Athens, Ga. – Frederick Snow, forensic anthropologist for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, will speak on “The Tri-State Crematory Incident: a Mass Disaster of Negligence” on Thursday, Oct.18, at 7 p.m. in Sanford Hall on the University of Georgia Campus.
This free event is sponsored by the UGA Anthropology Society and the Student Association for Archaeological Sciences and is sanctioned as a Franklin College of Arts and Sciences “Blue Card” event.
Frederick Snow received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has had extensive experience in the identification of remains from mass grave and disaster sites. Internationally, he has served as a forensic anthropologist for the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for Kosovo in 1999 and in Sarajevo and Herzegovina, Bosnia, in 2001, determining the manner of death and recovering evidence for the indictment of war criminals.
Snow contributed in an administrative role for the tsunami victims’ identification project in 2005 in Thailand. In the United States, Snow was a member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, in Noble, Ga., in 2002, and helped to recover and identify remains from 339 individuals at the Tri-State Crematory. Currently, as forensic anthropologist for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Snow has collected, analyzed and archived approximately 200 sets of unidentified human skeletal remains dating back to 1969.
Snow’s visit will allow students at UGA and others to experience an aspect of anthropology that is usually only practiced behind closed doors.
In 2002, more than 300 bodies were found outside of the Tri-State Crematory, which contracted to cremate deceased persons from Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. The owner and operator faced criminal charges for inappropriately disposing of the remains of individuals who were sent there to be cremated. Members of DMORT, such as Snow, helped in recovering and identifying many individuals in order to allow the families some closure and a proper burial.
The Anthropology Society and the Student Association for Archaeological Sciences at the University of Georgia brings guest speakers throughout the school year to represent all areas of anthropology. For more information on other Anthropology Society meetings and guest speakers, visit their website at www.uga.edu/anthsociety/.
