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Searching for the IRA Disappeared: Ground-Penetrating Radar Investigation of a Churchyard Burial Site, Northern Ireland

NCJ Number
212654
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 50 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2005 Pages: 1430-1435
Author(s)
Alastair Ruffell Ph.D.
Date Published
November 2005
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article describes a case in which a noninvasive, nondestructive means was used to examine the accuracy of police intelligence regarding the cemetery burial site of a victim of terrorist abduction and murder in Northern Ireland some 30 years earlier.
Abstract
The method for investigating the burial site was critically important, because the suspected site was in a cemetery located a few hundred meters from a nationalist housing estate, whose residents might misinterpret the humanitarian intentions of a security force they did not trust. A MALA RAMAC ground-penetrating radar system was used to examine the ground conditions and assess the likelihood of a burial or reburial any time from 1972 to the time of the investigation (2003). Unprocessed and processed 400 MHz data showed the presence of a collapse feature above and around a known 1970s burial, with no similar collapse above the suspect location. Processed 100 MHz data showed a series of multiples in the known burial, with no similar features in the suspect location. Processed 100 MHz lines defined the shape of the collapse around the known burial to 2 m depth, together with the geometry of the platform (1 m depth) the gravedigger used in the 1970s to construct the site. In addition, processed 100 MHz data showed both the dielectric contrast in and internal reflection geometry of the oil imported above the known grave. The data obtained enabled the reconstruction of the sequence, geometry, difference in infill, and infill direction of the grave constructed 30 years earlier. An additional day of data processing established that the suspect body could not be in the suspected gravesite. Subsequently, the missing person's body was found some distance from the examined cemetery site. 5 figures and 17 references