Bones claimed by a UC Santa Barbara anthropologist to be those of a missing teenager turn out to be not human, but animal, most likely from a cow. Was a fraud perpetrated on a grieving mother?

The latest, but hopefully the last, in the long-running saga involving Danielle Kurin.

A 2018 debris flow in Montecito, California killed more than 20 people and destroyed many homes.

Note: This article is reprinted from “Balter’s Blog”

On July 22 of last year, former University of California, Santa Barbara anthropology professor Danielle Kurin went public with claims that she and her undergraduate students had found remains of the missing teenager Jack Cantin, who had disappeared on January 9, 2018 during a major mudslide and debris flow in the Santa Barbara suburb of Montecito. Kurin, along with Jack's mother Kim--who had never given up the search for her missing son--gave a number of interviews to print, TV, and online media about the finds. Kurin told reporters that she was "90% certain" the bones belonged to Jack.

The Santa Barbara Sheriff's office (which includes the county coroner) was taken by surprise by the announcement, and had to ask Kurin to provide details. Kurin gave them a one-page summary of her findings, whereupon the Sheriff announced that it would launch its own investigation into what up to then had been classified as a "missing person" case.

On July 12 of this year, after nearly a full year of investigation that included forensic reports and DNA analysis, the case was declared closed. Conclusion: The bones Kurin and her team had found were not human, but belonged to a non-human animal species, most likely cow.

Over the past few weeks, in response to California Public Records Act requests from me and a local Santa Barbara reporter, the Sheriff has begun releasing the relevant investigative documents, which were kept confidential while the inquiry was ongoing. More documents may be coming soon, but those already made public add up to a convincing case that Kurin never had any basis to claim that she had found the missing teenager. The question remains whether Kurin knew that all along, but claimed she had found Jack to help her with her bid for tenure at UCSB, which her own anthropology department had recommended against.

If she did know, then she has perpetrated a fraud against Jack's mother Kim, the Montecito and Santa Barbara communities,  and her own UCSB colleagues and students. More than 20 people were killed in the 2018 disaster. While most of their bodies were found, the remains of Jack, along with a two-year child, have yet to be found.

Note: Neither Kim Cantin's attorney nor forensic anthropologist Rick Snow (mentioned below) agreed to provide any comment on the record for this post. However, Raquel Zick, the Sheriff's spokesperson, told me that the department was satisfied that the remains found by Kurin's team did not belong to Jack Cantin, and that the missing person case would remain open.

I began expressing my own doubts about Kurin's claims a few months after the announcement, when developments in a bogus $18 million defamation suit Kurin had filed against me for my reporting about her long history of misconduct and abuses made it possible. For background, here are links to my reporting on the Jack Cantin case:

-- The Strange Case of the Montecito Mudslide Human Remains

-- New evidence suggests former UC Santa Barbara anthropology professor Danielle Kurin exploited a grieving mother and vulnerable students in her bid to get tenure. Now she has resigned.

-- California Public Records Act documents provide new insights into the departure of Danielle Kurin from UC Santa Barbara

-- Still more evidence that disgraced @ucsantabarbara archaeologist Danielle Kurin exploited a mother’s grief to try to get tenure—and that the university administration knew, or should have known, she was doing it.

And, for reference to what I discuss below, here are the key documents that the Santa Barbara Sheriff has now released. While there are some (by and large unnecessary) redactions, the Sheriff has now agreed not to redact the names of Jack Cantin, Kim Cantin, or Danielle Kurin, given that they are already in the public domain.

-- The report of Officer C. Biedinger on the Sheriff-Coroner Investigation, release date Jul 12, 2022✎ EditSign.

-- Danielle Kurin's "Fast Fact Forensic Report" dated July 16, 2021✎ EditSign.

-- Report of forensic anthropologist Rick Snow of Knoxville, TN✎ EditSign

-- Miscellaneous documents including the key DNA testing report by Astrea Forensics ✎ EditSign

As these documents have been publicly released, they can now be shared and disseminated freely. We are hoping for additional documents including Kurin's more detailed forensics report, which in the end was reportedly rejected by the Sheriff-Coroner for not being conclusive. In addition, I previously reported on a lawsuit, now dismissed, that Kim Cantin filed against the Sheriff and the County of Santa Barbara for allegedly violating her rights by holding onto some of the remains too long, as the investigation proceeded. The Complaint in that suit✎ EditSign also provides a lot of detail, especially from Kim's point of view, and provides considerable evidence about the role Danielle Kurin played in convincing Kim (and her students) that other experts, such as forensic anthropologist Rick Snow, were wrong and she was right about her interpretation of the remains. It is recommended reading.

