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. Part one of a full report. [Update Jan 25: Kim Cantin drops her lawsuit against the Sheriff while negotiations over the remains continue. Students begin to speak out about Kurin's role]


UCSB students aid in the search for missing mudslide victim Jack Cantin


Earlier this month, University of California, Santa Barbara anthropology professor Danielle Kurin, whose long history of misconduct and abuses I have been covering for the past two years, abruptly resigned from the tenured position she had only been awarded last August. Given widespread opinion among her colleagues at UCSB and in the wider archaeology and anthropology communities that this history made her a danger to students, Kurin had to go to extraordinary lengths to get the university to give her tenure--including suing me for defamation for my fully accurate and well documented reporting on her misconduct.

Last July, Kurin announced that she had discovered with "90% certainty" the remains of missing teenager Jack Cantin, a victim of the 2018 Montecito, California mudslide, which took the lives of 23 victims. Many other experts were highly skeptical of this claim, and thought it equally likely that she was exploiting the grief of the teenager's family in her efforts to get tenure (which she did, the following month.) But the Santa Barbara Sheriff and its coroner's office have not yet confirmed Kurin's identification; their investigation is now in its sixth month, and the department has continued to decline to comment on its status.

Moreover, numerous anthropologists and archaeologists have told me, Kurin has violated California law, as well as the ethics of her profession, in her handling of the remains, most importantly by not informing authorities of at least some of the finds. This is a particularly sensitive issue in the Santa Barbara area, which shelters many burials of Chumash Native Americans. As an archaeologist, Kurin had to have known this.

This past week I discovered, mostly by accident, that Jack's mother, Kim Cantin, had quietly filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff and Santa Barbara County, claiming that her rights to bury her son were being violated by the withholding of the very fragmentary remains. In the lawsuit, Kim and her attorneys relied almost entirely on the supposed expertise of Kurin, whom they judged more competent in the quest to identify the remains--even though Kurin had not performed any of the requisite tests for identifying unknown bones, including DNA testing, and Kurin is not a qualified forensic anthropologist. The full text of the Complaint can be accessed here. The lawsuit had not become public because Kim Cantin and her attorneys soon entered into talks with the Sheriff about the matter. While a judge was assigned to the case, Cantin and her attorneys did not pursue it as those discussions continued, her lead attorney told me.

I am not going to say much more now, because a local Santa Barbara publication will be running a story on the lawsuit very shortly. Having spent months trying to interest the local press in their own local story, I do not want to steal too much of their thunder. But one of the most remarkable and damning revelations in the Complaint is that Kurin apparently tried to pass off one of her own students as a "peer reviewer" of her own analysis of the remains. To avoid Google searches linking the student with Kurin, I will call her "VB" here, although she is named in the Complaint which is publicly available; thus I have not redacted it.

VB is not, as the Complaint describes her--most likely based on what Kurin told Kim Cantin and her lawyers--a doctorate at Washington State University. Rather, she is a graduate student, on whose committee Kurin sits along with other researchers. Kurin is on her committee because VB's PhD thesis is based on materials from Kurin's archaeological sites in Peru. Whatever VB's expertise may be--and graduate students often know as much or more than their professors--she is not a trained forensic anthropologist, and Kurin's use of her as a peer reviewer represents an obvious conflict of interest at the very least. It also appears to represent an ethical breach of great magnitude, especially if she used VB for this purpose in an attempt to convince both Kim Cantin and the Sheriff's office that her analysis had been confirmed by other experts.

(Indeed, some months ago, the Sheriff's spokesperson, Raquel Zick, told me that their investigation had been delayed while they waited for Kurin to have her report "peer reviewed." Why Kurin could not, or did not, ask a qualified forensic anthropologist to do that review is one of the outstanding questions in this very sordid drama.)

I will have much more to say about all this once the local publication runs its story, including some commentary on why Kurin may have resigned and the very important role of powerful enablers in allowing Kurin to continue to abuse students for so many years.


Update: While waiting for the local Santa Barbara media to publish on this, I will post some additional comments. One is that there is a strange discrepancy between what the Complaint says and what Kurin, Kim Cantin, and the UCSB students told the news media last July when they publicly announced their claim that they had found Jack Cantin's remains. All of them told the local media that they had begun finding human remains during Memorial Day weekend, which began on Friday May 28 (that's also the day that Kurin scuttled settlement talks she was engaged in with me and my lawyers.) But the lawsuit says that the first remains were found on May 10. I have also noted before that the public announcement was made on July 22, exactly one week after the federal judge in the lawsuit approved the agreement between Kurin and I and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. All of this requires explanation.


                                                                    *   *   *

January 17, 2022: Full update, truth-telling, nothing left out edition.


As I noted above, I have been waiting to publish this full story until a local Santa Barbara publication ran its story, as appreciation for the local media finally recognizing that it had ignored a major scandal in its midst: The apparent cynical exploitation of grieving mother Kim Cantin by Danielle Kurin in her quest for tenure at UCSB despite her long history of misconduct. That publication is the Santa Barbara Independent, whose reporter has been investigating the Montecito mudslide story since last October, when I brought it to his attention. 

That story almost ran in early January, but was held back for reasons I will not discuss here. Then, on January 10, I discovered via a Google search that Kim Cantin had quietly filed a lawsuit in federal court against Santa Barbara County and its Sheriff-Coroner, William Brown, seeking the return of human remains she believes belong to her son Jack, who went missing after the devastating Montecito mudslide of 2018, which killed 23 people (also missing is two year old Lydia Sutthithepa; more about her later.)

I shared this information with the Independent reporter, whose interest had already been rekindled by Kurin's abrupt resignation of her tenured position. The Montecito mudslide, and the purported finding of Jack's remains, were both major events for the greater Santa Barbara community, and word about finding Jack was picked up by national media. Out of appreciation for the Independent's willingness to do a story about all this, and its assurance that it would run its story no later than last Friday, I held off publishing my own report, willing to allow my colleague in Santa Barbara to have the scoop. But when it became clear that his story would not run on Friday, I published the brief placeholder report above.

Today, Monday, the Independent's story has still not run, with no explanation about the delay--or, and I hope this is not the case, killing of the story, possibly out of fear of a lawsuit from Kurin (the huge role that fear of being sued by the litigious Danielle Kurin has played in this long saga will be explored below.)

[Update: The story has now run, please see below.]

If the publication finally does run its story, I will celebrate that here, with commentary of my own. In the meantime, however, it is time to explore, in one place, the many facets of the sordid Kurin drama, a story of a toxic personality allowed to run mostly free for the past eight years. In her wake, many victims and survivors who are still suffering the consequences of her abuses.

I will say a number of things here that I have not said before, and provide links to past stories for the guidance of readers who have not kept up with this complicated story. As might be imagined, the sourcing is very sensitive on some of what I will have to say, which will explain a certain vagueness in attribution in some parts. But as always in my reporting, all statements below are based on direct witnesses and participants in the events, multiply sourced and corroborated in all instances--except where I engage in speculation, which I will make clear.


Why did Danielle Kurin get tenure at UCSB, and why did she abruptly resign?

Danielle Kurin received her PhD from Vanderbilt University in 2012 and began teaching at UCSB as a visiting professor in 2013. (See also here.) In fall 2014, she was appointed to a tenure track assistant professor position in the university's anthropology department. Even at the time, fairly or unfairly, questions circulated in the anthropology and archaeology communities about whether she was the most qualified candidate; again, correctly or not, it was widely assumed that Kurin's father, anthropologist Richard Kurin--a powerful American scientist and major official at the Smithsonian Institution--had either used his influence to help her get hired, or that Kurin had used his name and reputation to enhance her own reputation. I mention Richard Kurin here because of the outsized role he would end up playing in the Kurin saga.

During her visiting professorship in 2013, Kurin appeared to be on her best behavior, and favorably impressed many members of the anthropology faculty. But from the very first year of Kurin's tenure track position, the UCSB administration began receiving reports that she was bullying students in her osteology and other classes and abusing them in various ways. These reports continued into 2015 and 2016.

In September 2015, UCSB received word that Kurin's partner and later husband, Peruvian archaeologist Enmanuel Gomez Choque, had sexually harassed students at Kurin's field school in Peru, and a Title IX investigation was launched. Kurin was subsequently put on administrative leave pending the outcome. That investigation concluded that Gomez had more likely than not sexually harassed students, and that Kurin more likely than not had retaliated against students who had reported that harassment--a very serious violation of her responsibilities as a faculty member. As a result, the findings were referred to UCSB's Charges Committee for adjudication. The Committee found the following (excerpted from the Letter of Censure issued to Kurin on February 28, 2018:)


Dear Professor Kirin:

As you know, the campus Charges Committee found probable cause for multiple violations of Part 11,

Sections A & C, of the faculty Code of Conduct, including explicit and implicit threats against a

complainant that would be interpreted by any reasonable recipient as harassing and retaliatory; and

additional acts of harassment and threats of retaliation€ occurring in the time period after the Title IX &

Sexual Harassment Policy Compliance Office specifically reiterated the need for confidentiality and

cautioned against retaliation. You have received a copy of the Charges Committee report, as well as the

Title IX report, and no* acknowledge that, as described in the Charges and in the Title IX report, there

were instances in whici your conduct fell below your own standards and those embodied in the Faculty

Code of Conduct. Attached to this letter of censure are a copy of the "Harrison/Gomez/Kuhn

Investigative Report (#2017470) ("Title IX Report") and a copy of the "CONFIDENT1AL-REFERRAL

OF COMPLAINT TO COMMITTEE ON PRIVILEGE AND TENURE AND PROPOSED

DISCIPLINARY SANIbTION" (the "Charges") that I filed with the Santa Barbara Division's Committee

on Privilege and Tenure on May 22, 2017.




But Kurin was not fired, which was certainly an option the university had in this situation. Instead, her administrative leave was extended to a total of three full years, during which she received most of her salary. But the UCSB administration never told the anthropology faculty why she was on leave, except for consecutive department chairs who were sworn to secrecy. Despite rumors about retaliation against students, neither faculty nor students were told anything officially. In maintaining secrecy, the administration, and most notably UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and Executive Vice-Chancellor David Marshall, were able to prevent any protests against the retention of a faculty member who had threatened students and retaliated against them, on multiple counts.


To make matters worse, when asked about it, Kurin routinely lied about what had happened. She told some colleagues that she and Gomez had been exonerated, and those colleagues--notably former Institute for Field Research director Ran Boytner, who had enabled Kurin's field schools in Peru--repeated these lies to others. Even those who knew about the Title IX, including Willeke Wendrich, director of the board of governors of IFR and of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, helped foster the falsehood that news of Kurin's Title IX only came to them after I began reporting on it in early 2020.


Kurin went so far as to perjure herself on the matter in her defamation suit against me, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the Amended Complaint in this litigation, filed in June 2020, we read the following:


"53. Between 2016 and 2018, Kurin engaged in the UCSB investigatory and disciplinary process, and utilizing the proper forums available to her as a professor, she amicably settled the matter with UCSB in March 2018. Neither UCSB nor any other entity found Kurin guilty or liable for any misconduct."



In the second sentence of this statement, Kurin and her attorney, David Scher of the Hoyer Law Group, told a federal court an obvious and baldfaced lie. (I will have more to say about Scher, what he knew and when he knew it, lower down.) I have been told that it is almost impossible to get prosecutors to charge litigants in civil cases with perjury, otherwise I certainly would have pursued that avenue. And this was just one of many such lies in the Amended Complaint.



I have laid out this chronology in detail so that the full context for Kurin receiving tenure can be understood. But before I go on, I must include an important detail: In 2016, while she was on administrative leave the Title IX investigation was continuing, Kurin sued the University of California, arguing that she had been denied a promotion she was entitled to despite the disciplinary proceedings. To the best of my information, the 2018 settlement was designed to deal with those issues as well.


We must now turn to the role of the anthropology department faculty. I want to emphasize that from the beginning, in 2014, there were faculty members who did their best to investigate and deal with Kurin's obvious abuse of students and her manifest psychological issues (these were a topic of discussion among faculty and students at Vanderbilt as well.) Those faculty efforts continued after the Title IX investigation was launched. But their efforts to alert the UCSB administration to the "Kurin problem" were met with complete resistance; higher level administrators took over all dealings with the situation and swore those faculty who were aware of the allegations to secrecy, as indicated above.


And, as word spread that Kurin had sued the university, fear of antagonizing the administration was compounded with fear of being sued by Kurin. Indeed, Kurin told colleagues that her parents had mortgaged their house to pay for the lawsuit against UC, and so faculty and students alike kept their heads down for fear that they would be on the firing line of Kurin and her father, whose power was feared as well.


But as much as I admire those faculty who really tried to do something, I have to fault them for not doing more to try to figure out why Kurin was on administrative leave and making that known to the department. Thus when concerned archaeologists came to me in September 2019 and asked me to look into all this, it was a simple matter to file a California Public Records Act and--after several months of UC's lawyers chewing over the matter--getting hold of the investigations of Kurin and Gomez and their conclusions. This was something the anthropology faculty could have done at any time.


Why was Kurin not fired in 2016, or 2018? This is a major question to which I cannot claim to have the full answer. I will discuss in detail below those who enabled Kurin to keep her job, including her father and of course UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang, who had the ultimate say in the matter. Even after 2018, when the IFR kicked Kurin out of the organization (she was on its academic board) and banned her from its field schools after Gomez allegedly sexually assaulted a student that year, the university did nothing (those events from summer 2018 occurred just a few months after the university signed a settlement with her that allowed her to keep her job.)


Was the university afraid of another lawsuit if they fired Kurin? That is possible, but UC's General Counsel's office, which has been involved since the Title IX, has enormous resources and could easily defend against such litigation. Was the university, and Chancellor Yang in particular, trying to protect the institution's reputation, which would be greatly harmed if students and their parents knew that it had harbored an abusive faculty member? My guess is that all of these factors played a role. But the bottom line is that the university enabled Kurin from the very beginning; in doing so, it made it possible for Kurin's then husband to sexually assault a student at her 2018 field school, a student who is still suffering from that experience.


We must now move from the question of why UCSB did not fire Kurin to the more recent question of why they gave her tenure when they had the choice not to. Again, this was ultimately Chancellor Yang's decision, although the UC General Counsel's office was almost certainly involved.


As I mentioned above, a core of Kurin's colleagues in the anthropology department tried hard to get rid of her. This was no secret in the department and so it will be no secret in this post. What follows is based on multiple sources, so Kurin and her attorneys should give up trying to guess or out sources for my reporting. Ultimately, the entire department was on record as opposing her tenure.


In September 2019, Kurin returned to teaching from her three year administrative leave. Despite the disciplinary nature of this leave, the university gave her partial credit on her tenure clock; thus she became eligible to apply for tenure in fall 2020, and did. As she stated explicitly in her lawsuit against me, and as her attorney David Scher told the student paper the Daily Nexus, the purpose of the litigation was to counter what Kurin considered lies that I was telling about her so that her tenure process could continue unimpeded (by the truth, as it were.) Kurin claimed that she had an excellent reputation and was well regarded by colleagues at UCSB and the anthropology community until I began reporting about her.


The reality, of course, was very different. So when Kurin came up for tenure, a core of the anthropology faculty began to discuss how to block her from getting it. But they made what I and some department members think was a fatal mistake: Rather than invoking Kurin's long history of misconduct, they decided to focus on her scholarship, which was probably borderline for a tenure candidate. The reasoning may have been sound: If they focused on her misconduct, Kurin could more easily claim that the department was biased against her, and the administration was likely to take the entire process out of the department's hands. But the plan backfired: While the department did indeed recommend against tenure on scholarship grounds, the administration overruled the department--a rare event in tenure proceedings--and granted her tenure last August.


Why did they do this? There are various hypotheses, some more charitable to Chancellor Yang and the UCSB administration than others. The less charitable interpretation is that the university was determined to continue its long policy of enabling Kurin no matter what, and the welfare and safety of students be damned (of course, this was the end result no matter what the motivation.) A more charitable interpretation might be that the UC General Counsel, which has been heavily involved in the Kurin matters from the beginning in the person of Counsel Michael Goldstein in Berkeley, advised UCSB that Kurin would be very likely to win her protest of the department's recommendation if she sued the university over it. The fact that she settled the case against me in July 2021, while the tenure decision was still pending, suggested to some that she was gearing up for another lawsuit which might be as costly as the one against me (her family spent an estimated $100,000 on representation by David Scher and the Hoyer Law Group.)


Instead, this hypothesis goes, the administration figured that Kurin was bound to screw up again sooner or later, and then UCSB would have firm grounds to terminate her. In support of this idea, I have it from numerous sources that over the past year a number of complaints about Kurin have been passed up to the administration from both students and faculty. In addition, Kurin demonstrated her mental instability by creating a very sick and disturbing sock puppet attacking me last year, which the administration was well aware of. (Kurin and Scher admitted to my legal team and to the federal judge that she had created and curated this Twitter account. She also created others that we were aware of.)


(In 2020, the administration had rejected a number of Title IX complaints that were filed against Kurin on jurisdictional grounds, so it was certainly aware of what victims and their allies were saying.)


And then, of course, there was the case of Jack Cantin and Kurin's involvement with what may well have been a fraud on the Cantin family, as discussed briefly above. According to sources, the university was investigating this matter at the time of Kurin's abrupt resignation, and it may have been the decisive factor. I have a series of California Public Records Act requests active at the university exploring the events leading up to Kurin's resignation; if they are refused I will seek legal counsel to challenge any attempts to privilege secrecy over much needed transparency.


And so on to the Jack Cantin case.



Kim Cantin quietly sues Santa Barbara County and its Sheriff-Coroner, relying on Danielle Kurin as chief expert over all others. Was Kim duped by Kurin?


As reported above, last October 18, Kim Cantin sued Santa Barbara County and its Sheriff-Coroner, William Brown (who, by the way, is up for re-election this coming June.) However, according to Kim's lead counsel, A. Barry Cappello of the widely feared Santa Barbara law firm of Cappello & Noel, the lawsuit was never formally served on the defendants. Instead, the attorneys quickly entered into negotiations with the county on Kim's behalf. Cappello told me that it was the firm's policy not to comment publicly on lawsuits it was engaged in, and that "We are currently attempting to resolve this litigation."


However, the Complaint in the case is a public court record, and so anyone can access it directly from the court or from the link I provide above.


I have already commented above on Kurin's use of a graduate student, VB, to "peer review" her forensics report, thus engaging in an apparent attempt to fool Kim Cantin, her attorneys, and the Sheriff's office into thinking that she had the last word and the most expertise in her identification of the very fragmentary remains as those of Jack Cantin.


The Complaint provides a clear reminder of just how tragic the 2018 Montecito mudslide, which took 23 lives, was for the families that lost loved ones, and how traumatic the events:



"...On the night of the mudslide, Kim and all of her family were swept away by the mud: her husband, Dave; their son, Jack, 17 years old; their daughter, Lauren, 14 years old; and their dog, Chester. 


20. Kim, Lauren and Chester were swept away as the avalanche of mud, carrying trees 50 feet long and boulders the size of cars, slammed into the house, tearing it apart. Kim came to a stop approximately 200 yards from the house. Badly injured, she was taken to the hospital after she was found. Lauren was literally buried alive within approximately 100 yards from the house. She managed to breathe from only a small pocket of air, until her cries were heard and she was pulled from the mud and taken to the hospital. Dave, who was outside when the mud hit, was killed; he was swept down to the beach, where his body was recovered. Chester, found near Lauren, also was killed. 


21. Jack’s body was never recovered. He had been inside the house, and should have been found close to Kim, Lauren and Chester."



Kim Cantin had long complained that the Sheriff's office did not do enough to find her missing son. I will not opine on that question here, other than to say that others in the Montecito community reportedly felt the same way, but also that any parent of a missing child would probably feel the same way in the same situation. In 2020, Kim made connection with Kurin, who reportedly agreed to help search for Jack and involved a group of undergraduate students in the effort.


We then read the following:


"27. On or about May 10, 2021, the Professor and her team discovered suspected human bone. The team collected two specimens, a fragment of cortical bone, and a toe bone. The team confirmed they were bone, and Professor Kurin then notified Kim. The specimens had been found with artifacts from Kim’s house, including remnants of carpet and remnants of Jack’s underwear. Kim called the Sheriff and told him about the remains and where they were found, and asked about the next step. She also asked the Sheriff to treat the bones carefully since she wanted them back."



