Megan is the Founder and Director of Forensic Guardians International (FGI), a company addressing all aspects of forensic human identification. As a leading global forensic advisor and an expert in forensic human identification and emergency management, Megan has an impressive history of advancing humanitarian forensic practice and enhancing forensic strategies and capacities for national and international organizations. In the past, she was the Forensic Coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Lebanon and Georgia, the latter with responsibility for the Caucasus and Central Asia. Megan has also supervised and directly performed archaeological recoveries and thousands of anthropological examinations, at single and mass gravesites, for the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus and the International Committee for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Join us as I speak to Megan about her work, technology, and the importance of identifying human remains in war-torn areas such as the Ukraine.
Forensic Guardians International: https://forensicguardians.com/
Megan is the Founder and Director of Forensic Guardians International (FGI), a company addressing all aspects of forensic human identification. As a leading global forensic advisor and an expert in forensic human identification and emergency management, Megan has an impressive history of advancing humanitarian forensic practice and enhancing forensic strategies and capacities for national and international organizations. In the past, she was the Forensic Coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Lebanon and Georgia, the latter with responsibility for the Caucasus and Central Asia. Megan has also supervised and directly performed archaeological recoveries and thousands of anthropological examinations, at single and mass gravesites, for the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus and the International Committee for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Join us as I speak to Megan about her work, technology, and the importance of identifying human remains in war-torn areas such as the Ukraine.
Forensic Guardians International: https://forensicguardians.com/
00;00;27;11 - 00;00;51;21
Eugene
Hi everyone, it’s Eugene here. And welcome to episode 76 of forensics talks. Today, my guest is Megan Bassendale, and she's going to be kicking off the first episode of 2023. And I want to thank everyone for being here. I hope you all had a good holidays, and I'm pretty sure that everyone is back to work. And yeah, just hoping for a good 2023.
00;00;52;08 - 00;01;18;08
Eugene
Let's start with Megan Barksdale. So Megan Bassendean is the founder and director of Forensic Science International, FBI, and it's a company that's addressing all aspects of forensic human identification and emergency management. Megan has an impressive history of advancing humanitarian forensic practices and forensic strategies for national and international organizations. And I think it would be good to name some of the things or some of the projects, I'll call them, that she has worked on.
00;01;18;09 - 00;01;58;03
Eugene
So, for example, from 2004 to 2006, she worked with the International Committee for Missing Persons. That was Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2007 to 2009, committing a committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, 2009 to 2016. International Committee of the Red Cross of Georgia and 2016 to 2017. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Lebanon. And so Megan has supervised directly supervised, indirectly performed archeological recovery and thousands of anthropological examinations at single and mass grave sites.
00;01;58;03 - 00;02;12;01
Eugene
So, I think it's going to be important to get her perspective and her experiences on, you know, what led her to start Forensic Guardians International in 2017. So let me bring her on in here. Hey, Megan, how are you?
00;02;12;05 - 00;02;13;14
Megan
Hi. Good to be here.
00;02;13;19 - 00;02;30;14
Eugene
All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for being here. Lots to talk about today and a very interesting background. I was really interested in, you know, sort of your CV and going back and. Yeah, it's good that we I mean, I think we first spoke in 2000, probably a couple of years ago on, on the LinkedIn thing and chatted.
00;02;31;08 - 00;02;51;01
Eugene
Yeah. And then, you know, just kind of every now and then I see you popping up with maybe some posts and that sort of thing. But finally, good to get to talk to you. So I want to start with your background. I want to start with your academic background, too. Let's see here. You started off with a B.A. in archeology.
00;02;51;01 - 00;02;54;15
Eugene
So first off, were you looking to be an archeologist? Is that what you are always.
00;02;54;29 - 00;03;16;05
Megan
I did not go into university thinking I was going to be an archeologist. No, I went in. So, I went to SMU here in Vancouver, and I went in thinking actually, that I was going to be a communications major. And I quickly realized that that was not for me. But at the same time, I was taking a human origins course with Bru, take all the CAS up at SMU.
00;03;17;18 - 00;03;42;07
Megan
And it was fascinating, and I just loved it. And so then I just started taking more and more archeology courses and at the same time this was sort of I think I started my B.A. in 96. So the war in Bosnia had just ended and people were starting to go into the country to do the ICC tribunals and the exhumations and the identifications of the human remains there.
00;03;42;07 - 00;04;10;09
Megan
And I had been doing field schools down in Belize, working on human remains that were in caves, purely archeological stuff. But I liked the social impact of the work that was being done in Bosnia. And so that was really intriguing to me. And so that kind of turned my path towards forensics. And then, yeah, I just did everything I could to get as much experience as I could.
00;04;11;25 - 00;04;31;12
Megan
I reached out to people. I was probably super annoying, but yeah, I just managed to sort of claw my way in and then, you know, I was in the right place at the right time, and I finished university at the right time to get into the exhumations in Bosnia. So it was just it sort of all fell in together.
00;04;32;00 - 00;04;44;22
Eugene
Okay. Like you also did, you got a diploma in forensic medical sciences and law and mercy and forensic archeology. But both of those in London. Yeah. So, you have other stuff there. And so was that just all sequential one after the other, too?
00;04;45;06 - 00;05;10;27
Megan
It did, yeah. So, when I finished my B.A., I went to London because I have a British passport as well. And so I went working to sort of save money to do a master's degree. And then I did the Masters, the one year Masters at UCL. And from there I presented my dissertation at a BARRHEAD, the British Association for Human Identification, at one of their conferences.
