Corpse Identification

• Author: D. P. Lyle
• Pages: 55-79

Corpse Identifi cation 55

CHAPTER 5

CORPSE IDENTIFICATION

Criminal investigators are often confronted with an u nidentified corpse.

The victim might have been dead for hours, days, months, years, or many

decades. Identifying these corpses might ta ke only minutes or might take

many months or years, and in some cases the corpse is never identified.

This can be a very complex process that involves many different forensic

disciplines and techniques.

If the body is more or less intact, size, sex, race, scars and tatt oos,

facial photographs, finger prints, and DNA examination as well as the vic-

tim’s clothing might help with identification. But if the body is significantly

decayed, much of this identifying information is not available, and if the

remains are skeletal, the problem is further magni fied. In this situation the

expertise of a forensic anthropologist, a forensic odontologist (dentist), and

a forensic artist might be needed. Whether the investigation centers on a

single body, victims of a mass disaster such as a plane crash or hurr icane,

or a collection of corpses found in a mass grave, the skills of these experts

are crucial.

Why Is Identification Important?

The desire to reunite the deceased with his fa mily and friends and to

allow a proper burial are, of course, central c oncerns, but for the criminal

56 Corpse Identifi cation

investigator corpse identification is critical. The identity of a homicide vic-

tim is perhaps the single most important factor in solving the crime, since

90 percent of the time, people are killed by people they know. This relation-

ship might be spouse, family, friend, lover, neighbor, or business associate.

One of the factors that make serial killers so d ifficult to track is that these

are usually “stranger killings” in that the killer and the victim had no prior

relationship. But most killers and victims do, so identification of the corpse

allows investigators to dig into the victim’s relationships and ultimately

reveal the killer. They might discover that the wife had a motive to kill her

husband, or a business partner wanted the entire business for himself, or

the spurned lover wanted revenge. Without identifying the corpse, these

paths of investigation would go unexplored.

The opposite is also true—and for the same reasons. Identifying the

killer might help identify the victim, because the relationship goes both ways.

Basic Considerations

Mother Nature is not kind to the dead. From the moment of death, bacteria,

insects, predators, and environmental conditions begin to destroy the body.

When discovered, the condition of the body depends upon the time since

death and whether the body has been exposed to the elements or predators.

Regardless of the time frame and the conditions, ultimately most, but not

all, corpses decay until only the skeleton remains.

An unburied corpse is direc tly exposed to the elements, predatory ani-

mals, and insects. In wa rm, moist climates, bacteria and insects can re duce

a corpse to bones in short order, while in colder, drier areas, this mig ht take

many months, even years. Animal predators m ight completely or partially

consume the corpse or scatter bones and body parts fa r and wide.

But even burial doesn’t offer complete protection. The most important

factors in the destruction of a buried body are the time since burial, the

burial container, and the depth of the grave. A body buried with no coffin or

similar enclosure will deteriorate much faster than one in a metal cof fin. A

shallow grave will attract more insect s and predators than will one that is

six feet deep.

A body tossed into water presents similar problems. Whether weighted

down or not, corpses almost always sink and will remain submerged until

enough decomposition gas collects within the tissues and body cavities to

make it buoyant, at which time it will become a “floater.” As we will see in