An odd feature of this statement is that when Kim and Kurin announced having identified Jack's remains on July 22 of last year--exactly a week after Kurin settled the lawsuit with me--the media reported them, as well as some of the students, to the effect that the first remains had been found during Memorial Day weekend of 2021, that is in the days after Friday May 28--which also happens to be the day that Kurin and her attorneys scuttled the first round of court-mandated settlement talks with me and my attorneys.


The Complaint further states:



"36. Professor Kurin’s team had continued to search after May 10, 2021, through approximately mid-July 2021. They found additional bone remains, which they confirmed were human and which showed evidence of blunt force and/or thermal trauma, consistent with fires and the live electrical wires and transformers that had exploded during the mudslides. Those remains, like the original two, were also recovered with artifacts connected to the Cantin house, including but not limited to Jack’s bathroom tile. After recovery, recording, and analysis, the bones were delivered to Kim, who understood that the Sheriff’s Department had given up the search, and that this was a recovery situation, not a criminal investigation."


This paragraph confirms my original reporting about the Cantin case from last October, in which I pointed out that Kurin (and also Kim Cantin, of course, as well as the students involved) had failed to follow the California Health and Safety Code concerning the discovery of human remains, which requires that all excavation stop and that authorities be notified. While Kim Cantin could be forgiven for thinking, as she states in the Complaint, that the Sheriff was no longer interested in the matter and that there was no point informing the department of further discoveries, as an archaeologist and a supposed forensic anthropologist, Kurin certainly knew better. In fact, any archaeologist working in California and the Santa Barbara area is well aware that there are many burials in the area of Chumash Native Americans, and that not only local law but also federal law applies to possible Chumash remains.


I will leave it to readers to look over the entire 17 page Complaint and draw their own conclusions about its significance. However, the conclusions I draw, based on the evidence, are as follows:


1. Danielle Kurin accepted the mission of looking for Jack Cantin in 2020, possibly out of real concern but also aware that the mission would enhance her chances of getting tenure.


2. Kurin represented herself as an expert in forensic anthropology, a field in which she has no formal training, to Kim Cantin and to Kim's attorneys when they prepared the lawsuit. That allowed her to pretend that she had more expertise than the Sheriff's own anthropologists, including Rick Snow of Knoxville TN (Snow declined to discuss the case with me on the record.)


3. Faced with having to defend her interpretation of the human remains as the definitive one, Kurin hatched the plan of asking a graduate student wholly dependent on her for obtaining her PhD, VB, to pose as a "peer reviewer" of Kurin's analysis. Kurin apparently did not reveal VB's real identity and role to Kim Cantin nor to her attorneys, dishonestly pretending that VB had a PhD and was some kind of independent scientist when she was nothing of the sort. (I have insisted elsewhere that VB should not be blamed for this.) If Kurin had really been interested in having her work peer reviewed, wouldn’t she have chosen an established and reputable forensic anthropologist to do it?


4. Kurin, who has long had the habit of cultivating a group of undergraduate students around her, used those students in the search, flattered them, and implicated them innocently in the ruse that she performed in her effort to impress the UCSB administration and achieve tenure.


5. The Sheriff-Coroner is now in its sixth month of investigating Kurin's claims, starting from when they were publicly announced on July 22, and has yet to confirm them. As things stand now, there is no definitive evidence--and perhaps no evidence at all--that the remains that Kurin and her students found belong to Jack Cantin.


6. Perhaps Kurin will turn out to be right that Jack Cantin has been found, and perhaps not. In the meantime, a grieving mother has apparently been given false hopes by an anthropologist who clearly used the situation to try to achieve glory and tenure, and succeeded briefly in both. She is now gone from UCSB, and no longer possesses the credentials as a university anthropologist that she used to insert herself into this tragedy. It's up to UCSB to tell us why she abruptly resigned, and whether the Cantin case had something to do with it.



Who were Kurin's enablers in her long history of abuse?


I have made comments above that express my own conclusions about this. Kurin was enabled by UCSB, by its Chancellor Henry Yang, by her attorney David Scher, and by her father, Richard Kurin. In a followup post, I will have a lot more to say about how they did it and the consequences of their actions and those of others who have been involved in this sordid saga, which has left so many victims in its wake.



Note: I asked Danielle Kurin and her attorney, David Scher, multiple times to comment on this story. Neither have responded so far. As Kurin knows, she has a standing invitation to respond to anything I publish about her. The university has declined to confirm or deny that she was under investigation at the time of her resignation.



Update Jan 25: Kim Cantin drops her lawsuit against the Santa Barbara Sheriff and County, but negotiations over the remains claimed to be those of her missing son continue.


The Santa Barbara publication Noozhawk is reporting that Kim Cantin has dropped her lawsuit against the country while negotiations with the Sheriff-Coroner over the disposition of the remains continues. The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that it could be refiled if Kim is not happy with the outcome. Unfortunately, Noozhawk, along with the Santa Barbara News-Press which has now also covered the story of the lawsuit, have so far avoided telling readers about the long history of misconduct by former UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Danielle Kurin, whose claims to have found Jack launched this whole new chapter in the tragic Montecito mudslide story.


Exactly what Kim's dismissal of the lawsuit means is not yet clear, although it seems possible that she has now agreed to the Sheriff-Coroner's insistence that the remains be subjected to further testing, especially DNA testing. At the moment, we cannot be sure if the remains are even human, as experts other than Kurin have suggested they might be animal rather than human. Hopefully the Sheriff will now be able to determine that with some scientific certainty.


Meanwhile, some of Kurin's former students are beginning to break their silence about how their former professor handled this whole mess. Thus we find this on a Reddit page devoted to discussing issues at UC Santa Barbara:





The comment is anonymous (using a pseudonym) and I have not yet authenticated it, but it is consistent with what I have heard from other sources--especially the cult-like atmosphere that Kurin created among the undergraduates who worked with her on the search for Jack. And while Kurin is now gone from UCSB and reportedly from Santa Barbara too (in times of stress she usually stays with her parents in Virginia) the process of bringing those who enabled her to account is just beginning.


It's looking increasingly possible that Danielle Kurin, in her desperation to get tenure despite her many years of misconduct, may have defrauded Kim Cantin, UCSB students, and the still grieving Santa Barbara and Montecito communities, by insisting that she had found Jack when she had no real evidence for the claim. But there may be a silver lining. The bodies of Jack Cantin and two year old Lydia Suthitheppa, who was also among the 23 killed in the mudslide, may still be out there under the mud and debris, awaiting a genuine discovery.


