Let's discuss the TV and movie trope "identified by dental records", especially when faking their own death

Cafe Society
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(I could have put this in CS, FQ, or IMHO, but because it’s about a media trope, I put it here in CS. Mod: please move if appropriate.)

You hear about human remains being identified by dental records. Is this pseudoscience. like bit-mark matching turned out to be? Or is it valid? Also, how is it done, and how accurate is it?

Do the forensic dentists look at all features, like cavities, crowns, implants, root canals, etc.? Or just a subset?

My real question, though, is about the trope about bad guys who try to fake their own death by modifying the teeth of someone else, killing them, and portraying that body (usually badly burned) as the bad guy?

Is this realistic at all, or just a trope? In my admittedly naïve view, it would seem almost impossible to get all of the cavities exactly right, all of the crowns exactly right, all of the implants exactly right, and all of the root canals exactly right.

And even if they DID get all of these exactly right, what about… well, I don’t know the correct term. When you break a bone, doctors / pathologists can tell roughly how long that bone has been healing. Is there something equivalent in dentistry? Are there features that a pathologist can say, “this work has been done very recently”? Therefore, this isn’t the bad guy?

Anyone more informed about this topic?

Thanks,
J.

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If they think the John Doe is really Dave brown, yeah, they can check Daves dental records to find a possible match. Assuming they can find his dentist.

But there is no system to search. In other words, if you have a John Doe, but are totally clueless who he may be (the body is years or decades old, for example), then dental records are more or less useless.

That’s just in the movies.

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I’m not at all informed on this, but I have assumed that what was faked, or substituted, was the dental record itself, not the dental work. That is, the person swapped out their own dental record for the appropriately renamed dental record of the victim used to take their place. Difficult? No doubt, but presumably easier than reconstructive dental surgery. And I assume the dentist doesn’t do the comparison but ships the records to the FBI or whoever and so doesn’t spend time going over the files and thinking, “I don’t remember doing that root canal on X,” so is unlikely to realize that the file has been changed.
But this is a WAG from someone who is always happy to willing suspend my sense of disbelief for a good film.

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FWIW, in Better Call Saul one of the characters kept a body double around. He paid for his dental work (the double’s wife even thanked the character for it), and presumably had the dentist put the double’s records in his own file. Then when he had to fake his own death, he murdered the double (and his wife), burned his body, and left it with the rest of the corpses.

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I once dated the daughter of a dentist. He told me he rented a storage space to hold all his really old records, which he keeps in case the police come looking for a dental match.

It’s not a pseudoscience because it doesn’t pretend to be science. I mean, if the corpse had a large mole on its right cheek, the police would look through missing persons reports for someone with a large mole on their right cheek. That’s not “science”; it’s just common sense.

Dental records are the same thing. The corpse has four amalgam fillings in these four teeth, and a silver filling in this other tooth. Do the dental records of the person we think this might be have four amalgam fillings and one silver filling in those specific places? Then it’s probably them.

As for modifying someone else’s teeth, I can’t imagine that would work, and I don’t remember ever reading or watching a story in which someone did that. A much simpler way — and one that I have seen several times on TV — would be to get the dental X-rays of your patsy, then break into your dentist’s office and replace your X-rays with theirs. When the police come to check, the corpse’s teeth will match the ones in your file, so it must be you, right?

ETA: Ninjaed by four people?? I must be a really slow typist.

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Hawaii 5-0 had one like this. A Russian spy was trying tom infiltrate the Navy base, and the dental records were substituted. The dentist sensed something was off (the dental work was not American, though he could have had it done overseas), so he sent off for original records, which would have exposed the imposter. So the dentist was murdered for his due diligence!

But yes, in real life, matching dental records is just that: you have some teeth you think belong to John Smith, and you have John Smith’s dental records, and if enough of the teeth look like they match the records, then they say “yes these are John Smith’s teeth (and remains)”. But it isn’t exact. And dead bodies’ teeth are rarely perfect, especially if they’ve been in a fire.

Plus, if John’s parents made him brush three times a day, there might be nothing but perfect teeth to compare. And all perfect teeth are alike. :slight_smile:

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Not according to the cite in Riemann’s post!:slightly_smiling_face:

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Hmm…that would appear to be correct.

But that’s exactly what forensic dentists WANT you to think. It’s all pseudo science. :slight_smile:

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There’s a Green Hornet radio show episode that I think had the teeth modified. The bad guy was a dentist, anyway. Of course, he also had a life insurance policy payable to a non-existent brother that was himself in disguise, so plausibility may not have been that important.

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Yah, he was a clever bastard.

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On the actual need for dental identification, there was a terrorist bombing in Bali in 2002 that killed many locals and Australian tourists. Australian family members came and identified their deceased relatives - but of the 18 identified, nine were incorrect. Pretty horrifying to have to contemplate doing it and just as horrifying to consider what if you or someone else got it wrong - a 50% chance.

Formal disaster identification protocols were changed after that to require something more than a visual ID. This included confirmation by dental records. The advantage in this case was that the victims were younger and their complete dental records more likely to be with dentist still in operation.

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I am so pissed that I told my plan to some random guy at a bar at ABQ and it turned out to be Vince Gilligan who utilized it in his show! Now I have to figure out a whole new way to fake my death using a cloned body and contrive exposure to enough acid to mask obvious difference in scars and fingerprints.

Stranger

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If the pulp of the tooth is still intact, you can get pretty good DNA from that.

Of course, someone could also switch out the DNA records.

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As a dentist who has had forensic training I can say that it is fairly easy to identify a body with dental records. I was on the county mass disaster response team and we trained with actual remains from several major airline crashes. Even if the remains are damaged if doesn’t take too much to make a match. The thing is one has to have an idea who it is and where to get the records. Identifying a random body with nothing to go on won’t happen. No possible way to fake someones teeth to match someone elses records.

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Can you go into more detail here? I’m curious to know the particulars why it’s not possible.

Thanks,
J.

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Cavity-free teeth doesn’t necessarily mean straight teeth, right?

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I remember a bad time travel movie they did on Mystery Science Theater had something like a person from like a month in the future trying to go back in time but die in a plane crash while coming back, and the person who picks up the dental records from the police is shocked to find the dead person from the future is actually themselves. Except it’s pointed out, if that person is still alive why would the police be checking their dental records if they already know they’re still alive? Are they checking every single alive person’s dental records?

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SD Staff Report.

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You always struck me as more of a Gus than a Lalo, but I bet Gus had a similar plan in place too.