Monday, September 02, 2013

THE BONES LADY

Best-selling novelist, and soon to be in New Zealand,  Kathy Reichs talks life and death with Bess Manson



The bones of a 6-year-old boy lie in a box in the lab where forensic anthropologist and bestselling author Kathy Reichs works in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has remained there, alone and unidentified, for more than 20 years. Reichs still lives in hope that she will one day learn his name and return him to his family.
"I take the bones out periodically to try and figure out what else I can do or what new techniques have come up to try and identify him. I thought in 20-some years we may finally have had a break in that case.

 "I have a case that goes back to about 1993. Another child. He has never been identified. He had dental work - his parents cared enough about him to take him to a dentist - yet those little bones are sitting in a box in my lab. There are some for whom it has been a long time." Those are the frustrating cases, the 62-year-old Chicago- born author laments, the ones that haven't been solved. And like the heroine in her Bones novels, she feels an obligation to identify her victims so that they may rest in peace. "If someone is not identified they just die anonymously. I have a storage closet at my lab and there are boxes in there with just numbers on them. Many of them contain people that have never been identified so, yeah, you feel an obligation to get them back to their families or whoever is out there wondering what has happened to them."

Reichs is a no-nonsense straight talker who doesn't waste time on pleasantries. A prerequisite for her job, perhaps.
Full story at Your Weekend

Footnote:
Tickets for Auckland event for sale at www.eventfinder.co.nz


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