The investigator's report reveals there was never any evidence to support Kurin's claims that she had found Jack Cantin.

This 12-page, single-spaced document provides a detailed account of the investigation that the Sheriff-Coroner conducted beginning in May 2021, when Kim Cantin first approached the department with some bone fragments that Kurin and her students had found, and May 2022, when the investigator was informed of Astrea's DNA results. Some key details:

-- After Kurin and her team found two fragments they thought were bone on May 10, 2021, Kurin took the fragments to her lab to analyze rather than report them to the coroner, as required by California law. Kim Cantin then contacted the Sheriff's office, and brought the fragments to the department the following day.

-- The Sheriff-Coroner investigators were dubious from the beginning that the bones were human, and in one case, that of an alleged toe bone, thought they might actually be plant remains. At the same time, the investigators began to explore possible DNA analysis of the material, and obtained a DNA sample from Kim to use as a comparison.

-- Later that month, the Sheriff-Coroner asked forensic anthropologist Rick Snow, head of Forensic Anthropology Consulting Services in Knoxville, to look at the materials and shipped them to him (one of Snow's reports is linked to above.) Snow thought the supposed toe bone was plant rather than animal, but said he thought the other bone might be human. However, Snow said, that bone appeared to be older than three years, the date of the debris flow.

-- When Kurin and Kim made their public announcements on July 22, 2021, Kurin's report (linked to above) indicated that an additional six pieces of bone had been found during excavations (again, none of these pieces of bone were reported to the Sheriff-Coroner as required by California law.)

-- In August 2021, Kim Cantin agreed to give one bone fragment to investigators to see if the Kern County Coroner's DNA lab, which the Santa Barbara Sheriff often collaborated with, could get DNA out of it. This fragment had been identified by Kurin as coming from Jack Cantin's knee.

-- A few days later, the Kern County lab completed its DNA testing. The amount of DNA in the bone was very low, and the lab concluded that while it could have belonged to a human male, it was also possible that the DNA found was due to contamination from an outside source.

-- At this point investigators began to contact a number of university-based DNA labs around the U.S. to see if they would be willing to do their own analyses (these even included ancient DNA expert David Reich's lab at Harvard University.) None of these labs were willing or able to take on the task, although Astrea Forensics was identified as a suitable lab with experience with degraded and low levels of DNA.

-- In September 2021, the Sheriff-Coroner learned that Kim Cantin was planning to file a lawsuit. This apparently put the investigation in abeyance until January 2022, when Kim agreed to put her lawsuit on hold, and then dismiss it without prejudice (that is, she could file it again if she wanted) while her attorney and the department tried to work out an agreement. That same month, investigators received a more detailed report from forensic anthropologist Rick Snow, who had come to Santa Barbara to look more closely at the bones. Snow again concluded that there was no evidence the bones belonged to Jack Cantin, but that DNA testing would be required to know for sure.

[[Not mentioned in the report: In January of this year, Kurin abruptly resigned her tenured position at UCSB, which she had fought for years to get and was awarded in August 2021. My sources say that the university was doing its own investigation of the matter and that she was forced to resign as a result.]]

-- On March 14, 2022, Kim and her attorney met with investigators to hand over the largest bone fragment for DNA testing by Astrea. According to the report. Kim and her attorney insisted on being present in the vehicle with a Sheriff lieutenant as he took the package to FedX to send to Astrea, so that it would not "be lost in transport."

-- On April 27, 2022, Astrea issued its report, finding that the bone sample was not human, but most likely bovine, with cow being the highest probability (see below.)

-- On May 19, 2022, a coroner's sergeant, along with the Santa Barbara County Counsel, met with Kim and her lawyer to return all the bone fragments. No later than July 12 of this year, the department closed the case and declared that Jack Cantin was still considered a missing person.

Kurin's first report: "The Case for Jack Cantin: FAST FACT Forensic Report”

As mentioned above, Kurin eventually prepared a more detailed report on her findings and submitted it to the Sheriff-Coroner. The Santa Barbara County Counsel is currently reviewing that document, along with certain others, to see if it can be publicly released, and if so, with what redactions. I will report on this "rolling release" once we have further documents in hand.

But Kurin's first report, dated July 16, 2021 and submitted to the Sheriff on July 22, is very revealing. It asks and answers a number of questions about the finds--"Is it bone?" "Is it human?" "How old was this person at death?" and so forth, but never actually puts forward any specific evidence that the remains belonged to Jack Cantin. Nevertheless, Kurin states in the report--and repeated to the news media--that she was "over 90% certain that these remains are those of Jack Cantin." No analysis, methodology, or other reasoning is provided for this statement.

