FORENSICS: Eric Stover

RELEVANT REPORT: “A Grave at Vukovar”, Smithsonian: March 1997 “Bones are often our last and best witness: they never lie, and they never forget.”

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Eric Stover has uncovered mass graves from Cambodia to the former Yugoslavia. In “The grave at Vukovar” he details the 1997 excavation of a mass grave in Croatia, where forensic anthropologists immerse themselves in death’s tentacles to gather evidence for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. “Lose one tooth or even a foot bone, and you’re an accomplice to the crime,” says forensic expert Clyde Snow. But Stover says these skeletons aren’t only data, and that the most rewarding part of his work is moving the grieving process for survivors by identifying the bodies of the disappeared. Eric Stover is currently an adjunct Professor of Public Health and the Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley.