Professor Mike Hoffman and
His Team of Scientific Sleuths

By MALCOLM HOWARD

herlock Holmes would roll over in his grave if he knew about the 120-year-old mystery that anthropology professor Mike Hoffman and a half-dozen of his osteology students are unraveling in a Barnes Science Center lab. A leading forensic anthropologist, Hoffman has been charged with finding out what claimed the lives of 130 people buried under unmarked graves in Pueblo, Colo., sometime before the turn-of-the-century.

The saga began in 1992 when the Pueblo State Hospital began bulldozing the foundation for a new medical wing and unearthed the remains. Because the Pueblo County coroner must by law identify and find the cause of death for any fatality in his jurisdiction, these antique remains could not simply be reburied.

That's where Mike Hoffman and his team of scientific sleuths come in.

Backed with $20,000 donated by an anonymous alumnus, Hoffman agreed to examine the remains at no cost to taxpayers. Hell try to uncover answers to a bevy of legal and scientific questions: Were the entombed patients of the hospital, which at the time was an asylum for the criminally insane? If they were patients, did they die due to foul play? Did any of the bones show signs of birth defects?

So far, Hoffman is fairly certain the cemetery is tied to the hospital and that the remains are largely those of Caucasians. While Hoffmans team is still far from positively identifying all the remains, a composite sketch of the people buried in Pueblo is beginning to emerge.

Several of them, for example, show signs of severe bodily trauma, says Hoffman, pointing to a hip bone that appears to have been crushed, then partially healed. In addition, many of the skeletons have multiple fractures throughout their bodies, and in many cases, the fractures have been partially healed.

This could mean that the deceased worked in nearby mines or in Pueblos smelters, where major injury and death due to accident were fairly common. The healing on many of the fractures, however, indicates that those people did not die immediately due to their injuries. But like most good clues, this only raises more questions: Were these patients brought to the hospital because of their injuries? Or, was the damage done at the psychiatric hospital?

Many of these questions will likely remain unsolved, but Hoffman says theres evidence that workers at Pueblos smelters may have been interred at the site. Still, there are other scientific questions that Hoffman finds even more engaging. For example, these bones might offer clues into the diets of turn-of-the-century rural Coloradans.

In addition, the find is unusual because the remains are relatively recent, and because so many bodies were apparently buried during a short period of time. While similar cemetery discoveries are much older - from the Civil War or Revolutionary War eras, for example - this project could offer insight into a slightly later period about which there is little forensic data.

But this no simple task. For one thing, Hoffman and his students must carefully sift through roughly 25,000 bones or bone fragments and upwards of 2,000 teeth. Though the work is time-consuming, it is giving students a unique chance to take part in cutting edge anthropological investigation.

In the Barnes Science Center, a half-dozen students are spending their spare time huddled quietly over thousands of minute vertebrae and bone fragments, femurs and jawbones, slowly piecing together skeletons that are then laid out on large metal trays.

Next door, senior Brennan Dodson is breaking down DNA samples to determine gender. This meticulous process involves multiplying microscopic strands of DNA (so they can be seen), then charging them electronically so the cloned genes migrate across a tiny pool of water. In short, how far the DNA travels indicates the presence (or lack) or the Y-chromosome - the part of the genetic blueprint that makes someone male.

As in all good mystery stories, there's suspense in the final chapters. Due to the sensitivity surrounding scientific examination of human remains, Hoffman must make haste so the dead can once again be laid to rest. The Pueblo coroner gave Hoffman only three years from the time of excavation to bring these 130 cases to a legal conclusion.

But three years is a short time to determine the cause of 130 deaths, Hoffman says, especially considering the multitude of questions being asked. His task, however, is even more difficult because the hospital has no record of the cemetery (though it is mentioned in newspaper clippings of the time) and because the remains were removed by workers with shovels, not by trained anthropologists.

Hoffman has asked for an extension so that the legal system, and science, can close the book on these unusual cases knowing a little more about the 130 people who were mysteriously buried at a Pueblo psychiatric hospital 120 years ago.

Malcolm Howard is a freelance writer who lives in Colorado Springs.