July 2012 Presenter Biographies

James Adcock (Ph. D.)
Dr. Adcock served over twenty years in the U.S. Army primarily as a Special Agent Criminal Investigator conducting criminal investigations in Viet Nam, Panama, Maryland, California, South Carolina and Germany. He progressed from a basic investigator to Special Agent in Charge and Operations Officer supervising as many as 20 investigators. In 1976, he completed a one-year Fellowship in Forensic Medicine at the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.  Soon after retirement, Dr. Adcock began working as the Chief Deputy Coroner for Investigations in Richland County, Columbia, SC.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2001 and has taught at the University of New Haven and Coppin State University in Baltimore. While at the University of New Haven, Dr. Adcock was a fellow with the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science where he designed and taught a Cold Case Workshop that trained detectives from all over the country on the concepts of cold case investigations. He supervised forensic science graduate students as they evaluated cold cases from numerous police departments. It was this experience at the institute that led Dr. Adcock to co-author a book “Cold Cases: An Evaluation Model with Follow-up Strategies for Investigators” (CRC Press, 2011). In 2004, Dr. Adcock was a visiting professor at the Yale Law School as part of a joint venture between Yale and the University of New Haven to help design the mission statement and a case processing protocol for the newly created Connecticut Innocence Commission.   Presently, Dr. Adcock is teaching part-time at Clayton State University and is the director of the Center for Justice Studies. He is also the Series Editor for “The Law Enforcement Guide to Investigations” (Jones & Bartlett), co-authoring the first book of the series, “Death Investigations” (2012). He conducts cold case training for various police agencies and consults on the death investigation process.

Donna C. Boyd (Ph. D., D-ABFA)
Eminent Professor of Anthropological Sciences at Radford University; Co-Director, Radford University Forensic Science Institute; adjunct member, Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Western District. Dr. Donna Boyd received a Ph. D in Anthropology with a concentration in Physical (Biological) Anthropology in 1988 from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. In 2009, she was named a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropologists. Since 1989, she has taught at Radford University and is currently Eminent Professor of Anthropological Sciences and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Radford University Forensic Science Institute. Dr. Boyd has conducted bioarchaeological research on human remains from archaeological sites as well as modern forensic cases for over 20 years. She is the author of over 70 publications and technical reports and over 70 papers on human bone presented at professional meetings.  As an Adjunct member of the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner-Western District (VOCME), she has
completed over 80 forensic case reports for this office (including numerous child abuse cases
and expert testimony on these cases) and is a specialist in human bone identification. She has also assisted this office with their NIJ grant “Using DNA Technology to Identify the Missing” (cold cases). Dr. Boyd is the recipient of numerous awards honoring her teaching and research, including the 1998 Donald N. Dedmon Professorial Excellence Award from the Radford University Foundation, the
Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (2006), and
the United States CASE/Carnegie Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2006). Dr. Boyd
serves on SWGANTH committees on Trauma Interpretation and Education in Forensic
Anthropology. She is also a Fellow of AAFS and a member of the U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Service’s DMORT(Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team), through which she was deployed to Haiti in February, 2010, to recover, analyze, and identify American and Haitian-American earthquake victims. Her current research is on the macroscopic and microscopic skeletal signatures of antemortem and perimortem pediatric trauma and microevolutionary change in the human mandible.  She, along with her husband, received a two year grant in 2009 from NIJ to sponsor a series of workshops entitled “Innovations in Forensic Science.”

C. Clifford (Cliff) Boyd (Ph. D.; RPA)
Professor of Anthropological Sciences at Radford University; Co-Director, Radford University Forensic Science Institute; adjunct member, Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Western District.  Dr. Boyd received his Ph.D. in Anthropology (Archaeology) from the University of Tennessee and is an Archaeologist (specializing in Forensic Archaeology) who has taught at Radford University for over 25 years.  In conjunction with his wife, he has completed over 50 forensic cases in consultation with the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and regularly conducts training workshops for law enforcement in Search, Recovery and Excavation of covert burials.  Dr. Boyd has conducted archaeological and skeletal analyses of prehistoric and historic sites in Tennessee and Virginia over the past 34 years, resulting in authoring over 130 publications or technical reports and presentations of over 100 papers at professional conferences.  His current research focus is the application of archaeological and anthropological theory to Forensic Anthropology. Dr. Boyd has supervised numerous geophysical remote sensing investigations of both historic and forensic sites, including the search for missing WWII Marines from Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. He is trained in the use of GPR, proton magnetometer, and electrical resistivity equipment and is regularly called upon to assist law enforcement agencies in their searches for clandestine graves. He has recently become a member of DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team) Region III with the United States Department of Health and Human Services (National Disaster Medical System).  Dr. Boyd serves on the SWGANTH committee “Detection and Recovery” of forensic human remains and is an Associate Member of the American Association of Forensic Sciences (Physical Anthropology section). He recently (2008) received the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia’s Outstanding Professor of the Year award.  

David Baldwin (D-ABMDI)
David presently is assigned as a Medicolegal Death Investigator for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Tidewater District.  He is a Diplomate with the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators.  He started his career in law enforcement in 1976, joining the Virginia Beach Police Department.  After 3 years as a Patrol Officer, he was promoted to Detective, where he worked Burglary before being transferred to Robbery/Homicide.  In 1983, he became a Special Agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service.  Before retiring from N.C.I.S., he split his career between the Criminal, the Fraud, and the Counterintelligence Directorates.  He received awards from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a Commendation from the Director of the FBI, and was named as the N.C. I. S. Foreign Counterintelligence Special Agent of the Year.  As a collateral responsibility with N.C.I.S., he was the Team Leader for the Norfolk Field Office - Major Case Response Team, which was deployed to the Pentagon on 9/11.  David has a Bachelor of Science from S.U.N.Y Brockport in Sociology/Criminal Justice and an Associate of Applied Science from Broome Community College in Law Enforcement.

