Okay, I watch lots of crime shows, NCIS, Bones, all the Law & Orders, even when there’s an all-day marathon.
When they find a body and say, “it was identified by dental records,” how does that work? I mean, it’s not like there’s a national registry of dental records. I guess on NCIS, since the victim is usually someone in the military, maybe there IS a national registry of military dental records.
But when there’s just a body… how does anyone know who the person’s dentist is? If they don’t know who the person is, how can they ask a relative, or go to the person’s house and look at his/her appointment book, or look for a business card of the dentist? They haven’t identified the person yet!
If anyone found my body, they would be hard pressed to identify me by dental records. I have no relatives. My dentist died several years ago and since then I’ve been to several, trying to find someone as good as he was. I haven’t gone around announcing the names of these dentists.
How does this work? Is this a question we’re not supposed to ask when watching these programs?
I think, in most cases, the police are 99% sure who the victim is. So they subpoena only that person’s dental records, to get a positive identification.
Usually, from someone who knows the suspected victim. A parent, a spouse, a child, a friend – anyone who would know. If there is dental insurance, they can find out who claims were paid to. Contrary to what you might get from TV, it doesn’t work out in a lot of cases.
The other side of the coin is that if you leave a bite imprint on a body, youe dental records can verify that you were indeed the biter. That was one bit of evidence that did Ted Bundy in on his killing spree after escaping prison–he left a bite mark on one of his victim’s ass!
This was kind of my point. It seems to me that locating the dental records of any given person at any given time would be problematic. But in TV shows, it seems like a piece of cake (so to speak).
Using dental records of a known person (like Ted Bundy) makes more sense. But LOCATING the dental records to identify or verify the identity of some unfortunate dead person, possibly dead for years… that seems like a long shot.
None of my friends knows the name of any dentist I’ve been to since the one I liked died. It doesn’t come up in conversation.
My husband and I were talking about this recently while watching a true crime show. “Dental records confirmed that the body was that of…”
If police came to me and said “we need to get your husband’s dental records” I have no earthly idea where to even start. And vice versa. As we were talking I remembered there is a tooth shaped magnet on the fridge from the practice my son and I go to so that’s at least something.
If something untoward were to happen to me and my sister was looking for clues it would take her no more than 3 tries to guess the password for my google calendar and she could figure it out from there.
I could hand over the stack of crumpled business and appointment cards my husband has accumulated. If there were a lead in the house that’s where I imagine it would be. But there’s a 30% chance that if he ever had a card he ran it through the laundry in a pocket.
That’s PRECISELY what I’m talkin’ about! How do we find these dentists to subpoena? And someone then has to go through their files and find who had the right molar pulled and a crown on the <don’t know names of teeth>, and the chipped front tooth? It barely seems possible, certainly not at the rate that it is done on TV.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you wrote, but if your husband was missing and suspected murdered, and they found a skull that might or might not be his, giving you your chance at closure and proper burial, you might try just a teensy bit harder than you’re giving yourself credit for. Credit card statements, returned checks, cell phone records, insurance statements, just to name as few could all point you to the right person.
Also, you don’t need ALL the dental records or every dentist you ever had. Just some, to make a positive ID.
Hold the phone, I think you’re a little confused. They don’t subpoena the entire dental office. They’ll ask for the records of a specific person (usually a missing person) who they have reason to suspect is the victim. Then match the dental records of that person to the teeth they have, for an ID.
NO, I get that part. It just seems like a long shot. Handy plot device… kind of like John Grisham had to put his first couple of characters in the witness protection program because he hadn’t figured out yet a better way to end his books.
Well, unless a long time has passed, there just aren’t often a huge number of bodies that are unaccounted for. So chances are really good that information that is even a few years old is enough to match a missing person to a corpse if a) the person had quasi-regular check-ups and b) the body is in good enough shape for a reasonable comparison to be made. They’ll also take in to account other information too.
For example:
Hello Again didn’t show up to work or the SDMB. No one has heard anything for days. Concerned Dopers file a missing person’s report with the police, who have so far only been able to determine that Hello Again was last seen at an adult video store wearing a blue hoody and floppy clown shoes.
Three weeks later, body parts, some blue fabric, and a single clown shoe are found in the dumpster behind the Chicago Reader. It’s pretty messy.
The police first comb though recent missing persons reports, because the body looks only a couple weeks ripened. There are only three missing person reports for adults in the past two months: one is the wrong race, one is way too short, and the other is the missing person’s report we filed looking for Hello.
The police go to Hello’s house with a photograph of the clown shoe found at the scene. The Again family thinks it’s Hello shoe, but aren’t 100% sure. They get the police in touch with Hello’s employers, to find out which insurance company handles their employee benefits. Responding to a subpoena, the insurer provides info that Hello’s most recent dental claim was from the office of Dr. Ed Zotti.
Dr. Zotti is presented with a subpoena for Hello Again’s dental records. It takes about 30 seconds for the receptionist to pull the file from the drawer. The dental records include x-rays from about two years ago, as well as some info on some recent repairs to a few chipped teeth which were broken during a drunken fall at a Dopefest.
Did the dental records match the body? Tune in next week to find out, on TLC’s “The Doper Murder Mysteries”.
My dentist takes digital photos of your teeth and puts them into your computer file. I image he can look at the police photos and say “Hmmm…Maryland Bridge for upper right incisor, caps on upper left canine and lower left molar…must be Annie-Xmas.”
This is the piece I forgot. Someone other than me does know which dentist I see. Even so, in the event of my going missing, followed by my untimely demise I’m hopeful that the manner of my death will leave me identifiable without this step being necessary.
