Making a Murderer: Fairgrieve no stranger to big cases

Providing his services as an expert in high-profile murder cases isn't new for Dr. Scott Fairgrieve.

The Laurentian University forensic anthropology professor testified as an expert witness in the 2007 murder trial of Steve Avery, recently featured in the hit Netflix series Making a Murderer.

According to local media reports from the time, Fairgrieve was also hired by the defence team for Casey Anthony, the Florida woman accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie, in 2008.

The child's body was found less than a mile from the home she shared with her parents and grandparents. In 2011, Anthony was acquitted of the murder.

Like the Avery trial, which was referred to as the trial of the century in Wisconsin, the Anthony case was also extremely high profile.

Fairgrieve worked as a consulting forensic scientist on Anthony's defence team, and reviewed reports of evidence in the trial.

He is often called upon as an expert witness and to investigate deaths in Northern Ontario and beyond.

Local cases include the 2009 murder of 15-year-old Sudbury girl, Whitney Van Der Wouden, and the 2013 deaths of two people in a fire at a Sudbury rooming house.

A biography of Fairgrieve on Laurentian University's website said he's a forensic anthropology consultant to the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario and the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service, working with the Northeast Regional Forensic Pathology Unit in Sudbury.

Fairgrieve has published in the areas of forensic anthropology, microscopy of bone and the analysis of intentionally burned human remains.

Former NorthernLife.ca photographer Marg Seregelyi interviewed Fairgrieve about his profession in 2012.

“Anything with young people is very, very hard to take,” Fairgrieve said. “It's people that are vulnerable.”

For more than 20 years, he has been teaching and doing forensic work at the university, helping his students learn about forensics through the study of pig bones, which most closely resemble those of humans.