Experts For the past few years, investigators have been calling on archaeologists, and their “reading the ground”, when excavations take place to recover a body. One of them, Patrice Georges, is giving a lecture at the Toulouse Museum this Thursday
A skeleton discovered at a crime scene (Illustration) — M. Maricic/Canva
- In recent years, investigators have increasingly called on archaeologists during excavations for the bodies of victims.
- This forensic archeology is in the process of development and allows, thanks to the know-how of these specialists, to be able to say if the ground was dug or not and if it is possible that a burial was dug there.
- This Thursday evening, Patrice Georges, specialist in criminalistics and forensic archaeology, is giving a lecture at the Toulouse Museum on this still little-known activity.
Searching for a body in an area that extends over several hectares often seems to investigators to be difficult. find a needle in a haystack. Depending on the configuration of the land, its environment, the search for corpses can be difficult, despite the the indications given by the perpetrators of the crime as demonstrated by the those made in the case of little Estelle Mouzin. After ten excavations, notably in the wood of Issancourt-et-Rumel, designated by Monique Olivier, Michel Fourniret’s ex-wife, the last campaign carried out last October turned out to be unsuccessful despite the the unprecedented technical means deployed.
In the field, at several times, the experts of the gendarmerie have appealed to; archaeologists. As was also the case last January at Cagnac-les-Mines, in the Tarn, when the excavators were activated; near a farm to find the body of Delphine Jubillar, this nurse who has been missing since December 2020. Over the past few years, more and more often, these modern-day Indiana Joneses are being called on these criminal cases. “Our main task is to provide added value when using a mechanical device. To read the traces in the ground, and to ascertain whether one is in the presence or the absence of a pit, to say whether the ground has been dug or not”, explains Patrice Georges-Zimmermann, archaeo-anthropologist at l’Inrap, which is giving a lecture this Thursday at the Muséum de Toulouse on its work in forensic archeology which consists of apply their techniques in a legal setting.
Prior to their arrival on the scene, the criminal identification specialists begin to sift the area through; georadar or by using human remains search dogs, trained to track the smell of decomposing bodies. But these two methods have their limits. The georadar, because sometimes its signal does not broadcast so that we can see things. As for the “corpse dogs”, the process of decomposition must be advanced. and that the soil is not clayey, allowing odors to filter through.
“Be sure to 100 % to close a door”
In the second curtain, the archaeologists are therefore called in as reinforcements, when the diggers begin to work. to dig. As with any excavation that could take place on remains dating back several thousand years, they will proceed to stripping, an operation which consists of remove a layer of soil about twenty centimeters in which there is grass, plants, roots. “We are going to find this layer of geological earth that we call ça the natural substrate and which was put in place often hundreds or even thousands of years ago. It’s a layer of sediments that has never known the presence of man”, recalls Patrice Georges-Zimmermann, expert at the Toulouse Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal. international association and member of the Traces laboratory of the university Jean-Jaurès.
An archaeologist in the field during excavations in a criminal investigation. -PGZ
And it’s there; that his trained eye will be able to detect the slightest modification. “If you don’t find any signs of anomalies, of digging, that means there is no body that could have been buried. to that place. We are not going to look for the skeleton as such, we are going to look for the trace of a digging, which is very easy to read. When you make a hole, when you fill it in, you have a soil that is much looser, a soil that is darker due to the decomposition of the body,” assures this specialist who intervened by example on the case of Amandine Estrabaud, named after this Tarnaise woman, who disappeared one day in June 2013 at; Roquecourbe and whose body has never been found.
It’s not, however, for lack of looking. In this dossier, as in others, Patrice Georges-Zimmermann has recommended extensive stripping. “We take squares of several hundred meters to make sure of the absence or presence of a body when the other methods said: “For us, it’s there is nothing”. The most important thing is to be sure of it. 100%, to close a door, and for that you need to have a reading of this sediment, of the ground when it was stripped,” Alexandria to study funerary vessels dating from Antiquity.
Because “classic”archaeology” remains its core business. The three members of Inrap at intervening in criminal cases do so very occasionally, on a regular basis. the request of the examining magistrates or the investigators if the latter are aware of these methods which are used almost systematically in Anglo-Saxon countries.
A method in full development
Alongside forensic pathologists and anthropologists from the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie, they will be able to determine how the grave was destroyed. dug, with which tools. And by inspecting the bones more closely they will be able to get an idea of how the beatings were carried out. worn. As was the case at Atapuerca, Spain, when a team of paleo-anthropologists were able to identify the “oldest homicide in the world” could be part of serial murders.
Like in this “bone pit” from the province of Burgos, the graves of the victims of crimes of this century deliver indications on what could have happened in the head of the killer. “You can show gestures, how the criminal went about burying the body. By knowing the location, one can know what has been his journey, what degree of sophistication he put into the disappearance of the body, to hide it. It can give clues. Just pointing out the dimensions of the pit is enough. information in itself: we see how long it took and the way he made the pit, we can see the traces of the tools used,” says Patrice Georges-Zimmermann who works on a few files each year and has already participated to the discovery of bodies in case investigations still in progress.
Regularly, he intervenes during training sessions for magistrates to explain to them what forensic archeology consists of. But some have already taken the full measure of its interest, in particular the members of the brand new judicial pole of the court of Nanterre dedicated to to the “cold case”, a division working on unsolved cases.