The remains of a Black male with a bullet lodged in his left shoulder have been recovered by the team searching for, excavating and analyzing skeletal remains found in a mass grave of possible Tulsa Race Massacre victims.
The announcement was made Friday afternoon, the last day of excavation, although forensic analysis will continue for a few weeks until a final report can be given in about a month.
Upon analysis in the on-site cemetery lab, lead forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield confirmed the excavated remains to be a male of African descent, aged 30s to 40s, with a bullet lodged in his left shoulder. Stubblefield also found associated trauma, including projectile damage, although she is still determining the exact nature of the damage.
“He has multiple projectile wounds, it affects his cranium and possibly his left arm,” explained Stubblefield. “Determining the rest of the wounds will take more time. We are dealing with X-rays and dissection of the soil away from the bone so I can see what metallic scatters are directly in association with bone, and what are remnants of the probable cranial projectile.”
The man was found in an individual grave shaft within a row of infant burials, but at a substantially deeper depth. Kary Stackelbeck, Oklahoma’s state archaeologist and lead of the project, noted the oddity of an older male being purposely placed in a section of the potter’s field that seems to be reserved for infants and juveniles.
Stubblefield said she could not identify the bullet, but that a very preliminary search confirmed it is not recent, nor is it from the Civil War.
Thus far, this is the only individual recovered with a gunshot wound, but the forensic anthropologist says she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of more. There are 10 more remains to analyze.
“The probability of finding additional trauma that is not ballistic is lower,” acknowledged Stubblefield. “The individual with the gunshot wound is well-preserved, others are not so well preserved. If they had sharp force trauma, it’s very hard to tell on brittle bone. You touch the bones two to three times and then they disintegrate.”
Stubblefield said she will continue to clean the bones and use radiography and visual inspection for any evidence of gunshot wounds, but “other forms of trauma take a lot more time.”
“Just because we haven’t seen trauma so far doesn’t mean they aren’t in the sample,” she said. “Your skeleton is not always harmed by the way you got shot.”
Of the 9 remains analyzed thus far, Stubblefield has been able to collect DNA from the petrous temporal bone at the base of the skill. Incredibly, she said, every single burial has had at least one intact petrous temporal bone to collect a “typical” specimen from.
After a total of 20 excavated graves from October 2020 to June 2021, the team will stop work in the cemetery. After the forensic analysis is concluded in three to four weeks, a recommendation will be made on whether to search the cemetery a third time. Searches of two other Tulsa locations where massacre victims are believed to have been buried are planned.
Photo: The team proccessing reamins from the grave site. Credit: 1921Graves