Snowhas found that the most reliabletestimony in cases of violent deathcomes from the victims themselves .

The skull yields many answers to questions of identity and causes of death,whether in highly publicized cases such as Joseph Mengele (on opposite page) orin the quiet of the state medical examiner's laboratory in Oklahoma (below) .

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Snow pays special attention to the skull andpelvis . "The skull is especially helpful,"he says, "because the teeth are there. Also, throughout life, the skull is target for alot oftrauma . You mayfind evidence ofold skull fractures, and the cause ofdeathvery often is directed at the skull."

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police found buried under the houseof convicted multiple murderer JohnWayne Gacy.

Last year, Snow assisted in perhapshis toughest homicide investigation.Joyce Klindt, the wife of a prominentIowa chiropractor, disappeared on astormy winter night in 1983 . Klindtwas seen boating on the MississippiRiver during the storm. Mrs. Klindt'sbody never was found. Several daysafter she disappeared, however, policerecovered a woman's pelvis and partof a thigh bone from the icy river.A call went out to Oklahoma City."The pelvis was clearly that of a

female, and the muscle attachmentswere well-developed, as though shehad been doing a lot of sit-up exer-cises," Snow said . "As it turned out,Joyce Klindt wasconcerned about herweight andhadbeen enrolled in a localgym or spa for about a year."Snow found the pelvis was from a

woman of comparable height, weightand age as Mrs. Klindt . Tissue sam-ples were analyzed by a Dallas lab,and the blood type was found to beconsistent with other members ofMrs.Klindt's family .An Iowa jury convicted Klindt of

first-degree murder.The case is a benchmark in forensic

science but routine stufffor Snow, saidmedical examiner Jordan . "He's somethodical . Everything he can prove,he does six or seven ways . When he'sinvolved in a problem, time is mean-ingless. He has incredible powers ofconcentration . He's just off in his ownworld."Snow's world, said his wife, Jerry, is

not the neat, ordered existence nor-mally attributed to scientists .

"He's interested in everything ; heloves art and literature ; he's abirdwatcher; he's really keen on his-tory ; he's a dog lover and is very in-terested in snakes," she said . "I lookon him as a Renaissance man."

Testifying to the man's diverse in-terests, the couple's Norman house-hold harbors three dogs (including"The Moose," a 100-pound Weimar-aner who shares their bedroom),snakes and a tarantula. Mrs. Snowsaid the menagerie may be expandedany time a neighbor finds an interest-ing animal .

"I've learned that snakes are not ter-rible creatures," she said, "but my

An Egyptologist commissioned Snow and colleagues Joe Young andBetty Gatliffto recreate a scientifically accurate bust of King Tutankhamen by working fromX-rays of the mummy to obtain sufficient measurements to reconstruct the skull.

mother frequently asks what's herebefore she will visit.""The thing about Clyde," Jordan

said, "is that he fits into any environ-ment . I've seen him lost in conversa-tion with fishermen and soldiers andthe provosts of universities . He'sequally at home on the plains of westTexas or testifying before Congress ;he's exactly the same guy, no differentwhatsoever."

Snow's affable nature often preventshim from saying no to people who askfor his help, Mrs. Snow said .One such case was a request by the

National Park Service. The agencylast year approved thefirst archaeolog-ical excavation of the Custer battle-field in southeastern Montana. Thedig turned up a partial skeleton andscattered uniform buttons, bullets,shell casings and bones. Park Serviceofficials asked Snow to look over theartifacts and skeleton to see if theycould provide any information aboutthe battle .Examiningthe partial skeleton and

its position among the bullets and ar-rowheads, Snow said it was evident thebattle was brief and furious. Deep cutmarks on the breast and shoulderbones and a fragmented skull told

Snow that the trooper had beenwinged by an arrow in the left shoul-der and hacked by a knife in his chestbefore his skull was bashed in .

"I went up there for a few days inMay to look at the battlefield site," hesaid, thoughtfully smoking one of hisever-present Camels . "Recently, theyfound amore complete skeleton, whichI haven't had a chance to examine."The Mengele case took Snow to

South America. For nearly 40 years,

Nazi hunters searched for Mengele,the green-eyed doctor known at theAuschwitz concentration camp as "theAngel ofDeath." When askeleton wasexhumed from a cemetery south ofSaoPaulo June 6, Brazilian authoritiesasked Snow to help verify it asMengele's.Snow and the American forensic

team found the skeleton was male andhad height and age characteristicsconsistent with those of the 68-year-

After removal of the soft tissues tomake precise measurements, Snow sys-tematically inspects the skeleton .

old former Nazi doctor. Theteam foundthe bones of the right arm were 3 to4 millimeters longer than those of theleft arm. That and beveling ofthe jointon the right side indicated the manwas right-handed, as was Mengele,Snow said .Dental records from 1938 matched

those of the skull. The German Armyrecords also established that Mengelehad a diastema, a gap between his twoupper front teeth.

