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K&R News

2018-10-30 | Forensic Scientists Battle to Identify South Africa’s Dead
Tattoos, DNA and scars are vital clues that Mahon, 28, and her mainly female team of forensic scientists collect in a bid to identify the thousands of people who are buried anonymously in South Africa each year. Most of them are believed to be migrants who’ve come to Africa’s most industrialized nation in search of work, in particular to Johannesburg, its economic hub. The huge number of unidentified bodies passing through South Africa’s mortuaries is a burden on the state and presents a moral dilemma to forensic scientists. Once people are buried in grasslands outside the city, after three months at most, their chances of ever being identified are close to zero.

2018-09-01 | Mother Mistakenly Told Son Was Found Dead
"Less than three weeks later, our board-certified radiologist compared body X-rays known to be of Mr. Buckley with body X-rays of the decedent and, based on the information known at that time, confirmed the identification for LASD," according to a coroner's office statement. The coroner's office notified Buckley's legal next of kin of the match, but on Tuesday, officials were informed that Buckley had been located and was alive. "We confirmed this identification and established Mr. Buckley was in fact alive and a misidentification had been made," according to the coroner's office. "Immediately after learning this, we called the (supposed) decedent's next of kin and notified them that their loved one was still alive and apologized for our mistake."

2018-07-26 | DNA Test Identifies 9/11 Victim 17 Years After He Died
Scott Michael Johnson was 26 when the attack occurred, and worked on the 89th floor of the south tower as a securities analyst at the investment banking firm Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods. Forensic scientists showed that DNA extracted from a bone found at ground zero matched a DNA sample taken from his toothbrush and samples taken from his parents. According to the Times, he is the first victim identified since August 2017.

2018-07-22 | Puerto Rico Probes Forensic Institute as Bodies Pile Up
A group of representatives made a surprise visit to the Institute of Forensic Science on Friday, where they were denied access to five large trailers stationed outside that contain 76 bodies. An additional 259 bodies are being kept inside the morgue, some from as far back as 2012. Overall, 56 bodies have been identified by relatives but remain unclaimed. Puerto Rico Rep. Juan Morales, president of the House’s health commission, told The Associated Press that he is verifying the institute’s claim that none of the bodies were victims of Hurricane Maria last September. He said that is one reason he requested a copy of the inventory of corpses, adding that it lacks key details, including where exactly the bodies are being held.

2018-06-11 | Grim Task as Forensic Experts ID Guatemala Volcano Victims
Forensic experts worked Friday on the grim task of identifying dozens of bodies charred beyond recognition by the eruption of Guatemala's Volcano of Fire, a disaster that has left at least 110 confirmed dead and nearly 200 still missing. Even as search and recovery efforts were suspended for a second day amid dangerous new volcanic flows and dwindling hopes of finding survivors, about 15 forensic experts worked at a makeshift morgue in a warehouse in the southern city of Escuintla. The corpses arrive wrapped in sheets and plastic, blackened and often missing extremities, filling the cavernous, metal-roofed warehouse with the unmistakable stench of death. Some still had hair; others did not.

2018-01-12 | ‘I’m My Brother’s Keeper’: NamUs Helps Texas Family Find Missing Man
They waited for the 23-year-old’s call that never came. They never had any answers at all. But that changed when Gonzalez found the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, last July. The database is available to the public—including grieving families with mysteries yet to solve.

2017-08-19 | DNA lab reduces testing for missing people amid funding woes
Karen Stipes always believed her missing mother was “Mountain Jane Doe,” buried unidentified in a paupers’ cemetery deep in the woods outside Harlan, Kentucky. But without proof, it took nearly half a century and the development of DNA technology for forensic scientists at the University of North Texas to confirm her intuition. But now the same Texas lab that handled Blair-Adams’ DNA has had to stop testing samples like hers that come from outside the state due to a lack of funding, meaning family members of missing and unidentified people are waiting longer for their cases to be solved.

2017-08-08 | 9/11 Victim's Remains Identified Nearly 16 Years Later
Remains of 1,641 victims have been identified so far. That means 40 percent of those who died have yet to have any remains identified. New, more sensitive DNA technology was deployed earlier this year and helped make the latest identification after earlier testing produced no results, the medical examiner's office said. As DNA testing advanced, so has the multimillion-dollar effort to connect more than 21,900 bits of remains to individual victims. Few full bodies were recovered after the giant towers burned and collapsed, and the effects of heat, bacteria and chemicals such as jet fuel made it all the more difficult to analyze the remains.

2017-07-05 | FBI, Groups at Odds Over Efforts to ID Immigrant Remains
Like many family members of missing immigrants, Arriaza, 45, has submitted DNA so it can be compared to remains found along the Texas-Mexico border. But while Arriaza, who lives in Philadelphia, submitted DNA to U.S. authorities, many others choose a different path that complicates potential identification of their loved ones’ remains. Many missing immigrant family members living outside the U.S., or who live in the country but fear going to authorities due to concerns about their immigration status, instead give their DNA to non-governmental organizations working on this issue.

2017-06-26 | California Father Buries Wrong Man After Coroner's Mistake
The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley. Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, said he called the coroner's office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street. When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints. "When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Kerrigan said. "If he wasn't identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat."