Dr. Lori Baker is an associate professor of anthropology in Baylor’s College of Arts and Sciences. She specializes in molecular and forensic analysis of skeletal remains. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Baylor and a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Baker, 44-year-old, sat down for Story Corps with her husband, Erich, and talked about what inspired her work. The goal, she said, is “to find one little thing that might connect to the case that you’re working on.” Identifying a body helps family members find resolution, Baker said. “But the families are going to know the horrible things that happened to their loved one,” she said. “They die of heat stroke. … And it’s really overwhelming when you’re holding them in your hands and you see the blisters that are on the feet of these individuals.” She says this because she thinks about her eleven-year-old daughter and how some victims migrate to the U.S.A in order to support their kids. In fact, the first victim she identified was a mother or two who migrated to give her daughters a better life and left them with the victim’s mother [1]“We love them. We think of them as people. We treat them with respect. We remember where they come from. And, we remember that everyone is associated with a family somewhere that is grieving”

In 2003, she founded “Reuniting Families”, a program to assist local, state and federal US agencies as well as foreign governments to recover, identify and return the remains of deceased migrants found along the US- Mexico border. Hundreds of Baylor students have donated hours to these efforts over the past 15 years, they unearthed the graves of the unidentified in order to perform proper forensic examinations, take DNA samples, enter the cases into NamUs (www.identifyus.org) as well as to work with many governmental, public and private agencies to compare information in hope of identification They have worked on roughly 560 cases that have resulted in the returns of individuals from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, the Dominican Republic and more. In 2016, Baylor College launched the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project in Italy it focused in the necropolis regarding the skeletal analyses the excavated tombs.[2]

Dr. Baker serves as chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Diversity (PACD) and is past chair of the Faculty Senate (2014-15) and at the Faculty Regent on the University’s Board of Regents. She is also an advisor to the attorney general of the Mexican State of Chihuahua, the Washington Office on Latin America, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Truth Commissions in Peru and Panama; as well as a speaker in many national and international venues such as the Peace Palace in The Hague, as part of the International Commission on Missing Persons Conference and Amnesty International. Dr. Baker is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and has published in national and international journals. Her work has been featured by National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover Magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC, MSNBC and other media outlets.[3]

One of Dr. Baker’s works, “Reuniting Families: An Online Database to Aid”, she attempts to federal agencies as well as state and local agencies on working towards the identification of deceased undocumented immigrants. It lead to the creation of an on-line database, which is accessible by public officials and private citizens who are interested in searching for individuals based on both phenotypic and genotypic characteristics. Meaning they can search observable characteristics and the genetic makeup that reference to a single trait, or a set of complexes of traits of a specific missing individual. This includes the exhumation of individuals from geographically disparate pauper graves, characteristics are cataloged with documentation of physical forensic evidence such as the analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence. The result of this prototype knowledgebase that could serve as a model for future efforts in international forensic science collaboration.[4]

Another example of Dr. Baker’s work includes an article by her and her colleague’s,  “Analysis of polymorphic nuclear markers in DNA extracted from archived Native American hair shafts” was a study that evaluated the applicability of a nonorganic DNA method extraction for using in analysis of environmental compromised forensic shaft and tooth samples.  Such environmental conditions that could compromise these samples include water decomposition, severe incineration, and different stages of decomposition. They conducted twenty autopsies in which they performed enzymatic amplification and manual sequencing of the first segment of the mitochondrial hypervariable region. Their results indicated that the nonorganic DNA extraction method produced mtDNA apt for generic identification.[5]

“The Rhomboid Fossa of the Clavicle as a Sex and Age Estimator” is another article that was co-written by Dr. Baker,it’s about using the Rhomboid fossa (a ligament) as an indicator to determine the sex or age of a corpse. Since the rhomboid is a ligament that connects the first rib to the clavicle, it stabilizes the pectoral gridle. It makes certain skeletal traits that may be tubercles, roughened impressions, shallow groove or deep fossae, or leave no trait. The depression at this site is called the rhomboid fossa. Using a contemporary sample of 344, 114 being females and 231 being male, the presence of Rhomboid fossa was evaluated as a sex and age indicator for the unidentified skeletal remains. The logistic regression found significant relationships between the presence of the Rhomboid fossa and sex and age. The Rhomboid fossa was more common in males than in females and were most common in males of 20-30 years of age. Nonetheless, the effect of age on the Rhomboid fossa was not conclusive and has to found by other methods, as well as sex estimation.  [6]

“A Mass Grave of Mexican Soldiers from the Resaca de la Palma Battlefield (41CF3): Demography and Battle-Related Injuries Battle of Resaca” is the second battle of the Mexican- American War, it resulted in the death of hundreds of Mexican soldiers who were buried in mass graves. One of them contained 27 to 36 adult male soldiers remains. They were examined for battle related injuries, each one was inspected to determine the timing, type of wound and the direction of the force. More than half of the remains showed skeletal evidence of battle related trauma, it was also demonstrated traditional battle tactics, and well as hand-to-hand fight that occurred. [7]

These are just some of the most important and groundbreaking work Dr. Baker has done in her career. She has been able to not just identify victims in the United States, but identify those who perished while crossing the border for a better life. Since they’re on American soil and have no family here, no one to identify them, she does it for them. It is so important now because of how now we hear so many immigration cases of people trying to cross the border more often and how it has become unsafe. She has been able to identify them, who are considered as nobody’s on paper, to an individual who was someone to somebody. Her work can help not just the families of those who perished at the border but for us and how it benefit us identify those who live here.

 

WORK CITED

[1] “Exhuming Immigrant Remains: Reuniting Families Project.” Media Communications, Baylor University, (https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/index.php?id=90056)

[2]“Lori Baker, PhD.” Department of Anthropology, Baylor University (https://www.baylor.edu/anthropology/index.php?id=946700)

³ “Lori E. Baker.”  Executive Vice President and Provost, Baylor University. (https://www.baylor.edu/provost/index.php?id=948204)

[4]Baker, Lori E., and Erich J. Baker. “Reuniting Families: An Online Database to Aid in the Identification of Undocumented Immigrant Remains*.” Journal of Forensic Sciences. February 11, 2008. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007.00612.x?scrollTo=references)

[5] Lori, E., Baker, M.A., William, F., McCormick, M.S., M.D. and Karla, J.M. (2001). Silica-Based Mitochondrial DNA Extraction Method Applied to Forensic Hair Shafts and Teeth”. Forensic Science. 126-130.

[6] Rogers, N. L., Baker, L. E., & McCormick, W. F. (2000). The rhomboid fossa of the clavicle as a sex and age estimator. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 45(1), 61–67

[7]Daniel J. Wescott, Lori E. Baker, D. Clark Wernecke and Michael B. Collins, A Mass Grave of Mexican Soldiers from the Resaca De La Palma Battlefield (41CF3): Demography and Battle-Related Injuries, Pdf. Texas Archeological Society, January 2013