Also very interesting are the photographs provided as part of the report of the remains found, along with the parts of a leg and foot they supposedly come from. Kurin and Kim Cantin never told the media how extensive the remains were, and it does not appear that the media ever asked (see below; if they did, they did not report the answers given.)

The bones found were amazingly fragmentary given the claims that Kurin made. One is identified as belonging to the thigh bone; several are supposedly from the knee region; one is from the ankle; and one is supposedly from a toe (although this one was identified by other experts as being plant material.)

Astrea's DNA report of April 27, 2022.

Astrea's attempts to get DNA out of the bone fragment it was given--the largest one, supposedly from the knee--were successful, but the DNA was very degraded. Their overall conclusion:

"The DNA preservation of the bone is extremely poor. We found no evidence to support the tested bone sample is of human origin. We cannot determine with certainty the species the bone belongs to, but the strongest evidence available in these data suggests cow."

Astrea further found that the amount of DNA in the sample that aligned to the human genome "does not rise above background," meaning that any human DNA present would probably have been due to contamination. On the other hand, the DNA found aligned most closely with Bos taurus, the domestic cow, and that alignment was more than ten times more extensive than for any other animal species (including pig, dog, black bear, horse, and sea lion) and about 100 times greater than for the human genome.

These analyses were based on DNA from the cell nucleus. Astrea further looked at DNA from mitochondria, the so-called energy factories of the living cell. It found that zero segments aligned with human mitochondrial DNA, while 22 segments aligned with a mitochondrial reference genome from the cow.

To put it simply, Kurin got it completely wrong. The question is, why?

A fraud on a grieving mother, and on a grieving community? Plus, a serious media fail.

In the articles linked to above about Kurin and the Jack Cantin case, I gave my reasons for suspecting that Kurin was simply using the situation to try to get tenure from UCSB, which her department had strongly recommended against. For example, documents I received through the Public Records Act from UCSB had shown that Kurin was telling Kim Cantin from the very first day that remains were found that they belonged to her son. This was before she had done any analysis of the remains at all.

Even before the Jack Cantin investigation began, I had written extensively about Kurin's long history of misconduct and abuse of students. This included a Title IX investigation that found Kurin had retaliated against students who reported her then partner (and later husband) for sexual harassment, which led to her three year suspension from the university. Taken together with her history, the evidence from the Jack Cantin case suggests strongly that Kurin knew, or should have known, that she had no basis for her conclusions. It is hard to come to any other conclusion than that she used Kim for her own selfish purposes: To get the university to give her tenure and overrule the department's recommendation against it.

Along with that damage, she used her own undergraduate students as part of the theater, some of whom were publicly identified in local news media as part of the project. I can only hope that the university is providing them with some kind of counseling given the incredible betrayal they have suffered at the hands of their own professor, in whom they put their trust. Anthropology chair Casey Walsh did not return repeated requests for comment on whether such counseling had been offered to the students; a UCSB spokesperson declined to comment as well, saying only that such counseling was available to anyone who asked for it.

I have written elsewhere about the way that Kurin was enabled, and by whom, over all the years that she was doing damage to students and colleagues. Rather than repeat it all, I will leave it to readers to review that evidence and my comments on it, here and here. Suffice to say that without these powerful enablers, who include UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and Kurin's father, the famous Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Richard Kurin, none of this could have happened.

It remains to comment on the truly pathetic role that a gullible local media played in this sad saga, hyping Kurin's claims and asking no--no--critical questions about the basis for them. Examples can be found here, here, here, here, and here (the absolute worst), and include the venerable Los Angeles Times and CBS News. The media has a lot of mea culpas to do; but more important than that, it must begin to report on the context for this debacle, including the role that Yang played in keeping Kurin alive, as it were. Yang is currently involved in a hit-and-run case in which he refuses to cooperate with police; perhaps it is time for him to hand in his resignation.

I do have some hopes that more light will now shine on the Kurin saga, which, for so long, I was the only reporter covering. There are some good signs: Tyler Hayden at the Santa Barbara Independent has just done a story on the Sheriff's records, and I am confident that other publications and reporters will feel compelled to do so as well. The truth, and the welfare of UCSB students, Kim Cantin, and the Santa Barbara community--not to mention the anthropology and archaeology communities in which Kurin swam like a shark for so long--demands no less.