odontology
by Leif Kullman
The case with the dead Frenchman in Lapland
This month I will give an example of a routine identification case, when a reliable identification could be performed by means of teamwork of the different involved disciplines.
At the seashore of a small lake in the north of Sweden a body of a deceased male is found. The body is fully dressed and when the police examines the clothes they find an identity card in a pocket. It is issued on a French citizen, living in Paris and as always a photograph is available in the card. However the body has sustained some decomposition and it is hard to make a direct comparison between the features in the photo and those of the body.
The body is taken to a department of Forensic Medicine for an autopsy and the police realize that the teeth and assistance of a Forensic Odontologist can be necessary to establish an identity.
Since they have an idea of the correct name of the dead male, they contact the French Police and get also a contact with a brother of the Frenchman. He says that his brother had gone through a depressive period in life and had left France to go to Lapland a couple of weeks ago. He is very eager to assist and he promises to contact his brother's dentist and to come back with a report of the dental condition of his brother's teeth.
A couple of days later he calls from Arlanda, where he has flied to be able to assist the Swedish authorities with whatsoever to establish an identity of his presumed brother. He has brought a written graphic representation of his brother's teeth, which he has got from his brother's dentist . A part of it can be seen in figure 1.
figure 1
As can be seen, this is not any useful antemortem dental record, instead very personal and free rendering. A new contact is therefore taken with the French dentist and finally can some reliable dental records be received including an antemortem radiographs, figure 2.
figure 2
A safe identity can be established with a postmortem from the same region (figure 3). Among other things a very typical rootfilling can be seen.
figure 3
Next time I will give you my opinion about
some ethical considerations
that may face a forensic odontologist during his work with identification
of unknown dead in especially mass catastrophes.
