The Bone Whisperer

Late Professor Was Pioneering Forensic Anthropologist
by Karen Shih ’09 | photo illustration by Kelsey Marotta ’14 It was a Friday night when the police showed up at the Kerley house, carrying a cadaver. Ellis Kerley, the man they were looking for, wasn’t home. Instead, they found his wife, Mary, and young daughter, Amy. “Mom said, ‘No, no, no, we’re not taking the remains here,’” recalls Amy Kerley Moorhouse ’88. But there was nowhere else to put them. Her father’s lab at the University of Maryland was closed for the weekend, and the body had been shipped all the way from Chicago. The only option left: Store it in the basement until he got home. This situation would be unusual for anyone but Kerley (right), a trailblazing forensic anthropologist whose expertise in identifying bodies—sometimes from just a sliver of bone—made him a trusted authority internationally and gave him a role in some of the most important events of the 20th century.



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Lee Tune
Fantastic profile!