FBI Evidence Response Teams Join Park Service in Excavation of Civil War-Era Site

Video Transcript

FBI Jacksonville and Tampa Evidence Response Teams partner with the National Park Service to excavate the site of a Civil War-era Confederate POW camp where it is believe over 500 Union soldiers died in the winter of 1864.

Jeffrey Shanks, Archaeologist, National Park Service: We are here excavating in a Civil War-era POW camp where we believe there may be some human remains from prisoners that died here during a small pox epidemic over Christmas in 1864 during the winter. What we've done is we've brought in cadaver dogs who have given us hits in this area indicated the presence or possible presence of human remains. We've come in with ground penetrating radar, which has showed anomalies under the ground which are consistent with graves. And so now what we're doing is we are actually excavating to test those hits to see if they were real to see if we can actually find human remains and prove that there are still burials here.

One of things we've done, too, is partner with the FBI and they've brought in several of their teams in—their forensic teams—to learn about how archaeologists excavate human remains. And the idea is that they can learn things from us, we can learn things from them. So we're hoping to partner and learn from each other and work together.

Lauren Regucci, Special Agent, FBI Jacksonville Division Evidence Response Team Leader: They do things very methodically and meticulously and we do, too, but in different ways and for different reasons. So, this gives an opportunity to see what they do and look at their methods and see if we can translate some of those to our crime scene work.