DATE: APR 8, 2014

TIME: 7:00 PM-9:00 PM

LOCATION: TED DAIGLE AUDITORIUM, FREDERICTON, NB, CANADA

What happens when we apply modern forensic science to some of Canada’s oldest and most notorious murders?

The Anthropology Department and Goose Lane are pleased to host internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and author Debra Komar on Tuesday, April 8 at 7:00 pm in the Ted Daigle Auditorium, St. Thomas University. The event is open to the public, and there will be an opportunity to purchase and have books signed following the talk.

In a four-book series using cases pulled from historic archives—crimes committed in the 1800s—Komar reveals how cutting-edge investigative methods are rewriting our nation’s legal history. The crimes may be old but the questions they raise continue to echo through our courtrooms to this day.

The first in the series, The Ballad of Jacob Peck (2013), examines whether the incendiary sermons of an itinerant preacher led to a brutal murder in 1805.  In her latest book, The Lynching of Peter Wheeler, footprints and blood analysis prove that Canada executed an innocent man in 1896.  The third installment in the series, The Bastard of Fort Stikine (2015), uses ballistics and crime-scene reconstruction to solve a 173-year-old unsolved murder, while the final book, Black River Road (2016), revisits the case of a renowned architect convicted of multiple murders to answer a provocative question: is everyone capable of murder?

Drawing on her twenty years as a forensic investigator, Komar gives a fascinating public presentation that uses the past to show how far Canada has come in our search for justice.

The Lynching of Peter Wheeler, available March 25th, explores the 1896 murder of Annie Kempton and consequent execution of Peter Wheeler in Bear River, Nova Scotia—one of the first cases to use forensic evidence in the courtroom. Komar re-examines the murder and observes how powerful forces, particularly the media, influence the players and the judicial process. She reveals how Wheeler was the victim of a state-sanctioned lynching, executed for a crime he didn’t commit.

Komar has worked in the US, UK, and Canada for the past 20 years, specializing in cold case homicides. She has investigated human-rights violations for the United Nations and Physicians for Human Rights. Shifting careers, Komar now applies modern forensic science to some of Canada’s oldest and most notorious murders. Her first historical crime work, The Ballad of Jacob Peck, was released to critical acclaim in 2013.