William R. Maples

By: Kristin Petroske

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

Joseph Merrick

Dr. Maples examined the gruesome skeleton of “the Elephant Man”

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

Bibliography

• Dead Men Do Tell Tales

• http://maples-center.ufl.edu/wrmaples.html