More thoughts, Jan 25: One interesting aspect of this story is that the Sheriff's office has not done the easy thing, which would have been to just say, "Oh, yes, let's just say this is Jack" and let Kim Cantin bury the bones as her son. Instead, for six months the Sheriff seems to have stuck to protocol, unwilling to confirm Kurin's identification nor to change Jack's status as a "missing person." That is, the Sheriff has not done the easy thing politically, but the hard thing, it seems to me anyway (no one outraged by the Sheriff's actions, including Kim Cantin in her lawsuit, has explained what his motivation would be for making life more difficult for Kim.) By following proper procedure, the Sheriff seems to be following the law, even though he is up for re-election in June. I suspect the Sheriff has known for months that Kurin had no basis for declaring the remains were Jack's. It would be interesting to know what communication may have occurred between the Sheriff and the UCSB administration leading up to Kurin's abrupt resignation.










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Anonymous said…
WHOA. That complaint tells us everything that Kurin has been feeding to Kim Cantin to manipulate and gaslight her in her grief. It also tells us all the crazy things happening behind the scenes and why the sheriff's office is so mum about the half year long investigation. Basically, Kurin purportedly discovered two small "bones" around May 10th and Kim turned it over to the Sheriff's office shortly thereafter. The Sheriff sent it to a respected forensic anthropologist with decades of experience, Dr. Rick Snow. Rick Snow quickly determined that the supposed "toe bone" was a plant and the fragmentary cortical bone was too old to be Jack. Incensed by this result, Kurin gaslit Kim into thinking Rick Snow was some sheister liar who had no recent experience and had lied about being an adjuct professor at U of Georgia. https://www.forensicscsi.com/ Kurin then spends the next couple of months recovering more "bones" and doing "analyses" with her PXRF gun. Instead of going to the Sheriff this time, Kurin and Kim decide that Kurin's analysis is sufficient to announce to the press that Jack had been found. Kim did not want to give over any of the newly found bones at first, but the sheriff convinced her to let the Kern DNA lab analyze one of the more intact bones, a shin bone. Probably due to the burned status of the bone, the Kern DNA lab could not get conclusive DNA results but based on the morphology of the bone, they determined that it was likely an animal, and not a human, bone. https://www.kernsystems.com/about-kern.html Kim Cantin/Kurin disparaged Kern lab as also being sheisters. Further incensed by this result, Kurin gaslit Kim into not wanting to hand over any more remains nor to have the shin bone sent to Marshall University's excellent Forensic Anthropology program and DNA lab. The lie that was apparently told to Kim was that DNA analysis would destroy everything, leaving Kim nothing substantive left of Jack's alleged remains. The lawsuit details how Rick Snow, the Kern Lab, and Marshall University's foresnic anthropology program, were all subpar sheisters. Kim/Kurin accused the Sheriff of punishing Kim by not signing the death certificate because they wanted to cover up the incompetence of the SHeriff and his "expert" foresnic anthropologists. They accused the sheriff of criminal malfeasance and wanting to destroy all the remains so that no one could prove that Rick Snow and others were in fact sheisters, because that would necessitate a review of the numerous cases that Rick Snow had worked on and embarrass the Sheriff. So there you have it, Kurin, a non-board certified forensic anthropologist with no forensic anthropology master's degree, is supposedly more qualified than three top labs in the country with decades of law enforcement experience. Reading the complaint, you see a masterclass of gaslighting and manipulation of emotionally vulnerable people, even egging them on to sue the sheriff accusing him of doing exactly what you had been doing all along: trying to destroy evidence of your fraud. The poor sheriff had been obviously trying to do right by Kim this whole time, even allowing her to keep most of the bones in an urn, and Kim's resentment and anger toward the Sheriff was entirely fed by Kurin. The Sheriff clearly changed his mind and wanted the whole assemblage once multiple labs came up with suspicious results that may indicate Kim being defrauded by Kurin. The fact that these "bones" were from multiple species and ages suggest that it was an assemblage not found in nature, but concocted by the dishonest academic we have become very familiar with: Kurin.
Anonymous said…
Sorry, in my heated scribblings after reading the outrageous complaint, I made multiple typos and misspellings. It's "shyster" not "sheister."
I will use this opportunity to add that Kim/Kurin said Marshall university was not a "highest research university" and "only" has a master's program in forensics. Forensic anthropology is not a PhD field! Kurin also shamelessly fed Kim and her lawyers the lie that the director of the program only has a Ph.D. in Education, insinuating that she knows nothing about forensics. In fact, she has a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a M.S. in Forensic Science from Marshall University:
https://www.marshall.edu/forensics/about/contact/crushton

I really hope Kim reads these comments and sues Kurin instead for fraud and infliction of emotional distress. Kurin's family is awash with money. Her father probably earns around 400k a year and her mother earns around 100k. I am so angry on Kim's behalf and hope that she is not gaslit to the point of no return. A mother's grief is very powerful, as Kurin well knows as a master manipulator.

It pains me to think that Kim may have been cradling an urn full of faked remains, maybe even some from Native Americans, thinking that they were her son. She has lost Jack twice.
Anonymous said…
Oh, bravo! Well done, UCSB! The ‘expert’ analysis from your renowned fake forensic lab, which deduced that a bit of plant matter was a missing teenage boy, will no doubt establish you as the laughingstock of the nation, if not the globe!

Anonymous said…
Who could have guessed that a university’s years-long pandering to, covering for, and rewarding of an abusive sociopath—to the detriment of students and faculty alike—would produce further, more catastrophic results for the whole community?

WHO. COULD. HAVE. GUESSED.
Anonymous said…
DK’s attempts to smear world-class experts and gaslight a grieving mother into thinking that an untrained, wannabe ‘forensic anthropologist’ with a team of ‘undergrad researchers’ were the far more accomplished and reliable authority on the matter simply beggar belief. All of this would be hysterically funny if it weren’t so unspeakably tragic. And who can blame Kim Cantin? People trust the imprimatur of the University of California and expect it to mean something.

UCSB allowed this disgraceful and ghoulish fraud to take place, and Yang and the other enablers must be held, finally, to account.
Anonymous said…
Well yes, we all like to think of the students as victims in all this. The depressing reality is that all of her grad mentees were 100% aware of what was going on, some even having participated in the said UCSB and IFR field schools that blew this whole affair wide open. True, they all need the data to graduate. But, they are adults who can make their own informed decisions and most importantly they are training to be the mentors of the future. My opinion is that if, despite all the hard evidence against Kurin (not “speculations”; not “allegations”), they still blindly continued to do her bidding and in the process hurt other fellow students and members of the public, they rightly earned every bit of bad publicity that will stick to them as a result. I say it with a heavy heart, but at the end of the day students can be enablers too.
Anonymous said…
‘I say it with a heavy heart, but at the end of the day students can be enablers too.’

Especially if they’re being trained by a corrupt University with no moral/ethical code to guide them.
Anonymous said…
Kurin tried to put out there the spurious notion that every case handled by the county’s forensic pathologists should be re-examined.

In fact, it is every case Danielle Kurin ever consulted on that needs another look.