00;05;10;28 - 00;05;35;07
Megan
And right before that I had spoken with, I think it was Deborah Comber, and I was asking her what do I do to get into this field? Like how do I take this archeology degree that I have? And this M.A. And in forensic archeology, and make that into something that I can use in places like Bosnia. And she said, you need to get soft tissue experience.
00;05;35;22 - 00;06;00;11
Megan
And so, I mean, that's not the easiest thing to get right. Like you can't just walk into a hospital and be like, I need soft tissue experience. Can I please come in? So fortunately, somebody at the mortuary in Glasgow went on maternity leave and the person that was hiring for that position to cover it heard me speak and said, We have an opening, Will you apply?
00;06;00;11 - 00;06;27;14
Megan
And so, I applied and I got this job in Glasgow at the police mortuary. And so I spent, I think about two years, maybe three, doing forensic autopsies all day and, you know, getting bodies that would come in to the mortuary, receiving families, doing identifications, working firsthand with the forensic pathologists. We had a few DVI incidents like big mass fatality incidents.
00;06;27;14 - 00;06;56;27
Megan
Yeah. And it was just I got a lot of experience in the world of forensic pathology through that. And I met people that were forensic pathologists that were working in Bosnia. John Clarke, who is a mentor of mine, he was working there in Bosnia and he was also working at the Glasgow mortuary. And so when a position with ICMP opened up, he gave me a reference.
00;06;57;09 - 00;07;07;14
Megan
And then by that point I had the experience of the soft tissue and the archeology and the anthropology. So I was in a better position to sort of get in and start working there.
00;07;08;04 - 00;07;12;02
Eugene
Can you tell me about what kinds of activities you were doing in Bosnia?
00;07;12;16 - 00;07;38;03
Megan
So, it pretty much ranged from reconnaissance, looking for human remains. Like a witness would have said that they saw some remains in the forest, like, for instance, in Srebrenica. And so we would go looking to see if we could find them to recover them and bring them back to the mortuary. I worked in mass graves doing the recovery of the remains.
00;07;39;17 - 00;08;07;06
Megan
I worked in the mortuary, basically everything up until when the identifications were made. And then once there was an identification In that context, we weren't involved, but it was taken over by somebody else. So there was a whole department that dealt with the families and, you know, returned the remains to the families and showed them all the clothing and personal effects and whatnot that were associated to a particular body.
00;08;07;28 - 00;08;37;23
Megan
But everything before that we were involved in. And so, I mean, it was an incredible experience because we got to see so many different things. You got to see these massive mass graves that had primary burials, secondary burials, tertiary burials. And because of the context of Bosnia and the I mean, I don't know how much you know about what they did, but there was a concerted effort to try and hide a lot of the primary graves.
00;08;38;14 - 00;09;08;11
Megan
So they were exhumed after they were buried and moved. And so what happened was that you ended up with all these bodies that were mixed up and then spread over a whole bunch of different secondary graves or tertiary graves. And so you ended up with a really complicated puzzle, basically because you would get some body parts in one grave, but then the rest of the body would be in other graves around the country.
00;09;08;11 - 00;09;46;12
Megan
And of course, they are clandestine, right? So, you don't know where they are. So you end up with bits at different times across a huge time span. And ICMP was really innovative and they really were pushing the boundaries of the space at that time, using forensic archeology and forensic anthropology and genetics and really trying to pull together all these different puzzle pieces into an identification and to have as many and as much as the bodies they could to return to the families.
00;09;46;29 - 00;10;11;22
Megan
And so, yeah, it was it was an amazing experience. And the work there, I mean, they've been very, very successful. I think there was about 30,000 missing and I believe now I think there's only about 10,000 that are pending. And not all of those bodies are still buried. There are a lot that are in different mortuaries across the region that haven't been identified for whatever reason.
00;10;11;22 - 00;10;28;14
Megan
But yeah, I mean, it was it was a really successful project. It's been long term, but, you know, missing persons investigations typically are long term. You know, it's not something that finishes in a year never, especially on this scale.
00;10;28;14 - 00;10;33;15
Eugene
How much time did you actually spend like there? And then like, are you back and forth or do you spend most of your time there? How did that work.
00;10;34;00 - 00;10;58;15
Megan
For that context? I was based there, yeah. So I was based in Sarajevo for some of the time and in Tuzla for the other part. And then we would sort of travel around the country. So they would say, okay, we have a cave in sort of northwest Bosnia we need you to go and deal with. And so I would go with a colleague basically, and then we would work with the local commissions.
00;10;59;09 - 00;11;23;04
Megan
And they were the ones that were actually in charge of the site and the work. And then I was there as the expert, too, to help them, help them basically with the recovery of the remains. And then we would take them back to the mortuary to this big facility where they would all be laid out, they'd be cleaned and all the remains were laid out.
00;11;23;04 - 00;11;48;13
Megan
And then we would do the analysis to try and figure out what we had. We would take DNA samples and then in the really mixed up secondary graves, we would do something that they called a mini DNA sample at that time. I mean, you got to remember, this is back in like 2004. So it's a bit dated so that we would do these many DNA samples that would allow us to match between gravesites.
00;11;48;13 - 00;12;22;20
Megan
And then once we had enough of a case, a body, it would be pushed forward to get a full DNA profile that you would match to a family. And so there was I don't really remember if we had an exact threshold for when we pushed it for a full DNA profile. But often, if you had a significant amount like it would even be like less than half a body would be enough to push it for a full DNA profile so that you could match it.
00;12;22;20 - 00;12;43;23
Megan
Because the idea was that we wanted to give families answers, right? We wanted them to know. So, you had to have enough that you knew that the person was likely deceased. And it wasn't just a traumatic amputation so that they would have some kind of answer and not just this ambiguous piece of information.
