Photos: Dr. Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist
Dr. Walter Birkby, famed forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona, died Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. He was 84.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona, reconstructs a skull in 1968.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona, with 19 skulls discovered in a Tucson home in 1988.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona in August, 1994. Photo by Rick Wiley / Tucson Citizen
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Walter Birkby of the University of Arizona shown in 1972 in his campus laboratory.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Walter Birkby listens as former student Dr. Bruce Anderson of the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office talk about Birkby's career and influence on students during a 2009 ceremony to honor Birkby.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Walter Birkby and his wife, Carmen Birkby, left, watch a slide show put on by his former students at an event honoring him at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office Dec. 11, 2009.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona, in August, 1989, with the bones of the victim of a cannibal attack by Alfred Packer
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist, at work at the University of Arizona in 1979
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist, at work at the University of Arizona in 1979.
Dr. Walter Birkby
The task of identifying unknown bodies often falls on Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Walter Birkby, who uses techniques such as boiling off flesh to reach bone that may yield clues in the person's identity. Birkby is shown in the "boil-down room" at the Pima County Forensic Science Center in 1999.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Skulls of unidentified border crossers rest in cabinets in the newly renamed Walter H. Birkby forensic anthropology lab at the Pima Country Medical Examiner's office Dec. 11, 2009.
Dr. Walter Birkby
Dr. Bruce Anderson, a student of Dr. Walter Birkby, looks over the remains of case no. 10-1157, a border crosser, while attempting to identify him at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner on June 23, 2010.
Rick Wiley
Photo editor
Dr. Walter Birkby, jokingly known as "Dr. Death" by local journalists, the internationally-known forensic anthropologist at the University of …