Anthropologist Discovers the Story Behind the Skeleton

May 6, 2009— -- Forensic anthropologist Mary Manhein analyzes human remains and helps law enforcement discover the person behind the bones, determining how their lives ended and earning her the nickname "The Bone Lady."

She loves to solve puzzles. And she's pretty good at it.

"I can look at the pubic bones and say that he is still a young person here," she said, holding a bone. "I can look at this area here and tell that he is quite young... I can tell you he's 5-foot-7 or so... I can tell by the fact that the bones are all fused in this area here that he is an adult, and he's over 18... You are beginning to get an age range here you are beginning to minimize."

"He's white," she said, speculating the race of the human remains. "Paranasal opening, kind of tall tinted, nasals, fairly straight face."

The bone lady isn't always cooped up in her lab. She is constantly on the go.

The day "Nightline" showed up at her lab at Louisiana State University, Manhein sped out of the door before she could sit down for the interview.

She had received a call from the coroner in Morgan City, La., about 90 minutes away. Human remains had been found near some railroad tracks, and the coroner needed Manhein and her team to come examine them.

Once at the site, Manhein and her assistants delicately started sifting through the dirt, finding more and more bones as they went.

"Our first goal is identification," she said. "Absolutely, we want to identify the person, and only after the person is identified can law enforcement go from there. We're just one stage in many stages of a case like this."

Manhein seems to welcome her grab and go routine.

"You grab who's available, you grab the tools that are always ready and waiting for you, and you're out the door," she said. "So the minute we're called we try and scramble in 30 minutes."

She arrived so quickly at the Morgan City scene that Kenny Ledet, the workman who had found the bones just that morning, was still there.

"So as I was walking, I saw a bone, you know just high and dry on the ground," he said. "White bone, I picked it up and couldn't recognize it... for some reason I did like this and put them by my side, and it clicked. It clicked because they were about the same size."

Ledet was stunned.

"I was at a loss for words," he said. "The first thing that come to my mind was, poor soul, he's got a family somewhere who are going crazy. And that's the part that's bothering me the most is who is it?"