00;12;44;25 - 00;12;58;10
Eugene
So right after that, like 27, 29, you were in Cyprus. And so that was Committee on Missing Persons there. And so how did you jump from Bosnia over to there?
00;12;58;19 - 00;13;31;11
Megan
Yeah. So in Bosnia, they started reducing the number of international contractors, basically, that were being involved in the exhumations and really trying to have the projects be more locally owned and having and there's a lot of great, amazing anthropologist, an archeologist in the Balkans, like Bosnian Serbs, Croats. You know, there was a lot of human resources that could do the job and they didn't need us necessarily as much.
00;13;31;21 - 00;14;20;28
Megan
And so a lot of local anthropologists and archeologists, other experts started having a bigger role, I guess, in the work and the opportunity in Cyprus came up and it was with the U.N., with the UNDP and the Argentine team. And so, it seemed like a good step. So, we moved there. And for that one again, we lived in Cyprus, my husband and I, and I was it again, the project was aimed at having local scientists that were working on the project and had a lot of local ownership for the work.
00;14;21;21 - 00;14;47;09
Megan
And then we were there, as you know, mentors and teachers and coordinators to make sure that there was a neutral intermediary between because it was Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. And yeah, you would just have the neutral intermediary with the objective of us not being there anymore and it being a completely locally led project, which I believe it is now.
00;14;48;06 - 00;15;19;23
Megan
There is still a third member on the political level, but I think that the local scientists are the ones that are fully in charge of that project now. And again, it was a fascinating experience and like I did some incredible sites there with the first one that they sent me to was a quarry where I think there had been 30 or 40 people that had been killed and dumped in this quarry.
00;15;19;23 - 00;15;47;12
Megan
And then, you know, we had to find them and recover them. And it was just a massive, massive undertaking. Like I had never seen anything at that scale before. And I had the opportunity to work with these great Turkish and Greek Cypriot scientists who, you know, they're just incredible. And they were all working together. And, you know, we were there helping them however we could and sharing our experience in other contexts.
00;15;47;12 - 00;16;18;13
Megan
And yeah, I mean, it's an amazing project. And so then I was there for two or three years and then I moved on to the ICRC where I was for. Yeah. So a lot of the coordinators, the international coordinators that were at the MP that in the Committee for Missing Persons in Cyprus went on to become forensic coordinators with the ICRC.
00;16;18;13 - 00;16;44;11
Megan
And so I think I moved to the ICRC in 2009 and the team was small at that point. I think there was five of us, maybe four. And so I was covering I was based in Georgia, but I covered all of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and so I did a lot of time traveling around. There are various missing person files.
00;16;44;11 - 00;17;17;07
Megan
They're from different conflicts, a lot from the breakup of the Soviet Union. But also, in Georgia. There's a couple more recent one more recent conflict that we were working on. And so there had been some work that had gone on before. You know, there was teams that had been trained in how to collect antemortem data from families. There was a lot of psychosocial work that was going on with the mental health teams for the families of missing persons.
00;17;17;07 - 00;17;51;27
Megan
And so, when we came but when I came in, yeah, I was carrying on a lot of what had been done before me. But I also had the opportunity to work with some incredible people. And we had the timing, the timing for the project in Georgia was just right, basically. And so we were able to get things moving and to get the project between Georgia and Abkhazia moving.
00;17;52;28 - 00;18;21;17
Megan
And now to this day, they're still doing recoveries and identifications and families that had been waiting for decades are getting answers. And both in the Georgia project and in the Cyprus project, it was pretty incredible because we were a part of the continuum from the very beginning when we had information about where potential sites were and we would go and look right up until when the remains were identified and being returned to their families.
00;18;21;17 - 00;18;52;06
Megan
So you had this incredible opportunity to see how families reacted when they actually got an answer and they got the remains back. And that's not something that you always get, because often as an archeologist or an anthropologist, you're put into a very specific part of the overall project and you don't get to see that end result. But in those two instances, we did get to see the end result and we did get to interact with the families.
00;18;52;06 - 00;19;15;28
Megan
And I think that's really important because ultimately the reason that we're doing this work is so that families can have an answer and they can have closure as some kind I mean, you know, you can never get total closure on a deceased family member, but they get information, they get some peace to know that they have they have their loved ones remains.
00;19;15;28 - 00;19;45;18
Megan
And it also gave us the opportunity to see what was important to the families and to understand what we needed to tell them, for them to accept the identifications and to trust them. Because me saying, well, we have a DNA sample like, you know, a lot of them don't care about that. It's not material enough for them to make the link between what I'm saying and some abstract numbers or codes, whatever.
00;19;47;14 - 00;20;19;23
Megan
But when you can bring a family into the room with the remains and they can touch them and they can see the clothes and they can see the teeth, the teeth are often really important or past fracture, then that was the thing that really cemented the identification for them. And it would make it real. And you would have families who, when you were talking to them before coming into the room, they would be like, you know, you're telling me it's my loved one, but I'm not sure that I actually believe you.
00;20;21;08 - 00;20;50;23
Megan
And when they would actually see the remains and they would see something that triggered for them, you know, clicked a switch. And then they would really connect with that with the skeleton because, you know, it's abstract. There's no soft tissue at that point. So that was an incredible experience. It was really special. I always remember that because it just was something that you don't often get.
00;20;50;23 - 00;21;00;02
Megan
But it's so important in the whole scheme of missing persons and identification, the families cannot be forgotten. It's the whole reason that we're doing the work.
