Research
Faculty
Aloha Everybody. This is Bob Mann and I’ve been a forensic anthropologist or, as some call us, “bone detective” at the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) for more than 10 years. Professionally, I’ve spent the past 45 years in a variety of jobs and job titles from assistant director in pathology at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine in Memphis, as a biological anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC for nearly 5 years, then Deputy Scientific Director leading search and recovery teams around the world in search of missing American soldiers at JPAC, the world’s largest skeletal identification laboratory for 16 years, followed by founding Director of the military’s Forensic Science Academy in Hawai’i for 7 years.
Although I’ve spent most of my life traveling the world recovering and examining human bones and working on police, medical examiner, and even FBI cases, my life took a new direction when I retired in 2015 after 32 years with the US Government. Although I’m still home based in Hawaiʻi, I now spend more time traveling, teaching and looking at human skeletal remains in Thailand and Europe. As a result of my long and varied career as a forensic anthropologist, I’m able to work on some fascinating and mind-boggling cases. If you’re a forensic anthropologist or are interested in bones, true crime shows and books, or forensic anthropology you might like this glimpse into the life of a forensic anthropologist. If so, here’s how I spent my summer. 
I started the summer with a month at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok - the largest and oldest hospital in Thailand - examining their large known-identity (willed body donors) osteological collection. While there I examined human skeletons recently exhumed from an early 1800s cemetery in Bangkok as well as many other skeletons in their collection including the skeleton of a young man who died of thalassemia that caused bone loss causing his bones to have a “woven basket” appearance, and another individual who died with osteogenesis imperfecta, or “brittle bone disease” resulting in many broken bones in her lifetime. Both cases provide us a rare opportunity to study and learn the range of symptoms and skeletal lesions in these two diseases in individuals who died 50 or 100 years ago. While there I also gave talks and workshops on forensic anthropology and some of the police and medical examiner cases that I’ve worked on over the past 45 years. While in Bangkok I also examined the remains of women alleged to have been killed and disposed of by a male serial killer dubbed “The Thai Ted Bundy.” You can find out more about this case online. 
After about a month I was on to England with my family for two weeks of sightseeing (and walking!!), photography and exploring new foods and dishes. Being a musician and former hippie, the highlight for me was visiting Abbey Road studios where the Beatles recorded “Abbey Road” in the 1960s. My family and I crossed Abbey Road (and got the t-shirts and photos to prove it!), the famous zebra striped crossing on the album cover…it just never gets old!
My next stop was Edinburgh, Scotland to continue examining and documenting the large osteological collection in the Surgeons’ Hall Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. I gave a sold-out public talk titled “How Forensic Anthropology Solves Police and Medical Examiner Cases Around the World.” While in Edinburgh, I examined bones with disease and trauma in the museum’s collection for one of my next photographic atlases. I even had a chance to examine infamous serial killer William Burke’s skeleton to help answer the question that I’ve been asked many times of “What makes a serial killer different from the rest of us?” As a little background, William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people in early 1800s Edinburgh and sold their bodies to a local medical doctor for anatomical dissection and study. Burke was convicted and hanged, and his body anatomized just like those of his victims. His skeleton now resides in the department of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. Examining Burke’s skeleton was a once in a lifetime and novel examination that is still “a work in progress.” Stay tuned for more.
After Edinburgh I was off to Italy for three weeks. My first stop was in Milan where I examined skeletons at the famous LABANOF (forensic anthropology and odontology/dental laboratory) before returning to Pompeii for the second time in so many years to examine some recently excavated skeletons. After nearly five decades of doing archaeology, traveling the world, and working on many high-profile cases such as Jeffrey Dahmer’s first victim, Pompeii is still the pinnacle of cases for me.
I then spent a week co-teaching at the Pontestura Summer Bone Camp located about an hour’s drive from Milan. The bone camp this year hosted 34 students and medical doctors, many for the first time, as they examined contemporary and Medieval-era skeletons to estimate age at death, sex, ancestry, stature, bone disease, skeletal trauma, surgical implants and taphonomy, and what happens to the body after death – all from skeletal remains. Absolutely fascinating! I guess it just goes to show – at least so far – that being 75 really is just a number and that life not only goes on after retirement, but it can reach new heights and achievements and give us time to check off items on our bucket list. Fingers crossed, as I have many more things to do on my bucket list… 