This master of projection never gives up.
Anonymous said…
Re: the students comment:
The difference is if you followed her because you are naïve and bought into her and the administration web of lies- like I suspect most of her undergrads did- or if you are personally gaining from boosting a false narrative- like some of her graduate students may have done.
Just throwing it out there.
Michael Balter said…
Let me weigh in on the students. To my knowledge, most of the students who got involved with Kurin were victims in one way or another. She was never able to recruit any grad students for PhD theses in the time she was there, because everyone stayed away. Her reputation has been negative since 2016 although mostly through the whisper network because UCSB kept everything secret—thereby enabling continuing abuses.

The reason Kurin recruited a mini-cult of undergrads to work with her is, based on my knowledge, because she was not able to get anyone else to work with her, and she was widely shunned by her colleagues and the archaeology/anthropology community. Everyone knew the truth about her by the time I began reporting on her misconduct in early 2020, or they should have.
Michael Balter said…
Ie, grad students of her own. She was on at least one PhD committee, as I indicated, but that was not her own student.
Anonymous said…
Danielle also loves to surround herself with undergrads because they don’t know anything and can’t catch her in her mistakes.
Anonymous said…
It still pisses me off that she and her field “student assistants” had the nerve to inform the Sutthithepa family thorough the media that Lydia’s remains will never be found, When the honest thing to admit would have been “we didn’t find her, but someone else may one day”. Mind you that since they were contracted by Jack’s mom, they also didn’t particularly look for Lydia’s remains.
In light of the above report it’s painfully obvious that Kurin simply got what she was after with what she claimed were Jack’s remains, and so didn’t need to take additional “risks” with another skeleton.
Anonymous said…
Grief-stricken or desperate, members of the general public don’t typically sue when they don’t like the results of a scientific/forensic investigation. It is, on the other hand, page one in the Kurin family playbook.
Anonymous said…
It sounds as though the initial date of discovery of the remains was intentionally fudged when the story was taken by Kim Cantin and Danielle Kurin to the local press, in order to downplay and hide the knowledge of the initial ‘toe bone’ and cortical fragments, which had been turned over to the Sheriff the following day and soon afterwards debunked by Dr. Rick Snow.

It seems the *official* story begins after that, after Danielle likely went back to the drawing board and decided she needed to concoct a more serious, face-saving scheme to (in my opinion) defraud the mother and, later, the public.

Eighteen days later, Danielle returned with a new fragment or set of remains. This time she would keep things secret and handle the analysis all by herself.

It is from that date, on Memorial Day weekend, that the ‘official’ story (in the press) began.

(And in perfect keeping with her reputation for sloppiness and ill-thought out schemes of all sorts, this fiction wasn’t maintained in the lawsuit, leading anyone with a bit of curiosity to note the odd discrepancy.)

N.B. As I write this an astute observer texted me with the thought that Memorial Day may have been chosen intentionally to milk the sentiments of the public. With Kurin, anything is possible.
Anonymous said…
Just to add, I don’t believe Kim Cantin attempted to mislead the press about the first date of discovery. That is almost certainly the work of Danielle Kurin alone.

In the rush of everything that was happening, DK likely slipped that information into the official record.
Anonymous said…
I hope anyone who has ever defended Danielle Kurin will read through this lawsuit and see how disgustingly she, through her manipulated mouthpieces, has tried to smear and disparage the reputations of a number of fine people, with no regard for their lives or careers (the very thing she always accuses others of doing to her). She did all this simply to cover her own lyin’ ass.

This is the core of who this person is. Other people exist as mere objects to be used or discarded by her, as suits her purpose.
Anonymous said…
Who wants to bet that the "toe bone" was a chrinoid??? *Facepalm*
Anonymous said…
If I were the attorneys in this lawsuit, I’d be embarrassed to have a) consulted Danielle Kurin as an ‘expert’ in this case; and b) not checked to find out that Kurin’s supposed ‘peer reviewer’ is not a PhD, but a grad student under her control.

Maybe the belated realization of these humiliating details played a role in the quiet shelving of the suit.
Anonymous said…
My heart aches for everyone painfully affected by this story: the community of Montecito, and, of course, Kim Cantin and her family.

But we can’t allow a hoax by an unscrupulous person to continue to be fobbed off as fact: the truth is, young Jack Cantin’s body has not been found.

I pray for the family that they will truly get the closure they seek, and someday have him—the real Jack—to lay to rest.
Anonymous said…
My heart aches for the Cantin and Sutthithepa families. I worry about the UCSB undergraduates associated with DK. I also feel for the upstanding members of the Anthropology program (yes, there are some) who have had to deal with this issue for years with an unsupportive UCSB administration.
Anonymous said…
The irony? If Kurin hadn't sued Balter for defamation, there was actually a good chance that no one else would have noticed or reported this other incident, and she would have got away with it and kept her tenure. Ha.
Michael Balter said…
I want to emphasize my view on who is responsible here, because an earlier commenter implied heavily that vulnerable students were responsible for collaborating with Kurin along with everyone else. This is badly wrong.

Students are completely dependent on their seniors for their careers, especially graduate students. Over the two years that I have been reporting on Kurin, I have seen tenured, senior faculty running and hiding in fear of Kurin and her father and lawsuits rather than sticking up for students and publicly calling this twisted individual out and doing the right thing. Why does anyone think Kurin has been able to continue operating for so long? It’s pathetic and its disgusting. If senior faculty cannot muster up the courage to deal with someone like Kurin, and if those same faculty are advising their students to be just as cowardly, how can anyone expect that she would not go from one abuse to another as she did?

I will have a LOT more to say about this when I expand on this blog post tomorrow.
Anonymous said…
Did you try and fail to extort money from DK?
Michael Balter said…
LOL at this last comment. Why, do you have some evidence that I did? Why would Kurin want to give me any money?
Anonymous said…
She wouldn't want to give, hence the word extort.
Michael Balter said…
So here we have Exhibit A in the kinds of fools that take Kurin's side despite her long history of abuses. Still waiting for this individual to present some evidence that I tried to extort money from Kurin. Failing that I won't publish any more posts by this person.
Anonymous said…
Balter, I think it’s Danielle projecting again. Now it’s time to figure out who she had been extorting. UCSB? Oh that’s right! She extorted them by threatening to bog them down in multi-year lawsuits if they didn’t turn that negative Title IX finding into a golden ticket to tenure: 3 years of paid leave, 2 years off her tenure clock with no penalty, gag order on faculty, gag order on student journalists, and freedom from service and teaching. Plus tons of funding and freedom to lie on your CV! https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e72bdcc5-1a02-49b8-9727-1db180d76af9/Kurin_Bio-Bibliography_last%20edit_Sept_15_2020.pdf

No wonder abusers and bullies get away with shit. They simply threaten to sue or frivolously sue to make craven legal counsel cave time and time again. Appeasement didn’t work for Hitler, and it won’t work for Kurin.
Anonymous said…
When it comes to the question of who at UCSB Anthropology still wants to be associated with Kurin, this page of her Walker Bioarchaeology Lab says it all:
https://kurin.anth.ucsb.edu/people


Anonymous said…
Yes, I am supporting Danielle or at least want to hear her side. I know Mr. Balter has come up short in the truth department previously. Can we take this discussion to a neutral site. You name it and I'll be there
Michael Balter said…
Say what you have to say here or be gone.
Anonymous said…
no because you moderate what is said. Dani doesn't have a real chance, just the fakeness that you are impartial
Michael Balter said…
Readers, please indulge me while I deal with this individual.