00;21;00;22 - 00;21;23;06
Eugene
Right? Right. And in some cases, you have I mean, you may have skeletal remains or whatever, but do you sometimes have other things like small articles of clothing or like other little things that are that you try to keep all together? And I'm just wondering if you had any cases where, you know, family sees an item and it's like, yeah, that's, that's you know, that belongs to for sure there and yeah that happened.
00;21;24;13 - 00;21;54;09
Megan
Yeah, we are yeah. In several of the projects like even after seeing the skeleton the family wouldn't necessarily have connected. But when we pulled out the personal effects, they saw shoes. I remember one family was these particular pair of sneakers that the mother saw, and she just remembered them. And there was some significance to these sneakers. And that was the thing that just connected it for her.
00;21;54;12 - 00;22;10;26
Megan
And she was so emotional. And but where she had not been until she saw the sneakers that like, flipped something for her and made her believe and trust what we were. But we were saying. So yeah, the personal effects are super important.
00;22;11;15 - 00;22;22;04
Eugene
I was just going to ask you about the last place that you were at, which was Lebanon, and I was wondering if your responsibilities there were the same or what happened in Lebanon?
00;22;22;04 - 00;22;52;26
Megan
Yeah. So Lebanon has had several conflicts over the years and they have people that are missing from various these different conflicts. And so we were working with the local authorities to try and get the missing person project going ahead. And at the same time, we were doing a lot of work on training for management of the dead in emergencies.
00;22;52;26 - 00;23;25;04
Megan
And so what that means is like working with first responders, the police, the military, civil defense, these kinds of people that are really the first ones that go in there when there's been an incident and helping them to develop their skills in what to do with the human remains and how to manage them so that they're traceable and that the right information is recorded about them right from the start so that an identification can be made later on down the line.
00;23;25;04 - 00;23;41;18
Eugene
I want to know about some of the challenges that you've had in these places and like, what were some of the more difficult places you were at? And you know, what are some of the difficulties that you face as somebody that's trying to get back these human remains? So what kinds of things do you typically expect to happen?
00;23;42;06 - 00;24;25;13
Megan
Yeah, I would say that the biggest challenge is political will. Like somebody needs to want to do this work if there's no political will to do it, then it often just doesn't start because it's expensive, it's labor intensive and it requires a lot of effort from everybody that's involved to make it work. And if you don't have buy in and trust from all the various different parties, and that includes the government, that includes the families, that includes the other organized nations that are working on the project, that includes civil society like family associations.
00;24;25;22 - 00;25;01;04
Megan
You know, everybody has to agree and want to achieve the same thing. And if you don't have the same vision, then it becomes really difficult to do anything because you don't have the parameters within which you're working. And so I would say that is the biggest challenge. The technical things, you know, you can usually find a way around them, but having the political will, that's a big it's a big one.
00;25;01;04 - 00;25;35;02
Megan
I would say having reference material from families that can be really hard, especially in con context, where you're working on identifying people that have passed away like decades before. And so you're working on people's memory of what they remember the person to be like. And in order to make the forensic identification, we don't rely just on the DNA.
00;25;35;02 - 00;26;04;08
Megan
I mean, it's one thing, but we also need to understand what their dental status was, how tall they were, what kind of color hair they had, style, all these things that make a person a unique individual. And in many cases, people can't remember. Like it's just really hard to know, like what tooth your husband was missing. Like, I don't know what teeth my husband has fillings and or is missing.
00;26;05;13 - 00;26;33;20
Megan
And so, trying to recreate that information is really hard. And you're working on kinship matching at that point for the DNA matching because you're not doing direct samples. Right. You don't have the missing persons sample. You have their family members. And so, it depends sort of on which relationships you have to the missing person available in order to actually make that identification.
00;26;33;29 - 00;26;42;03
Megan
And if you don't have the right family members, it can become really difficult to get the threshold high enough to actually rely on the DNA.
00;26;43;02 - 00;26;58;15
Eugene
Okay. When you take a DNA sample from a from a whatever, and what if you find a bone or you find a skeleton, whatever. What where are you typically, typically taking the sample from? Are you dissecting the bone or what do you what are you doing?
00;26;58;15 - 00;27;28;00
Megan
So, there's been a lot of studies on this. And the ones that we've had the most success with are teeth. Teeth are really good for a really long time because they're so hard and the DNA is in the root. So, you're like it's protected quite well, but also the load bearing bones. So, your femur, your tibia, the really hard bones, that's where you take a chunk, you know, like an inch or so long.
00;27;29;25 - 00;27;56;13
Megan
And that's usually what we would do. We would try to take a piece of the femur and or a tooth. Where you get into challenges is when you only have a partial body. Like in Cyprus, there was a lot of cases where we only had a skull, or we only had an arm. And so, then you're working on less dense bones, I guess.
00;27;56;26 - 00;28;20;12
Megan
And so, it can be harder to get a viable profile. That's not to say you don't get like in a lot of cases you do, and the technology is just getting better and better and more sensitive. So they're able to do a lot more now than we were back in the days when I was in Bosnia, when it was just really a developing technology.
00;28;20;12 - 00;28;26;23
Megan
But yeah, what you really want, the best ones are the teeth or the femur, tibia, humerus, those kinds of bones.
00;28;27;09 - 00;28;43;27
Eugene
There's obviously going to be a team of people that you're going to be working with. And so, there's, I don't know, anthropologists or archeologists or other scientists. What makes up the entire team for a group like ICMP or something like that?
00;28;44;15 - 00;29;12;23
Megan
And yeah, it depends really on the context. So if you look at the response for the tsunami there, they had because the bodies were really fresh, they had a lot of their pathologists, they had ontologies, photographers, police, probably anthropologists, you know, they had these huge teams of a whole bunch of different experts that were working on the cases.
