odontology
by Leif Kullman
Forensic Odontology
Working with Forensic Odontology means that you spend a lot of time establishing identification of unknown dead persons. This process means a comparison between the post-mortem dental records of a dead person with the antemortem records of a missing person, believed to be identical with the deceased. This comparison is well suited to preliminary be performed by a computer (especially in great disasters with many victims -for example an aeroplane crash).
The following authentic identification case stresses the usefulness of computers in Forensic sciences. The importance of computers will grow in the future.
Case report:
A couple of years ago a skeletalized body was found in Norway. The body was lying outside below a tree. On the tree branch a rope was arranged as a noose. According to the forensic medical and police investigations the person had committed suicide by hanging himself at least two years earlier. When the soft tissues had undergone complete putrefaction, the body had fallen down. There were no personal belongings around which could give a clue to the identity of the body.
The autopsy was made at the department of Forensic Medicine in Oslo. Since no soft tissues were left on the body it became a very rough and difficult autopsy. It could however be concluded that it was a male, middle-aged body. A Forensic Odontologist made a post-mortem dental examination. These registrations were sent to many countries including Interpol in Stockholm. As a routine, the police in Stockholm forwarded a copy of the message to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Stockholm. Among several restorations in the mouth of the dead person the Odontologist in Stockholm could see a characteristic gold crown in tooth 36. A computer search among missing Swedish citizens with exactly this kind of crown was made and two possible candidates were found (dental records of all disappeared Swedish citizens are stored in this register since a couple of years). These two possible candidates were manually examined and one of them had dental records that matched exactly, except in one tooth.
The missing person had an intact 45 while the post-mortem findings of the skeleton was an occlusal filling in the same tooth. This discrepancy could be explained, since the antemortem findings were based on records from the late 1970:s and the filling could have been made later by some other dentist. Our matching missing person was a military who disappeared in Stockholm 1983. He was working as an officer in a military camp a bit Southwest of Stockholm. However, when we now suspected his body to be found, the police contacted his family again. They lived in the county of Värmland near the Norwegian border and mentioned now, that shortly before he disappeared the captain had said that he would commit suicide and make sure that nobody could ever find him.
Since this was an important case, with two different countries involved, we decided that we had to have a reliable, radiographic identification. The officer's former working place was again contacted and requested to send dental radiographs to us (we had sent them back after registering the officer in our list). Meanwhile we concentrated on the medical records of this captain. The missing officer had two toes amputated and we had also some skeletal radiographs, for example a hip joint. A medical description of him was made and sent together with the medical radiographs to Oslo. Also included in this message to Norway was information about the length, hair colour, shoe size and our dental records according to our computer program, but without any accompanying intraoral radiographs. However we soon were lucky to get the intraoral radiographs from the camp and we could make copies and also send these to Oslo. Post-mortem intraorals could be taken there and a full identity could be established.
Finally, over half a year after that the skeletonized body was found, it could be repatriated and be buried in the family graveyard in Sweden. Without our computerized missing person register this solution should never been possible.
Next month:
Is it possible to let the computers make the identification in the future?
Leif Kullman
