How long does it take to identify a body?

Factual Questions
1

Nearly 4 years ago in Dallas, a young woman disappeared after a night out with friends. It was a high profile case, and her body was never found. The friend she was with was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison. I’ve paid closer attention to this case than most since I have friends who knew the victim.

Today, human remains were found near where police believed the man dumped her body. How long does it normally take to identify remains? In this case police already have dental records and DNA to compare, but she has been dead for nearly 4 years so probably not very easy to do.

Link to article for anybody curious:

2

In St. Louis, a young girl’s decapitated body was found in an abandoned building in 1983.

It has never been identified, nor has the head been found, despite efforts by detectives who’ve continued to work on the case after they retired. No missing person’s report, no DNA match, no anonymous tip.

3

For a high-profile case like a murder of a young woman, I’d be surprised if it’s more than a week. There would still be traces of DNA, and traces would be all they’d need. But IANAcop.

4

as a dentist who has taken forensic dentistry courses I can say if the dentition is intact and the records are good it may only take a few minutes to an hour or so. Don’t recall all the legal details so may not be so easy in that regard.

5

If you’re looking for a missing person and find a dead body, it’s pretty easy to figure out if the dead body is your missing person.

It might not be nearly that easy if you’ve got a dead body and have to figure out who it is, especially if the body is a couple of years old.

6

You can’t just say it takes x long to ID an unknown. It depends entirely on what you have to work with and what you have to compare to. The latter in turn can be totally dependent on having some sort of initial lead as to who you think the unknown might be. If you start with a total blank, you’re very often stuck.

7

Yup. We have sequenced Neanderthal DNA. It will usually be possible to obtain DNA from a body years or decades old, even if teeth and bones are all that remain.

8

I was just looking up unidentified bodies on Wikipedia when I made my way back to GQ and stumbled on this thread.

Wikipedia has an article on the general subject of unidentified decedents and articles on specific cases; the oldest they link to is the Battersea Mystery, which are bodies that have been unidentified since 1873 and 1874, and one of the most famous of the older ones is the Tamam Shud Case, which involves a body that’s been unidentified since 1948; I suppose there’s an effective maximum possible age in effect, here, because if we find remains that are old enough, we won’t consider them to be evidence of a crime, but merely evidence of prior human habitation, and won’t expect to ever be able to identify them. Bog bodies and similarly prehistoric remains obviously fit here, but remains from as recently as the Middle Ages and Early Modern period would likely fit as well.

9

All right, how do you do it? Say a body is found. Is there a forensic dental database, and who is on it? I’m kind of interested in this process.

10

Confirming identity through dental records really only works where (a) you have an idea as to who the person might be, and (b) you have that person’s dental records. Assuming your cadaver has its teeth largely intact, its relatively straightforward to compare the teeth with the records and say that the cadaver is, or is not, the body of this person.

If you have no idea who the body is, or you have an idea but no dental records, dental identification techniques are no use to you.

Which means, mostly, that dental identification techniques will either yield results very quickly, or not at all.

I doubt that there is a general “forensic dental database”. You might establish a limited database for a specific situation - e.g. following a fire with multiple fatalities, you might try to establish a dental database for all missing people who it is thought may have perished in the fire, and then use it to assist in identifying recovered remains.

11

An interesting statistic that really impressed and disconcerted me regards the Bali nightclub bombing took place in 2002, killing 187 people. When it happened many relatives flew from Australia to find loved ones. Of the victims who were visually identified by close family, 50% were wrong. Perhaps understandable in the stress and chaos, ‘my son is a fit young man in his 20s’ but the nightclub was full of exactly that sort of person.

That experience with misidentification led to a comprehensive protocol for post-disaster vicitim idnetifiction. I expect similar reviews took place after 911 and keep being refined with every incident.

12

True; easy identification depends on already having a suspicion of who the body is. And no matter how easy it is to recover DNA from the remains, it’s only as good as your knowledge of the missing person’s DNA. It’s possible that, as soon as she was found missing, the police found something that had some of her hairs on it, or the like, and got her DNA from that. And they could always compare to close relatives, if there are any available. But if they don’t have that, then the DNA would be useless.

13

Police found a body. It’s not exactly the OP’s question but I think the OP is really wants to know how long it will take to figure out whether the newfound body is the missing girl. Any clue?

14

Yes, that’s what we’ve all been discussing.

15

Thanks for the information so far!

Today on the news they said that she was found by a construction crew clearing brush. They also apparently saw a dress and women’s underwear nearby. There’s video footage of her walking to her car that night, so if the dress is the same then that’s already a good start. That may be why the local news used this as their lead story this morning.

I know in this case the police already have DNA and dental records so it’s just a matter of matching results and making sure every i is dotted and t crossed. My friends that knew her are certainly hoping for closure.

16

And the answer to my specific instance is one day.

I’m relieved for the family that they now have a a body they can properly bury. And I’m happy that the man who did this will now be officially charged with murder and will likely never get out of prison. Still, a sad day for all involved.

17

Problem is there is no dental database. Say Mary Smith disappeared two years ago and last seen wearing jeans and U of Someplace T-shirt. Someone finds remains with these clothes. Law enforcement/coroner gets dental records using info provided by next of kin. Dentist compares records against body. Use things like number and placement of restorations, missing teeth, unerupted teeth(depending on age). The remains’ teeth are x-rayed to compare with x-rays from dentist. Thing is there has to be some idea of who you are looking at to use dental records. For just a random body it doesn’t help.

Every once in awhile there will be something in a dental journal from a Law enforcement agency needing help with an identification and they list restorations and copy x-rays also usually an artists drawing of possible person. Never heard of it working but maybe it has.

18

I’m actually a little surprised that it was as quick as a day, even assuming that they prioritized it to the max. PCR (the technique for turning small DNA samples into large DNA samples) takes a good fraction of that by itself.

19

That may just indicate that they didn’t identify her through DNA. Identification through dental records can be very quick, if the dental records are to hand.