00;29;13;02 - 00;29;47;27
Megan
But in post-conflict situations where it's often you're dealing with skeletons, the core team that's going out there are anthropologists and archeologists. And then you are supported by the pathologists, the geneticists, the ontology hosts in the analysis phase on the on the end. So, it kind of depends on what the context is, and it depends if there's a criminal investigative aspect to the project.
00;29;47;27 - 00;30;16;10
Megan
So, a lot of the stuff I've worked on has been humanitarian in nature. And so having the police there wasn't necessary, but in cases like Bosnia where the cases are going to a tribunal, you need to have the police and the prosecutor on site as well, because the whole thing is wrapped within the justice system. And so, it the set up.
00;30;16;10 - 00;30;39;15
Megan
That's why at the beginning it's important to have buy in from all the different people because you need to understand what the setup is of the project, to understand the parameters of what you need and to understand even like who needs to be at a site on a particular time and that the steps that you need to go through before you even get to the site, like, do you need to have authorization from the prosecutor's office?
00;30;39;15 - 00;30;46;19
Megan
Maybe depends on the context and what the threshold and the parameters are that you're working with in right.
00;30;46;19 - 00;31;05;26
Eugene
There's a question here and it's, you know, what pre-planning is going on or should be going on for the conclusion to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And actually, I actually I was going to get to that eventually. But actually, I'm curious about pre-planning, like before you get to where you're going. You were just talking about, you know, before you start doing things.
00;31;05;26 - 00;31;09;16
Eugene
So, what kind of pre-planning is there in in these kinds of situations?
00;31;10;05 - 00;31;38;08
Megan
Yeah, I mean, I haven't worked on Ukraine, so I don't know beyond what's in the news. I don't know what they're doing. But I think one of the really important things that is often not done that should be is that data, antemortem data from anybody that's going to fight should be taken because these people are really susceptible to being killed.
00;31;38;12 - 00;32;07;17
Megan
Like if we're frank about it, they're going to the front line. We know that the casualty numbers are really high and like you, you're going to need their information to identify them if something happens and, you know, dog tags are there, but sometimes they get lost. Sometimes you only have part of the body like there's so many other you can take so much information before people go to ease the process on the back end.
00;32;07;26 - 00;32;38;25
Megan
And so, countries do this already. The United States is very good at this because they've had so much experience trying to identify all their past war dead. But there's a lot of other countries that don't do that. They don't collect antemortem data from service people. And I think that is that should change because these people need to be identified if something happens to them and their family have an expectation that remains will be returned to them if the worst happens.
00;32;39;10 - 00;33;11;09
Megan
So, the traceability of people that dies. So, making sure that bodies that are recovered in the field are tagged and the information that's collected about them is done so in a consistent way throughout the spectrum of when they're collected and when they're moved to the mortuary and then when they're buried. And then the information needs to be in a robust data management system, but also the bodies need to be buried in a way that you know who's there.
00;33;11;21 - 00;33;37;16
Megan
And in a lot of cases, what we see is that bodies are buried under temporary markers that are wood or stone or something that isn't going to last. And so, a couple of years later, when the conflict's over and you go back to try and find the people that, you know, you buried, like, you know that they're there somewhere, but you don't know where they are because the markers gone missing.
00;33;37;16 - 00;34;12;09
Megan
And I can't tell you how many times I've walked through cemeteries looking. I know the bodies, they're somewhere, but I can't tell you where specifically it is, because the marker that was used to identify the burial spot has long gone. And yeah, I think, you know, there's things you can do now you can plan for that so that in two years when they're trying to do the recovery and identification work, you don't have to find the body again.
00;34;12;09 - 00;34;13;06
Megan
You know where it is.
00;34;13;23 - 00;34;34;03
Eugene
Well, let's lead into forensic guardians. Okay. So, at some point, what was what was the spark for you that said, hey, I need to I need to start something, you know, on in area and maybe it's maybe some of the things you've just highlighted right now. Like there were ideas like, hey, these are problem areas and maybe I've got a solution for those, but when did that happen for you and?
00;34;34;03 - 00;34;35;15
Eugene
Yeah. How did how did that come about?
00;34;35;26 - 00;35;07;03
Megan
Yeah, I mean, it was a bit of a slow boil because you see the same problems in all the contexts, right? Like the lack of direct reference samples and direct reference information, the lack of traceability of human remains, you see it all across them. And it was just in 2017. Oh, my gosh. Okay. I thought my internet was going out again in 2017.
00;35;08;02 - 00;35;46;20
Megan
Yeah, I just I took the leak, and I finished my contract in Lebanon, and I have two little kids. At that point. They were, I don't know, probably three and six or something. They were little and I was a little tired of hauling them all around the world. And I wanted to see if I could if I could do this, this company that would have the ability to help and to make proactive solutions for all the problems that we were seeing and constantly seeing.
00;35;47;24 - 00;36;08;00
Eugene
Okay. Let me let me show some of that because there's on your well, there's a couple of things that I want to touch on from your website here. And let's talk about the products, because you brought up a couple of things that mean and you've got products. So, one of them is the gravesite. Gravesite markers. So, what's the need for that or what problem does that solve?
00;36;08;26 - 00;36;36;04
Megan
So, this makes it possible to have an affordable, like really affordable way to mark bodies that are being buried with a durable solution. And so, this stick in the ground, you can write on it with a Sharpie and it won't rub off. We're putting QR codes on them so that you can scan it and have a digital footprint of where that that gravesite marker is.