I haven't moderated you yet. First, tell me who told you that I tried to extort money from Kurin. Did she tell you that? Details, please.
Anonymous said…
Why haven't the police arrested her? Because she hasn't done anything wrong. Why are you so obsessed with her. it's not normal
Michael Balter said…
Okay, this is not as interesting as I thought it might be. You are just asking questions and not providing any useful information. One last question for you: Why did she resign a tenured position she could have kept all her working life? There is no mandatory retirement age at UC.
Michael Balter said…
Some colleagues are telling me they think this is Kurin. I'm not so sure. She has created a mini-cult of undergrads whom she flatters and gives goodies too, including trips and spots on Forensic Anthropology teams. The fact that this person called her "Dani" is kind of of a giveaway, that is what her friends call her and by extension her cult members.
Michael Balter said…
btw this business about me being "obsessed" with Kurin is interesting. I think even some sympathetic colleagues wonder if it might be true given how much I discuss her on social media, this blog, etc.

What they might not realize is that practically every day I talk to Kurin's victims, who have in some cases been permanently damaged by her. Exposing her and preventing her from hurting others is an obsession not just of mine but of many others as well. I hope this provides some important context.
Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said…
Can I just say? The phrase ‘subpar shyster’ is evverrything.
Anonymous said…
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

This is why Kim Cantin and the numerous bamboozled news media may never come around to the truth... Masterclass by Kurin on how to make a lie become the truth. Get everyone on board publicly with the lie, and they will be too embarassed, grief-stricken, and fallen to sunk cost fallacy to face and correct the lie.

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/movies/20120817_His_most_brazen_con_fooled_the_family_of_a_missing_boy.html
Anonymous said…
I’ve heard of situations in abusive advisor/advisee relationships, where the graduate student essentially develops the academic equivalent of a Stockholm syndrome. Even when faced with hard facts, they will defend their abusive advisor and justify her/his actions against any accusations of the harm they are causing them and others. Maybe this is the case with some of these students. Unfortunately the aftermath may often mean a long period of mental health treatment for the student.
Anonymous said…
You are not an independent observer at this point. You are obsessed and you have inserted yourself into this story. You talk to the victims everyday? You mean you coach them and manipulate their thoughts and plant ideas which you develop and then report on.
Anonymous said…
Why did you lie, Danielle? Why did you try to pass off a doctoral candidate under your supervision as an independent peer?
Anonymous said…
Danielle, do you really not know the differences between fossilized plant materials, animal remains, and human remains or did you lie because you knew that your students and Ms. Canton didn't know the difference? I'm not sure which scenario is worse.
Anonymous said…
There is a cult. But not associated with Danielle. Its Mr. Balter's cult.
Anonymous said…
Why did you lie, Danielle? Why’d you tell a grieving mother that a piece of plant and some old animal bones were her kid?
Anonymous said…
I don't hear this complaint in the actual media about Dani, after months. I will give Mr. Balter this, he has not blocked me so far, but is there push back on the other stories he puts out? He is clearly obsessed here but this is not is only story.
Anonymous said…
It’s Frederick or Rick Snow, not Rick Stone.
Michael Balter said…
Thanks for catching the misspelling of Snow’s name, now corrected.
Anonymous said…
Balter, I think this person who is referring to Danielle Kurin as “Dani” is her lawyer sister, not an undergrad. Her family probably calls her Dani, because I have never heard of her being referred to as that in an academic setting. Jaclyn Kurin had done some psy-ops PR for Danielle on twitter on several occasions. She should know better since she is a civil rights lawyer representing prisoners. She even warned Danielle to not have the students participate in her machete incident because it puts them in danger and her career in danger. All Danielle had to say was that Ricky was loyal and wouldn’t talk. Now he has passed away: https://michael-balter.blogspot.com/2020/12/afghanistan-vet-ricky-nelson-found.html

https://mobile.twitter.com/JackieK68302507/status/1358895247015743490

https://mobile.twitter.com/JackieK68302507/status/1404967696438079488

https://mobile.twitter.com/JackieK68302507/status/1404966631613231104 (here she follows up with a congratulations for tenure)





Anonymous said…
There is a reason why Danielle hasn’t been in the official media for months, just as Weinstein hadn’t been in the media in the decades he was abusing and raping people. They kill stories with their connections, their bullying reputation, and lawyers’ threats. This may change soon though. This truth is stranger than fiction story has all the elements to go viral once it does break the news. I would not be surprised to see it on Netflix in a year or two.
Anonymous said…
Is faking evidence and evidence tampering a Kurin family habit? While this is a developing story, this is the Kurin family after all. Normally I would give the civil rights lawyer the benefit of the doubt, but maybe not this one. I guess we will find out when they review video recordings of the declaration taking.

https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/calls-for-further-investigation-after-allegheny-county-jail-officials-deny-allegations-of-abuse/Content?oid=20944687

https://pinjnews.org/county-officials-investigate-accounts-given-by-the-incarcerated-about-conditions-at-the-jail-was-it-investigation-or-intimidation/

https://www.alleghenycounty.us/News/2022/6442476786.aspx

Also, why did Danielle’s sister recently receive a license to practice in California when she lives and works in Pennsylvania? Is she gearing up to represent Danielle pro-bono?

https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/Licensee/Detail/338970

Anonymous said…
Michael, just looking at the last few comments, you're people are flat earth nuts.
Anonymous said…
‘Michael, just looking at the last few comments, you're [sic] people are flat earth nuts.’

I can see why it would appear that way. Any conversation involving Kurin quickly veers into the Twilight Zone. But that’s entirely to do with how truly cuckoo she actually is.

You really can’t make this shit up.
Anonymous said…
We’re not the ones mistaking plant for bone.
Anonymous said…
“…you're people are flat earth nuts.”

We got our science degrees from UC Santa Barbara.

(Department of ‘forensic anthropology,’ to be exact.)
Anonymous said…
Mr. Balter. You are unusually quiet tonight. Dani Kurin is not your only article, though it may be your obsession; are your other articles so obviously BS.
Michael Balter said…
I had a lot to say in this blog post, so now I am interested in what others have to say.

