Hurricane Katrina, Space Shuttle Columbia, 9/11.

All mass casualty incidents on which David Boyer, coordinator of the Accelerated Studies for Adults Program (ASAP) criminal justice program, has lent his expertise.

“There remain 180 people still reported missing [following Katrina],” said Boyer, who was appointed to the Hurricane Victim DNA Identification Expert Group, Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, in November 2005, after serving as DNA evidence collection team leader in St. Gabriel, La., and Gulfport, Miss.

The expert group—which also counts FBI personnel and the medical examiner for the World Trade Center among its members—convenes every quarter “to review the latest findings and make recommendations as appropriate,” according to Boyer.

“More than 40 recovered bodies have yet to be identified,” said Boyer. “The environmental conditions are what make [recovering and identifying bodies] more challenging.”

Boyer came to Keuka from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, a component of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Rockville, Md.). The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) is a tri-service agency of the Department of Defense (DoD) specializing in pathology consultation, education and research. AFIP maintains 22 subspecialty departments with a combined workforce of more than 820 personnel, including more than 120 pathologists and other scientists. Boyer was the program manager for the DoD DNA Reference Specimen Collection Program and director of operations of the DoD DNA Repository from 1997 through 2006.

He was responsible for overseeing the collection of DNA from military personnel (all service men and women are required to provide a DNA sample as a condition of their employment), as well as storage of that DNA (there are more than five million DNA samples contained in the repository), safeguarding the privacy of donors, and maintaining the database.

According to Boyer, a complete autopsy is conducted on any soldier killed in combat. His or her body is recovered from the battlefield and sent to Dover, Delaware, where the autopsy is performed. A casualty report is filed with the Pentagon and DNA samples are retrieved by the Department of Defense for identification purposes, and compared to the reference on file.

“Even if fingerprints or dental records confirm the identity, a DNA profile is still generated as confirmation,” said Boyer, who holds a B.S. in sociology from the University of Maryland and Master of Forensic Sciences degree from George Washington University. He completed a one-year Forensic Medicine Fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

“There’s a huge amount of satisfaction in successfully identifying [a soldier],” said Boyer. “It’s not just a service that is provided, but an obligation that we have.”

The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner is called upon by other federal agencies including the FBI, State Department, and National Transportation Safety Board, which is how Boyer came to help on his first mass casualty: Eygpt Air 990 in 1999. Egypt Air 990 was an international flight from New York to Cairo, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, south of Nantucket Island, Mass.

“Our lab was responsible for evidence collection of DNA material—blood, soft tissue, bone, and teeth,” said Boyer, a graduate of the FBI National Academy and the NTSB Aircraft Accident Investigation Course.

Prior to Eygpt Air, Boyer had worked primarily on single death cases.

“Unlike the [military personnel], we didn’t have references from which to compare the 217 passengers and crew on board the aircraft,” said Boyer. “The airline is responsible for setting up family assistance centers where they give briefings to the families and collect personal effects suitable for sampling—hairbrushes, toothbrushes, used razors, clothing. We take those items, isolate biological material and generate a DNA profile.  When we have a closed population, we know who we are looking for.”

In the case of United Flight 93, which went down in Shanksville, Pa., on 9/11, Boyer said there were 44 members on board the plane and 40 DNA profiles were matched. The remaining four—of the terrorists—“went beyond the scope of our mission and were turned over to the FBI for criminal investigation.”

Prior to working with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Boyer was a criminal investigator in the U.S. Army, and has more than 20 years investigative and management experience, specializing in death investigations.

He has lectured throughout the country to various local, state, federal, and foreign interests on matters of DNA reference specimen collection and evidence collection in mass fatalities.

As criminal justice program coordinator for Keuka’s ASAP, Boyer is responsible for recruiting, hiring, training and evaluating adjunct instructors for the Bachelor of Science in criminal justice systems and the Master of Science in criminal justice administration.

“Much of my time is spent scheduling instructors for the various criminal justice courses,” said Boyer.

He is also responsible for curriculum review.

“With my background in forensic sciences, I hope to develop new forensic science courses that are appropriate for integration into our criminal justice curriculum,” said Boyer. “I am also focusing on course development that is suitable for online delivery.”

-- Tanya Cornell-Kestler