00;36;36;04 - 00;37;10;19
Megan
And you can link it so that you know who is buried under which gravesite marker and their plastic, a UV stabilized plastic. So, it's not like a wooden marker that's going to disintegrate over time. It’s, you know, it's plastic, it's going to last. And it has the ability to really be pushed deep into the ground like that one is or to stand up higher with a tilted face plate so that you can actually see what's, you know, see it from a distance.
00;37;11;15 - 00;37;14;07
Eugene
So, what do people use now? What are they using?
00;37;14;29 - 00;37;41;03
Megan
They're using like would a lot of contexts use? Would they have to like wooden pieces like scrap wood that are nailed together and then it's just written on with a pen or a Sharpie. And then on the other end, like the higher level you have concrete and then you spray paint on with a stencil, the name or the number or whatever information it is that you want to put on there.
00;37;41;14 - 00;38;22;09
Megan
But the wood isn't good because it's not durable and the concrete's not great because it's really expensive and it's hard to move it around and to like actually implanted into the ground. And so with these, the concept is that there it comes in two pieces, so it snaps together and so they can be taken out in the field on your back like you don't you can walk with them in your bag, you don't need to be hauling around a gigantic concrete slab and they just make it a lot easier to actually be able to provide traceability to, human remains that need to be buried and need to be stored.
00;38;22;24 - 00;38;47;04
Megan
Because a lot of contexts, like if we think about conflicts or large scale emergencies where you have a lot of deceased, like the mortuary space is often exceeded really quickly. And so, burying the bodies becomes a real reality very fast. And so, you really need to have a system where you can mark those bodies and you know where they are.
00;38;47;04 - 00;38;57;09
Megan
And you know that that marker is going to still be there in two years when you come back. And the situation is such that you can actually do something and look at those remains and figure out who they are.
00;38;58;06 - 00;39;16;01
Eugene
I'm thinking a situation where, for example, you have a mass grave and there may be thousands of pieces of you know, bone sample evidence, whatever. And how is that typically managed? Is it being a fairly advanced process nowadays, or is it is it still kind of primitive in some cases?
00;39;16;11 - 00;39;40;23
Megan
I mean, I think it's still not where it could be. You know, people do their best with that, the resources that they have. But in a lot of places around the world, Death management's not given the resources that it needs, it's not seen as the priority. So, people end up just doing what they can. They do the best that they can, what they've got, but it's not what it could be.
00;39;41;06 - 00;40;06;16
Megan
And what we're trying to do is give an affordable option to make sure that everybody has the ability to give dignity to the deceased and to make sure that these people that have lost their lives, for whatever reason, are able to be identified and be returned to their families, or at least to have a dignified commemoration and visibility in death.
00;40;07;03 - 00;40;26;05
Eugene
You had also the I can see there's like body bags, there's body tags, and then there's PPE, protective personal equipment. For example, the body tags. I mean, they're different bodies. But what about like, you know, if you find a large bone or a single bone or something like that, like are those tagged as well? Are they how are they identified?
00;40;26;12 - 00;40;59;02
Megan
Yeah, they should be. So, the way that it should work is that each body, an individual body should be tagged as one body. A body part should be tagged as its own unique code or object. And then an individual bone shouldn’t be as its own case as well. They shouldn't be collected together. And I'll put as one because if you are able to map and take photographs of the scene, you potentially can put things back together if you know where they came from.
00;40;59;14 - 00;41;26;15
Megan
And that's why tagging them at the site, at the spot and being able to photograph them and store that information in a digital format is so important because everybody has a phone. So as long as the data is securely stored and you have an easy way to do it, then you give people a chance to make use of data that they may not otherwise be able to use or be able to collect and use.
00;41;27;28 - 00;41;55;01
Megan
And then once like if you're if you're talking about a mass fatality situation where you don't have the capacity to take the remains to the mortuary, often what happens is they're buried. What should be ideal is that it's a big long trench and each case has its own bag and is buried linearly, not as a big clump. Sort of the worst-case scenario is to collect everything without tagging it and dump it in a hole and cover it up.
00;41;55;01 - 00;42;06;10
Eugene
Right? Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I also noticed that you I mean, you told you mentioned QR codes before GIS integration. So, are these all things that you're currently working on? Is that is that the idea?
00;42;06;21 - 00;42;30;04
Megan
Yeah. We, the QR codes are just about ready to go and then we're working on an app that will allow for the GIFs integration so that you can use the geospatial information to help analyze data afterwards and to know where things are buried. Like you'll have a digital footprint of where things are actually buried.
00;42;30;23 - 00;42;49;14
Eugene
You mentioned before about, for example, people like the you did the conflict in Ukraine and stuff like that, people who we know are going to be going into areas of war or they're going to be putting themselves in danger, that they can prepare. And so, like here it says Identity Guardian. So what? What is that about? Can you explain what you're doing there?
00;42;50;07 - 00;43;16;28
Megan
That's the product where we collect, we witness and collect biometric information from people that are in at-risk jobs or have at risk lifestyle. So, this would be what I'm talking about for people are going into Ukraine as soldiers, as service people who where there's a likelihood or chance that something might happen to them. And they may not die, but they may not be able to communicate who they are.
00;43;17;05 - 00;43;45;13
Megan
And so what we do is collect the information and it's witnessed so that we know who it's collected from. And we watch as the collection goes ahead. And then the system is very specific about who can actually access that information. It's not sitting on a cloud somewhere. It's in an accredited lab and it's the person that is giving us the information has to tell us who the information can be released to.
00;43;45;27 - 00;44;14;03
Megan
So, it's not that the police can just use that information to track criminal cases, for instance. It really has to be specific about who can use that information for that specific person. But it gives the ability to work around that issue that we always face of having families have to give us the antemortem information after somebody has died and they're stressed, they can't remember.
