Episode 35: The Forensic Anthropologist

2024-10-25

In this episode, Warrant Officer Stephné Le Roux of the South African Police Service (SAPS) provides intimate detail of her fascinating work identifying skeletal remains. Frequently, this means determining whether these are perhaps from an ancient burial site or a more recent crime scene. In a country where endemic violence and poverty, migration, substance abuse and other factors tear families apart, many of our dead are unidentified, unclaimed. What is the story they tell?Stephné d...

In this episode, Warrant Officer Stephné Le Roux of the South African Police Service (SAPS) provides intimate detail of her fascinating work identifying skeletal remains.

Frequently, this means determining whether these are perhaps from an ancient burial site or a more recent crime scene. In a country where endemic violence and poverty, migration, substance abuse and other factors tear families apart, many of our dead are unidentified, unclaimed. What is the story they tell?

Stephné discusses the challenges she faces, sharing good ideas to improve the systems that often make her work so challenging. With consistent humour and modesty, she shares detail of the techniques she uses to analyse human remains, and speaks candidly about how her work has influenced her attitude to life.

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