Robles, Mark Angelo DV.

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 What is the essence of personal identification in forensic investigations? 

 Describe or trace any historical/ old methods of personal identification, identify the scientific
methods and describe their nature.
 Explain the stages of identification process under the concept of Disaster Victim
Identification. Cite Interpol standards as a basis of your discussion.
 Discuss how the case was solved through the scientific method of identification.

ANSWERS:

 There is a big role of personal identification in forensic investigation because an

individual’s identity is established through personal identification. The need for
personal identification arises in natural mass disaster like earth quakes, tsunamis,
landslides floods and in man-made disasters such as terrorist attacks, bomb blasts,
murders, and in cases when the body is highly decomposed to deliberately conceal
the identity of an individual.

 Identity verification has been around for thousands of years. One alternative was the
physical display of jewelry or other decorative goods. The oldest pieces of
jewelry found for identity purposes were beads that were discovered in South Africa,
Algeria and Israel. The oldest date back approximately 100,000 years ago. In terms of
identification, these beads communicated a variety of information to others,
including wealth, familial ties and personal identity. Even now, jewelry is still being
used in the military in the form of dog tags, and for medical purposes as medical alert
bracelets to help identify and classify individuals. Another historic alternative to
memory was tattooing. The earliest tattoos identified in ancient Europe and Egypt
appears to have had a therapeutic purpose. But other societies such as the Maori of
New Zealand developed elaborate visible tattoos that communicated a person’s
status, ancestry and membership in a particular group. As time progressed,
the Roman Empire developed more data collection techniques and needed more
personalized information from citizens, so a variety of documents were introduced.
These included many that are still common today, such as birth certificates, land title
deeds and citizenship records. In 1829, the British Parliament enacted the reforms of
Robert Peel to place more emphasis on printed police records. Due to this new focus,
data could be stored in a personal document file and linked back to individuals using
a unique numerical value. This would be the precursor to more modern government
databases that link to ID cards. In 1840, William Henry Fox Talbot pioneered the
 negative-positive photographic system. This invention revolutionized the
identification industry, although it was not until after WWII that photo IDs became
widespread. In 1858, Sir William Herschel made a biometric breakthrough. He
successfully implemented ink fingerprints as manual signatures on wills and deeds,
making it a means of precise identification. This practice evolved into Scotland Yard’s
Galton-Henry system of fingerprint classification and would later be automated by
the Japanese in the 1980s with their Automated Fingerprint Identification System
(AFIS) and further improved by the Americans with their Integrated AFIS.

 According Interpol, there are 4 steps of to identify the victims of disaster such as
earthquake, cyclone or a terrorist attack but it can take a long time to accurately
identify the victim. The first step is Scene examination: Depending on the incident,
and where it happened, it can take days or even weeks for all the victims and their
property to be recovered. Second is Post-mortem or PM data: The human remains
are examined by specialists to detect forensic evidence to help identify the victim.
This can include: fingerprints, Odontology, DNA profiling, and Physical indications
such as tattoos, scars or surgical implants which may be unique to the victim. Third is
Ante-mortem or AM data: Dental and medical records, fingerprints and DNA are
recovered from the victims’ homes or provided by family members. Lastly
Reconciliation .Once the PM and AM data is collected, a team of specialists compares
and reconciles the two sets of information to identify the victims.

 Along with skull searchers found a few strands of hair, a lower jaw, and about 40 bones
including pelvic bone, femur and some ribs. Searchers unearthed the tattered remains
of a pair of jeans, pieces of a flowered shirt, remnants of plastic shopping bag and a
metal button. That physical evidence was sent to the forensic crime lab to examine. The
criminalist determined the overall height of the victim using the evaluation of the
tattered blue jeans. Scientist also analyzes the hair found at the grave side. Hair can be
identified as either Caucasoid, Negroid or Mongoloid. The preliminary investigation
indicated that the victim was a female Caucasian. Police sent the information to the
national crime lab center a database of all missing persons in the United States of
America and Canada. Investigators believed that the skeletal remains found in the
shallow grave had been there for less than 8 years and were those of a petite Caucasian
Female. One piece of evidence had puzzled investigators from the start- the small metal
button found with the remains. Scientist found the letters “T-E-X-W-O-O-D” from
that metal button. To find out more the bones was sent first to anthropologists. The first
step is to determine whether the skull is Caucasoid, Negroid, or Mongoloid which
includes native Americans and Asians. The anthropologist confirmed police suspicions
that the skull was Mongoloid. The anthropologist confirmed that the victim was female
since the cranial sutures were closed and judging from the wear of her teeth, the
anthropologist estimated that she was young most likely in her mid-20. Anthropologist
estimated her weight to be approximately 12- pounds. They learned something else
from examining her pelvic bone. When a woman has delivered at least two children, the
separating process of the pelvic bones create a groove such a groove found on the
pelvic bone at the grave site. Investigator now knew that the victim had given birth to at
least two children. Now the Police knew the victim that she was an Asian female who
had given birth to at least two children, a petite and standing about 5 feet tall and
weighing about 120 pounds. Police asked the anthropologists to bring the skull to life
using the technique of facial reconstruction. Using the facial reconstruction, the
generated image was released on the news by the police. Willaiporn cox saw the news;
her husband recognized the image that looked like their friend 33 year old Bun Chee
Nyhuis. The police obtained the photograph of Nyhuis from her husband and sent it to
the anthropolgy department at Colorado University and use the technique of Skull
Photograph Superimposition.