Holland, Thomas D.

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Holland, Thomas D.

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Missouri, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1979, M.A., 1985, Ph.D., 1991.

CAREER:

Forensic anthropologist. U.S. Department of Defense, Central Identification Laboratory, scientific director. Former curator, Museum of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia. Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology; member of National Institute of Justice Technical Group on Mass Disasters; consultant to the New York State Police; member of scientific advisory board for International Commission on Missing Persons. Guest on television programs, including Discovery, Nightline, Nova, and 60 Minutes.

MEMBER:

American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, American Board of Forensic Anthropology (member of executive board), Council of Federal Forensic Laboratory Directors.

WRITINGS:

One Drop of Blood (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Variation, Selection, and the Archaeological Record, Volume 2, edited by M.B. Schiffer, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1990, and Cat Monsters and Headpots: The Late Mississippian-Period Prehistory of Pemiscot Bayou, Southeastern Missouri, edited by M.J. O'Brien, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1993. Contributor to professional journals, including Current Anthropology, American Antiquity, Journal of Forensic Sciences, and American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Thomas D. Holland's work as the scientific director of the U.S. Department of Defense's Central Identification Laboratory puts him in charge of the world's largest laboratory dedicated to identifying skeletal remains. He has led forensic recovery missions in locations around the globe, from deserts to snow-covered mountains, sometimes coming under enemy fire while doing so. The Central Identification Laboratory itself is the site for officially approving the identification of the remains of American military casualties from past conflicts. Asked by Kit Jarrell of Euphoric Reality if this job was emotionally difficult to handle, Holland replied: "The men we identify— while they died too young and under circumstances that they shouldn't have—died doing something noble. You can debate the virtue or horror of war all day, but what you can't debate is the nobility of what these men did. They went into harm's way and didn't return; they did what this country asked and they paid an awful price."

Holland put his real-life experience to use in his first novel, One Drop of Blood. The central character is a Hawaiian scientist working for the Central Identification Laboratory. His work entangles him in a complicated string of events that stretches from the jungles of Vietnam to the hills of rural Arkansas. The passages portraying the main character's struggle to balance logic and emotion "have the ring of truth," according to Burl Burlingame in the Star Bulletin Online. One Drop of Blood is "a very readable, very entertaining work of suspense," according to Hank Wagner in the Mystery Scene Review. It "is, in a word, fantastic," concluded the writer for Euphoric Reality.