Could the Mengele death have been a hoax? Could hehave found an exact double? Snow went beyond any

reasonable scientific doubt. "Mengele would have spentthe rest of his life looking for someone that close."

"We found only three natural teeth,and ofthose, all three had been filled,"Snow said . "A diastema occurs in onlyabout five percent of the population. . . We took X-rays and found fromthe internal structure of the jaw thatthere was a diastema ."Snow's forensic team came up with

more than 24 detailed anatomicalsimilarities between the skull and fa-cial features of the skeleton andMengele's X-rays and photographs.

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The clincher was finding a healed frac-ture on the skeleton's right hip . Rec-ords indicated Mengele broke hisright hip in a motorcycle accident in1943 ."You reach a point where you can

say you are beyond a reasonable scien-tific doubt," Snow said, addressing thetheory that Mengele planted the bodyas a diversion . "When you talk interms of a hoax, you operate out of ahypothesis that Mengele found a dou-ble ."The first thing he would have had

to do was find somebody in the sameage range, who spoke German, whowas close to him in stature, who hada diastema, whose dental X-rays re-sembled his own, who was right-handed, whose skull exactly matchedhis face and who had broken his righthip . Mengele would have spent the restof his life looking for somebody thatclose."With all skeletons, Snow said he fol-

lows the same routine . "If there areany soft tissues, you have to examinethe skin very thoroughly to see ifthereare tatoos, scars or marks that mightindicate the cause of death."Soaking the bones in a hydrogen

peroxide solution removes soft tissuesfrom the bones, he said, so precisemeasurements can be made . Thechemical also deodorizes the bones ifthe body is badly decomposed . He thensystematically inspects the entireskeleton, paying special attention tothe skull and pelvis ."The skull is helpful because the

teeth are there," he said. "Also,throughout life, the skull is target fora lot oftrauma . You may find evidenceof old skull fractures, and the cause ofdeath very often is directed at theskull ."By examining the pelvis, Snow is

able to tell sex, age, and, if female,whether the woman has had children .

"It's all there in the bones," he said .Ever the perfectionist and profes-

sional at work, Snow often may seempreoccupied at home, his wife said ."This is a man who stands in the mid-dle of the room, and asks where hissocks are when they've been in thesame drawer for 10 years."

This is also a man who can examinethe bones of Custer's men and deter-mine how they were wounded and kill-ed in a battle 109 years ago .

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AV1 CTIM 'S STORY

They said she diedin an armed encounter.Oklahoma's Clyde Snowknew better.

n April, Dr. Clyde C . Snow stoodm a darkened courtroom in BuenosAires to give expert testimony be

fore Argentina's Supreme Military Tri-bunal. Theroomwas packed with a

rapt audience of lawyers, military offi-cers, journalists and spectators . Ontrial were the former commanders ofthe Argentine Army, Air Force andNavy who had ruled the country from1976 to 1983 . They were accused of or-dering the deaths of more than 10,000Argentinians .A small minority of the victims had

been left-wing terrorists responsiblefor a number of bombings, kidnap-pings and political assassinations be-fore the military junta had takenpower. Most, however, were ordinarycitizens who, for one reason or another,were accused of harboring ideas onrunning the country which differedfrom those of the generals . They in-cluded journalists, lawyers, trade un-ionists, university professors and,especially, students .

Snow's testimony, complete withslides of bones and skeletons, wouldbe different from the lectures the Uni-versity of Oklahoma adjunct professorof anthropology usually delivers . Heremembers his presentation to thecourt as if it were yesterday."Liliana del Carmen Pereyra," he

announced . A picture of a shatteredskull with a gaping hole in the righttemple flashed upon the screen .

Liliana del Carmen Pereyra was oneof Argentina's "desaparecidos" - oneofthose who simply disappeared whilein military or police custody. A 21-year-old bank clerk, Lilianawas aboutfive months pregnant when she van-ished from the city of Mar de Plata,approximately 150 miles from BuenosAires . She was last seen walking homefrom work on October 6, 1976, whena military "death squad" snatched heroff the street . Nearly a year later, herfamily was notified that she had beenkilled in an "armed encounter" withthe military. According to the au-thorities, she met her death as part ofa heavily-armed gang of subversiveswho were wiped out in an attack onan Argentine Air Force installation .Snow knew differently. During the

blistering months (in Argentina) ofFebruary and March, he and a volun-

One of the Argentine archaeologystudents Snow trained to work on the case of the

desaparacidos carefully arranges the remains of Liliana Pereyra.

teer team ofarchaeology students hadunearthed Liliana's skeleton, alongwith those of many other de-saparecidos .Using techniques he honed over 30

years as an anthropologist, Snow wasabout to challenge the military's story.In his soft Texas drawl, Snowexplained that Liliana Pereyra's skele-ton had been exhumed from one ofhundreds of paupers' graves intowhich the Argentine military dumpedits victims .The grave had been unmarked,

Snow said, the woman identified onthe death certificate as "NN" (noname) . Snow told the court that herremains had been identified throughdental records supplied by relatives .On the death certificate, which was

signed by an Argentine doctor, LilianaPereyra's death was listed as causedby gunshot wounds received in "anarmed encounter." Snow held up askull . Above the right ear was a three-inch diameter hole ."Victims are the best witnesses to

homicides," he said . "We removed

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The remains ofLiliana Pereyra are shown as they were uncovered by Snows teamof student volunteers in one of the hundreds of paupers' graves where victimsof the Argentine dictatorship were dumped by their military executioners .