00;44;14;14 - 00;44;31;28
Megan
They don't know. Maybe we can't find the best relatives. You know, there's all these challenges that come up when you start involving a family member's memory of a person, and it's just a whole lot easier to identify somebody if you have direct information from them.
00;44;32;20 - 00;44;43;28
Eugene
I'm wondering who is approaching you on stuff like that? Is it being it individuals that are saying, hey, I just I prefer to have this safe? Or do you find that it's also agencies maybe that are saying, hey, look, we got a bunch of people going over, we want to get all these people covered?
00;44;44;10 - 00;45;12;20
Megan
Yeah, we it's kind of a little spattering of both. We have some groups of people like companies that want to do it for their duty of care, to make sure that, you know, they know that they're putting their people into a risky situation and they want to make sure that they're not that they don't have any liability because they've done everything that they can to make sure that they've protected their employees as much as they can.
00;45;13;15 - 00;45;33;25
Megan
But then we also have individuals who are interested in doing it for their own peace of mind, for their families, peace of mind. And they don't want to put the stress of having their families try to remember this information if something happens to them. And like nobody wants to think that they're something's going to happen to them. Nobody wants to think about that.
00;45;33;25 - 00;45;50;19
Megan
But there's you know, there's a lot of people out there that are in jobs or have a lifestyle where it's a possibility. And it's like insurance, right? Like, you hope you never have to use it. But if you do have to use it, you're pretty happy that you've actually got it.
00;45;51;12 - 00;46;06;25
Eugene
I know you were on. I was I was looking on, you know, doing a bit of research and I saw that you were on I don't know if it was a television or news thing, but they were asking you about the Canadian residential school. So, if those are the people that are listening, there are some what can I say?
00;46;06;25 - 00;46;30;24
Eugene
Well, there's some things happening in Canada that happen in Canada a while back with residential schools where some of the indigenous people, their children were sent to these schools and a lot of them have been missing and that sort of thing. So, in this particular case, well, what can you maybe just give me some background on that and maybe where you think this might be going and what some of the challenges are with the Canadian residential schools?
00;46;31;09 - 00;47;08;25
Megan
Sure. To be transparent, I haven't worked on the residential school issue here. I've been consulted about it by media mostly, but I haven't done any actual work on it. But yeah, I mean, it's a challenge because well, first of all, I mean, the case has spanned such a long period of time, so actually being able to get answers for some of the families that have, you know, like way back like in the late 1800s, that will be hard.
00;47;09;12 - 00;47;49;04
Megan
I mean, it's not impossible, but it will be hard. And or maybe it's but there has been a lot of work that has gone on the residential schools. By the truth and Reconciliation Committee. You know, there's been a lot of historical research that's been done. And I think there's a lot of answers that can potentially come out of a lot more historic research and connecting historic research to what people are finding in the field because right now there's a lot of ground penetrating radar results that are coming out that show potential places of burial.
00;47;50;09 - 00;48;23;10
Megan
You never know for sure until you actually start digging if there's actually something under the ground. But what the air can show you is areas where it's possible that something's there. So, it really narrows down the scope of what you're looking at. But, you know, families and communities need to want to do this because that the recovery and identification process is really long, like it takes years and years.
00;48;23;18 - 00;48;53;19
Megan
And it's to some degree, it's very invasive because you're asking families to dig up their memory of these children, some of which have been missing for decades. And you're asking them to remember what would they have looked like, what clothes would they have been wearing? And that can be really difficult for people if they can't remember or, you know, just in general digging up those memories of something that they may have found some way of getting past.
00;48;54;06 - 00;49;16;17
Megan
That's not to say don't do it, but it's to say that the communities need to want to do it. It needs to be community driven, not from somebody else saying you should do this. The communities need to want to do it because they have to own it and they have to be involved in it and they have to be an integral piece to the whole project because if they're not, it won't work.
00;49;17;08 - 00;49;50;19
Megan
Like you need their information, you need them to help you and to give you context. So yeah, I'm not sure where it's going to go, but I think there's some answers that can come out without going to the exhumation process. There are some families that won't get any information until that an excavation does happen. But yeah, it's the place to start is that historical research.
00;49;50;19 - 00;49;52;28
Megan
And as I understand, I think it is happening now.
00;49;53;20 - 00;50;12;15
Eugene
So, when I started looking into this, I didn't realize I thought they were already exhuming like bodies and there was all these bodies being found. But it sounds like we're just we're getting we're still at that initial point where they have to get the families and the communities and, you know, you mentioned before about the political will and having people do this.
00;50;12;15 - 00;50;24;20
Eugene
So, I mean, politically, I'm assuming that it's obviously a hot topic, but I'm assuming that the government, because of the truth reconciliation stuff that was going on, that they would likely support something like this, they have to support something like this.
00;50;25;19 - 00;50;41;24
Megan
Yeah. I mean, you would hope that they would. Yeah, but it's politics. You never know. You know, there's stuff that can be done through the historical research and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. There was a lot of research that was done. There was a lot of recommendations that came out of that and a lot more research that needs to be done.
00;50;42;06 - 00;51;12;25
Megan
But that's the place to start. And then you move forward from there at the same time, consulting the communities to find out what do they want. And, you know, one of the challenges will be that all the communities won't have the same opinion. You know, they some will want to do it, some won't. And then you have to sort of see where things are and figure out what steps to take for different people, for different communities, like what you do in Vancouver might not be the same thing that you do in Kamloops.
