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William R. Maples
By: Kristin Petroske
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Born and Raised
• He was born in Dallas, Texas on August 7, 1937• As a young man he road shotgun in a funeral
parlor’s ambulance, in a race for the rights to the bodies
• His experiences doing that helped him with his career later on
• First became interested in the dead as young boy after a neighbor, who was a deputy sheriff, showed him autopsy pictures of Bonnie and Clyde Parker
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Bumps and Bogies of Academic Life
• He graduated from the University of Texas, completing a doctorate in 1967
• He worked in graduate school under Tom McKern (a physical anthropologist)
• He taught for 2 years at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville
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His Cases
• His most historically important cases were:– President Zachary Taylor– Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family– Francisco Pizarro; a Spanish explorer– Medgar Evers (a civil rights leader)– Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man)
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President Zachary Taylor
• In 1991, Dr. Maples, lead a team which exhumed President Zachary Taylor from his tomb in Louisville, Kentucky. The purpose was to determine if he had been poisoned, as some thought at the time.
• Test results showed that he had not been.
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Czar Nickolas II (and family)
• In 1992, Dr. Maples and a team of forensic specialists were invited to Ekaterinburg, Russia to study skeletal remains which the Russians had identified as the Romanovs; a Russian Royal Family, and entourage, murdered in 1918. The American team identified them as Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, three of his children, his physician, and three of his servants.
• This was later proved by DNA testing• This was Dr. Maples' fourth important historical
case.
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Francisco Pizarro
• In 1984, Dr. Maples went to Lima, Peru, where he confirmed that remains found in two boxes in a crypt in the Cathedral of Lima, belonged to Francisco Pizarro; the Spanish
• In addition, it was proved that the remains that were removed from the crypt previously could not have been those of Pizarro.
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Medgar Evers
• Mr. Evers's body was dug up and re-examined to provide evidence leading to the 1994 conviction of a white supremacist, Byron De La Beckwith, almost 31 years after the murder
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Joseph Merrick
Dr. Maples examined the gruesome skeleton of “the Elephant Man”
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Death Finally Catches Up
• Dr. Maples’ was about to go examine the supposed body of Christopher Columbus but before he could do it he passed away
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Bibliography
• Dead Men Do Tell Tales
• http://maples-center.ufl.edu/wrmaples.html