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seven buckshot pellets from this skull.They were fired from a shotgun at arange of about one meter."He paused and looked over his black

rimmed glasses at the distinguishedgathering. "That's tough to do in anarmed encounter, unless only one sideis armed."The Argentine National Commis-

sion on Disappeared Persons was get-ting a look at one victim of what Snowterms a "mini-Holocaust." To date,Argentine authorities and humanrights groups have documented morethan 9,000 cases of Argentines whodisappeared while in police or militarycustody. Estimates ofthe total numberof desaparecidos ("the disappeared")run as high as 30,000 ."They were mostly males," Snow

said . "Usually, they were picked up athome . Sometimes they took the per-son; sometimes they took wholefamilies, blindfolded, and put them inthe trunk of a car and took them toone of 361 secret detention centerswhich were used during this period .

"There, at provincial police stationsor military reservations, they wereheld, interrogated and tortured fromseveral days to several months . Themajority were eventually killed by themilitary intelligence units of all threeservices (Army, Navy andAir Force) ."Complicating the task of determin-

ing how many died were methods theArgentine Air Force and Navy used todispose ofbodies besides burial in pro-vincial cemeteries or mass graves . Ac-cording to the Argentine commission,the Air Force loaded prisoners inplanes anddumped them in the ocean.The Navy disposed of corpses in a cre-matorium it operated in BuenosAires.

After the killings stopped, govern-ment exhumations were crude.Bulldozers were used, destroying orlosing bones, teeth and bullets. Snowand others called for a moratorium onthe digging.Snow formed a team of University

of Buenos Aires archaeology students .They went back to the grave sites,using the same careful recovery tech-niques as archaeologists .

"It was a real high-tech operation.We had about $25 in shovels, brushesand buckets."Snow taught the team to start dig-

The gaping hole above the right ear ofLiliana's skull was

Throughout the blistering Argentine summer, Snow taughtmade by a shotgun blast at pointblank range, disproving the

his student crew to apply careful archaeological techniques"armed encounter" explanation of her death .

to the exhumation of the desaparacidos' graves .

ging at the foot of graves . "The firstthree or four feet will not contain any-thing of value," he said, and can bestripped away rapidly once the footbones are located .Then Snow taught them to divide

graves into zones or quadrants . Aseach shovelful of dirt was taken froma zone, it was screened and put into acolor-coded bucket .Once the skeleton was uncovered,

each bone was tagged and carefullyremoved from the grave . Bullets,strands of hair and clothing, whichcould help identify the skeleton, werecollected, and their position in thegrave was noted . In the first 10 exhu-mations conducted by his team, Snowtold the court, a total of 35 bullets,bullet fragments or shotgun pelletswere recovered-nine in one skeleton .

"Typically, what we found was asingle gunshot wound to the base ofthe skull," Snow said . "We saw it overand over and over again."

At the morgue, Snow showed the stu-dents how to reassemble the skeleton

and to place the bullets where theywere found so the direction and dis-tance of the fatal shots could be deter-mined . By studying the beveling oftheedges of the bullet holes, forensic sci-entists can learn where the bullets en-tered and exited the body, Snow said .Then each detail ofthe skeleton was

catalogued : estimated age, height,weight and sex of the deceased,whether they were right- or left-handed and evidence of any old in-juries or diseases .

Liliana Pereyra was one of thefemale skeletons his team exhumed .From his examination of scarringalong the sacroiliac and pubic bones,he found that some ofthe women gavebirth before they died . Witnesses con-firmed the women were held in milita-ry hospitals, sometimes chained andblindfolded during labor, after whichmother and child were taken away byauthorites .Snow said he was not able to find

any ofthe babies' skeletons . Argentineofficials testified the military operated

a black market in which infants of de-saparecidos were distributed amongmilitary families wanting children .Snow advanced the next slide, and

the picture of the young woman withdark eyes, shy smile and shoulder-length chestnut hair appeared againon the screen .

"Liliana Pereyra," Snow said . "Shewas a clerk in a bank . She might havebeen politically active or known some-body who was."He turned offthe slide projector. The

lights came on . Judges and govern-ment officials stared at a blank screen .The courtroom was silent .

Liliana Pereyra no longer was apaper person . She was a pretty, dark-haired young Argentine girl whoworked in a bank . Somebody had puta shotgun to her head and killed her.

Snow's job was over. It was up tosomebody else to determine who hadpulled the trigger.

The preceding was adapted from articleswritten by Don Stewart for The Tulsa Tribune.

1985 FALL/WINTER

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