Jarrod Burks (Ph. D.)
Director of Archaeological Geophysics at Ohio Valley Archaeology, Inc., a small cultural resource management firm based in Columbus, Ohio.  He received his BA in anthropology from the University of Illinois (1993) and his doctorate in anthropology from the Ohio State University in 2004, with a dissertation focused on studying Middle Woodland period (circa A. D. 250) Hopewell households.  As part of his job at OVAI, Dr. Burks conducts geophysical surveys on all manner of archaeology sites, primarily in the eastern U.S., but he has also worked in California and Arizona, and as far afield as Guadalcanal searching for the remains of WWII MIAs.  In the past five years, he has surveyed a wide range of prehistoric Native American sites (including Cahokia, Hopewell Mound Group,
and Serpent Mound) and historic-era sites, including El Presidio in San Francisco, Fort Monroe, Virginia, the Blennerhassett Island Estate in West Virginia, the John Rankin House in Ripley, Ohio, and the Eddie Rickenbacker boyhood home in Columbus, Ohio.  Dr. Burks is a regular instructor for the National Park Service’s annual geophysical prospection workshop.

Andi Damewood (M. S.)
Andi Damewood is an Information Technology Administrator with the Law Enforcement Innovation Center. In this position, she supports the IT needs of LEIC staff and programs and helps implement new technologies to meet new challenges as the Center’s IT needs grow and change. She supports programs such as the National Forensic Academy (NFA), the NFA Investigator Virtual Reality, and our Cybercrime Investigations for Law Enforcement training. Before joining the LEIC, she was the Program Coordinator and IT Administrator for the LiveOnline@UT system at The University of Tennessee. She has extensive experience building and supporting the infrastructure needed to run online programs and support end users. She has developed and delivered training to hundreds of students, faculty, and staff members at UT as well. Andi received her Master of Science in Communications from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She also has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She is currently working on her Ph. D. in Adult Learning at the University of Tennessee.

Andrew Foy (Ph. D)
Dr. Foy received his Ph.D. in Geospatial and Environmental Analysis in 2011 from Virginia Tech. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geospatial Sciences at Radford University. His major fields of research and training include: GIS for Emergency Response and Asset Management, GIS Uncertainty, Statistics for Geospatial Data, Biogeography and Physical Geography. He has worked as GIS coordinator and Developer since 2004 for the City of Radford and assisted with a National Geospatial Intelligence Grant with Virginia Tech from 2006-2009. He is
currently directing training and research on RU’s LiDAR system.

Kevin Harth (Special Agent)
Special Agent Harth began a law enforcement career in 1985 with a local police department. In 1989 he was appointed to the Virginia Department of State Police. He was  promoted to Special Agent in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in 2003. Harth began his career with  a focus on computer related criminal activity and data recovery. Harth was selected to become an
evidence technician for BCI.  He graduated from the Virginia DFS Academy in 2006 and is also certified by the IAI as a certified crime scene examiner.  Agent Harth has served as the primary evidence tech for the Norris Hall scene during the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, as well as many other homicides and police related shooting incidents.  Agent Harth was trained by Leica Geosystems to operate the ScanStation C-10 in 2010.  BCI uses the scanner primarily for violent crime scene documentation.  It has proven to be a valuable tool for trajectory analysis.  BCI has also used it to document aircraft crashes and covert burial sites.  The C-10 has greatly improved the detail in which BCI can document three dimensional details.

Rhett Herman (Ph. D.)
Professor of Physics, Radford University.  Dr. Herman received his doctorate in Physics from Montana State in 1996 and is a specialist in geophysical remote sensing (ground penetrating radar, soil resistivity, and proton magnetometer).  He has conducted research on depth of sea ice in Barrow, Alaska, as well as the use of the Ground Penetrating Radar on archaeological and
forensic sites in Alaska, Virginia, and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. His research has led to over two dozen presentations and publications on remote sensing. He has taught Physics and Astronomy at Radford University for 14 years.  In 2007, the Radford University Foundation awarded Dr. Herman the Donald N. Dedmon Professorial Excellence Award.

Richard H. Walton (Ed. D)
Richard Walton has over thirty-five years of law enforcement experience as a deputy sheriff and district attorney’s investigator in California, where he gained extensive experience and expertise in homicide, arson, white-collar crime, elder abuse, and fraud investigations. He earned his Master’s Degree in Education in 1978 and is currently an associate professor of criminal justice for Utah State University Eastern.  Beginning in the early 1980’s, Walton re-investigated perhaps America’s oldest active homicide case, a series of events set in the mid-1920’s. His 13-year effort identified a surviving killer and earned a posthumous pardon on the grounds of innocence for a Native American who had spent over 40 years in prison and on parole for crimes he did not commit. It is perhaps the first of its kind in American legal history.  Walton has presented on the topic of reinvestigation of cold case homicides to law enforcement and forensic venues for more than two decades, including the FBI Academy, The American Academy of Forensic Sciences, National Institute of Justice, Pennsylvania State Homicide Investigator’s Association, California Criminalists Institute, International Association for Identification, Vidocq Society, and others.  Dr. Richard Walton received his Doctor of Education degree from the University of San Francisco in 2005, writing his academic dissertation on identification of solvability factors in cold case homicide investigation. His is the first such academic research in this field and is being utilized by law enforcement and academic researchers internationally. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and member of the Vidocq Society, and author of “Cold Case Homicide: Practical Investigative Techniques,” (CRC Press, LLC published in June, 2006) as well as numerous journal and professional articles.