00;51;13;14 - 00;51;23;16
Eugene
Right? So, there may be there may be some cultural differences where you know that they don't maybe they don't want to assume they were just like, Yeah, okay, leave it, leave it at rest and memorialize it.
00;51;24;10 - 00;51;55;01
Megan
Make sure that like these sites where the children are potentially buried or I mean, we know that some are buried there. We just don't know how many that those are memorialized and commemorated and that these children are given a name and given visibility and that their families are given visibility, you know, as much as they want. They may not want visibility, but you really have to know what they want out of the process to be able to help guide what you do.
00;51;55;01 - 00;52;07;25
Megan
And so, it's what I said in the beginning about the parameters and the thresholds like you need to there needs to be a lot of discussion and agreement at the beginning so that you know where you're going and what you want to do.
00;52;08;05 - 00;52;29;08
Eugene
Who would, who would head something like that up. So if, for example, there were going to be now a big project where, you know, people were going to be doing exhumations and I'm assuming it would be a very big job, is there is it is there a federal or a federal agency or do you think they'd come up with a new group of people that were, you know, handpicked to do this sort of thing?
00;52;29;26 - 00;52;30;24
Eugene
How do you think that would happen?
00;52;31;10 - 00;53;04;04
Megan
Yeah, I think that it should be led by the First Nations groups with support from different experts. I don't think that necessarily it I mean, the funding should probably come from the federal government, but I don't think that the federal government should be the ones making the decisions about what the First Nations groups want to do. I think it needs to be owned by the First nations and they bring in the people that they need to support them, whether they're Canadian experts, whether they're international experts.
00;53;04;13 - 00;53;23;14
Megan
You know, there's all sorts of people. There are tons of Canadians. You'd be surprised at how many Canadians there are in this field that are that are supporting missing person’s work. But yeah, I think we need to listen to what they want and let them drive the process.
00;53;23;14 - 00;53;33;15
Eugene
Okay. So, what is next for you? I mean, you're heading up the company and you got a little thing going on, but what's, what's sort of the next big move for Megan and forensic artists.
00;53;33;25 - 00;54;02;13
Megan
Yeah. So now we're really trying to work on the development of the digital automation and the digital aspect of the gravesite markers and the body tags and those products and really to get a robust system out there so that first responders have the ability to use tools that will make their life easier and to just make sure that we have products and services that are making a difference.
00;54;02;13 - 00;54;07;21
Megan
You know, that are helping people to help others. And that's really what we want to do.
00;54;08;13 - 00;54;24;23
Eugene
This question here, I'm just going to bring it up here. But as far as asking and I'll just summarize it, but basically, he's asking about students and gaining experience and what is the best way for them to gain international experience and, you know, get some hands on in your area.
00;54;25;03 - 00;55;01;07
Megan
Yeah. So, there's all sorts of different opportunities out there. A lot of them are volunteer to start like I don't you can't really get away from the volunteer aspect to get into the field, but I know some people have gone through the project in Spain. I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head, but they're working on the Civil War remains and they often have taken volunteers that will help with the recovery of remains in Spain.
00;55;01;07 - 00;55;25;12
Megan
I know that there's several there's opportunities with the Red Cross, the International Committee of the Red Cross as an intern. It's a paid internship in Geneva with the forensic unit there. And that's an excellent way to actually get exposure to a lot of different experiences. And a lot of different work that's going on within the medical, legal, humanitarian forensic action space.
00;55;25;27 - 00;55;50;02
Megan
There's a CFP in Cyprus used to have internship program or like a visiting scientist program that people could apply to. I'm not sure if they have got it back up and running since COVID, but I know that they did have that. And then, you know, it's being curious and just getting out there, talking to people and saying, do you have any opportunities?
00;55;50;02 - 00;56;09;06
Megan
I'm interested, can I help? And it's just really getting in there and yeah, putting yourself on the line. I mean, you really have to be a little bit obnoxious. I would say I was totally obnoxious when I was trying to get into the field about asking people for help. And I think you have to you have to do that a little bit.
00;56;09;06 - 00;56;14;29
Eugene
Yeah. Now you offer it like you offer consulting or training and things like this.
00;56;15;24 - 00;56;35;07
Megan
Yeah, we do training for different organizations. It's just a matter of contacting us and seeing what you need and what we can do to help. And I think our contact information is there on the website. So, we're here, We have a team, it's a small team, but yeah.
00;56;35;17 - 00;57;02;20
Eugene
Yeah, we've, I've got your contact page up here, so folks, if you go to WW forensic guardian Starcom you can reach Megan through the contact and you're also on can I show your LinkedIn thing here. Yeah so, she's also on LinkedIn so you look up Megan best deal you'll see her there and you've got the friend the forensic talks thing here of course as the as what we're doing today so yeah so people can reach out to you and find out more about what you're doing.
00;57;03;18 - 00;57;19;09
Eugene
Yeah. Look big and we're getting out in time. But I think some really interesting work that you're doing. I think it's a great idea. It's a very how can I say it's a hopeful, you know, what you're doing is, you know, making a difference as a company and everything else. And yeah, I wish you all the best of luck.
00;57;19;09 - 00;57;35;15
Eugene
I think it's cool. I think the product's cool. I think it's a great idea the app and the QR codes and sort of modernizing this this, you know, recovery, human remains and everything and managing all that data. It sounds really cool and sounds kind of exciting and yeah, very, very promising. So, I wish you all the best.
00;57;35;24 - 00;57;38;24
Megan
Thank you. Thank you very much. And thanks for having me on your show. It's been great.
00;57;39;03 - 00;57;44;04
Eugene
Yeah. Thank you. Thank everyone. Cheers. And wish you all a good 2023. Bye.