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Dr. Emily Craig - The lady behind the cause.
I have known Dr.
Emily Craig for about 6 years now. Been through a lot with her TV crews,
press conferences, a funeral (30 years late) flew to LA and even shopped
Rodeo Drive as we rode the media wake of the Tent Girl
identification.
I worried as she left for New York to help with
DMORT duties after 9-11. I prayed for her safety each day.
I
remember the day I heard from her when she "did it our way" and went
online to identify Letitia Luna.
Dr. Craig has been the forensic
anthropologist for the state medical examiner’s office of Kentucky since
1994. And Kentucky now has one of the best Medical Examiners systems in
the nation. With a state wide database containing biological profiles of
all of the unidentified victims found in the State during the past 30
years.
Kentucky has become one of the few states that a potential
match, anywhere in the state, can be reviewed with a single e-mail.
She has been an advisory member of the Doe Network for some time
now. She has promoted and defended our efforts for "the cause" on more
than one occasion. And has been the source of invaluable advice more times
than I can count. I have always known her to be a "matriarch" of the
cause.
In a quote from a letter from Dr. Craig she has this to say
about our efforts. "Solving the problem of cold cases is difficult without
some sort of outreach and awareness program...and the occasional
exhumation. The efforts initiated by the Doe Network and other websites
are the only thing that seems to be working for now. Their tenacious file
searches, facial reconstructions and drawings are obviously not front-line
efforts at victim identification (even though project EDAN is having
positive results.) These are last ditch efforts to give the victims a name
after everything else has failed."
Dr. Craig was instrumental in
the establishment of the Kentucky state Web-site for their unidentified deceased.
Dr. Craig recently
finished up her book, of which I have had the pleasure of a peek, called
"Teasing Secrets from the Dead". published by C rown
division of Random House books.It is a collection of tales from her
adventures through her career from the "Body Farm" to Waco and the World
Trade Center. Her book will be in full release in the fall of this year ,
but pre sales have began already on Amazon. She has promised me an
autographed copy of the book, but I couldn’t help but to order another
anyway.
Dr. Craig has once again managed to amaze me. Not that it
is out of character for her, but again she has shown her devotion to the
cause. She has pledged 100% of her personal profits from book sales to
charities that support victim identification. That alone is reason enough
for many of us who also devote much time to snap up a copy. But I can say
with great confidence, anyone interested in the cause will enjoy this book
and at the same time be aiding the cause.
In light of her
contribution to the cause I'll take every opportunity to promote the book,
as the unidentified victims are the primary beneficiaries. So I hope all
of you will pick up a copy...and inside you will find that she spoke very
highly of the Doe Network volunteers.
Besides the book itself, you
can also hear more about Dr Craig's work in a detailed radio interview
recorded last fall with Morehead State University.
"Thanks Emily....for
your contributions to a better tomorrow!"
Author: Todd
Matthews
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