I’m disappointed that your comments are so immature and lacking in detail. They don’t contribute to the conversation.
Michael Balter said…
I just did delete a comment that was pretty idiotic and also contributed nothing to the discussion. To save readers of this blog from such nonsense, I will probably be a bit more strict about moderation for a while.
Anonymous said…
What is your other main article right now?
Michael Balter said…
Thanks for asking. I’m working on the weekly installment for my newsletter “Words for the Wise.” It will be called “Enablers Gonna Enable” and discuss how abusers cannot operate without being enabled by others around them. Kurin is a good example as I point out in this post. Watch for it at https://michaelbalter.substack.com/
Michael Balter said…
I’ve had to reject a few more stupid comments that added nothing to serious discussion of the issues here.

Kurin’s defenders have to ask themselves why she resigned her tenured position, or if they think they know, tell us here. Kurin fought for years to get tenure despite her documented record of misconduct, her family spent a huge amount of money suing me as part of that effort, and she did finally get it—only to give it up a handful of months later (there is no mandatory retirement age at UC, so she could have kept the job for 40+ years if she had wanted to.)

The likely answer is that she was in serious trouble, and perhaps was given the choice of going through yet another disciplinary proceeding or quitting. She won’t tell us, her lawyer won’t tell us, and no one here seems to know. Perhaps the Santa Barbara Sheriff will have the last word on the matter.
Anonymous said…
25. In early 2020, two years after the mudslide, Kim reached out to UCSB
for assistance. Dr. Danielle Kurin, from USCB’s Anthropology Department,
responded. Dr. Kurin, now a tenured professor, is the Director of the PL Walker
Bioarcheology and Forensic Bone Lab at UCSB. She has published substantial
literature on bone issues, and is regularly consulted by the Santa Barbara Police
Department and the Lompoc Police Department.

What is this "bone issues"? On which cases is she being consulted by the SB and Lompoc PDs? These should not be touted as appropriate credentials. Once, some cops consulted me on whether I saw someone matching a certain description run past me.

These are such sad times and it's so distressing to not get closure on a loved one's death. Kim Cantin, the memories of her husband and son, and he community in grief do not deserve being conned by a privileged, opportunistic narcissist.

DKs resignation is not karma or cummupance or anything she had coming. It's not good enough. She's hurt so many people in such deep ways. I hope this makes it to mainstream media and the Kurin name gets ruined. She and her daddy should be unemployable, stripped of their ability to influence anyone.
Anonymous said…
I don’t know if I’ll call Balter’s keen interest in Kurin an “obsession”. It is literally his job as a journalist of academic #MeToo topics to follow such stories to the smallest and last detail, and in this regard Kurin’s web of lies is the scoop of the century. It may be true that Balter became fixated on Kurin more than any other academic he exposed throughout the years, but that was simply because she sued him for $18,000,000. Frankly, I would be fixated on anyone who sued me for any amount over $1.
Kurin, on the other hand, is an academic whose job is to write academic books about archaeology. It is NOT her job to take popular books about archaeology and photograph them in garbage dumps or next to soiled diapers. It is NOT her job to open one sockpuppet account after another just to photoshop people’s heads with Nazi propaganda and disparage her former students. THIS is what I call a true obsession.

Michael Balter said…
Note: Making gratuitous and silly personal attacks on me is not going to get a comment approved for this blog. Make a point, something that adds to the discussion, whether or not one agrees with me, my reporting, or my conclusions, and I will post it.
Anonymous said…
I have received information that you have pressured people to lie about Kurin
Michael Balter said…
Oh, tell us more, please. Details details.
Anonymous said…
Danielle, a part of me feels bad for you. But you are incredibly unethical, a bully, and a gatekeeper. It brought you pleasure to derail people and stand in their way. You destroyed a lot of people's lives, even people who didn't know you all that well, like me. That an R1 fostered your behavior and that you were attracted to that position makes me never want to go that route---it seems like people with your behavior is a systemic problem and you, the epitome. I am glad that you resigned because you didn't deserve the position of professor, and you didn't deserve to mentor undergraduates or graduate students.

Michael Balter said…
Anyone who hires Kurin now is going to want to know the truth about why she resigned from a tenure-track position. She certainly will never work in academia again, at least not in the United States.
Anonymous said…
Some of the comments have a misunderstanding of the differences between bioarchaeology/anthropology and forensic anthropology. Forensic anthropology does require specialized training and American Board of Forensic Anthropology-certified experts in FA are PhDs. Currently, the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Inc. is the ONLY certifying body for forensic anthropology. An application process and testing is required including case work and a PhD. This is about to change as the board members at large have voted to develop a certification process for Master's level practitioners.

On that note, many PhDs and MAs are not certified by the ABFA, but are exceptional analysts and forensic anthropologists. Dr. Snow is definitely one of those individuals.

Kurin in a podcast admits that because of her background, she thinks she can "sell" herself as a forensic anthropologist - which denigrates the training, background and testing of others.
Anonymous said…
Thanks Anonymous 4:16pm for the clarification. I had written earlier that Forensic Anthropology/Science isn’t a PhD field (PhD labelled as such), not that board certified forensic anthropologists don’t have a PhD. This was an impression I had because I had only encountered MS programs in forensics but never a phd. I made the earlier comment to point out the ludicrous lie that Kurin told, a lie by insinuation that because someone did not have a PhD in “Forensic Anthroplogy” labelled as such, that they are therefore not a real forensic anthropologist

https://www.theabfa.org/schools
Anonymous said…
I’m not past the fact that UCSB perpetrated a fraud upon the community, allowing its facility to be passed off as a legitimate forensic anthropology lab when it is nothing of the sort.

Surely this kind of intentional lie has to meet with some kind of repercussion. What does it say if a major public research institution engages in this kind of fabrication and is not held to account?

Corrupt bodies never self-correct. They must be impelled by outside forces to reform.
Anonymous said…
The reddit comment from that anonymous UCSB student is chilling. That account and the revelations from the complaint paint a damning picture of the manipulation strategies Kurin uses, and until now, to great success. It’s a combination of appeal to authority, instilling a cult like following where you are the queen bee, and making people publicly pronounce something to your advantage, knowing that even if they are confronted with evidence they’ve been had and used, that they would prefer to continue in the lie. In fact, this was the exact strategy that Hilary Leathem had used to further incense the mob. Clancy, instead of accepting that she had lent support to a liar, doubled down on the lie and based the NASW complaint on Hilary’s lie. Because what better way to save face than to have an external prestigious body rule in your favor despite the facts? Ultimately, NASW ruled against Balter because Balter can’t keep his mouth shut and confronted Clancy on her duplicity and participation in Kurin’s defense strategy. Ultimately, the ploy worked and the NaSW saga only served to help Kurin. Unfortunately, all this had led to her getting tenure and exploiting a grieving mother. The only reason why she didn’t get away with it was because she also can’t control herself and violated the settlement by attacking Balter and her former student and colleague. She also couldn’t keep her story straight. It’s frightening to see how close she came to a resounding victory, with UCSB fully signing on to the positive Cantin publicity. A smarter, more self controlled sociopath would have gotten away with it.