Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's not here, but she's here in spirit.
Speaker 2: We're all flashing our pearly whites because we're in a
Speaker 2: lineup and this is stuff I.
Speaker 1: Tried, or my case, front four of my pearly off whites,
Speaker 1: because when they made me my new set of four
Speaker 1: teeth to go upfront to replace my four teeth, they
Speaker 1: were too white and they looked weird. Oh really, And
Speaker 1: they said we can send them back and have them
Speaker 1: staining them just a bit more, and I went, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do that.
Speaker 2: Like Matt Dylan, and there's something about Mary.
Speaker 1: They weren't quite chick lit white, but they were enough
Speaker 1: to where they looked a little different than the others.
Speaker 1: And the others are just gonna, you know, as teeth
Speaker 1: do continue to stay in a bit. So yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: why don't we go ahead and knock it down?
Speaker 2: And you should have just smoked a bunch of cigarettes, right,
Speaker 2: done it yourself, saved some money.
Speaker 1: I don't think these implants will. That's the problem is
Speaker 1: they don't stain, while the others are.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well then yeah, you definitely need to hand
Speaker 2: those off for staining in the lab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, well, I was just smoked eighties cigarettes,
Speaker 1: so today another and I thought we were done with forensics,
Speaker 1: But who knew that lurking out there was the topic
Speaker 1: of forensic dentistry, which we will learn very quickly as
Speaker 1: in right now kind of can be divided up into
Speaker 1: two things, which is identification of deceased people or peoples
Speaker 1: from dental records, like when you hear like you know,
Speaker 1: they perished in the fire, but they were able to
Speaker 1: identify the body, and the much more controversial bite mark
Speaker 1: analysis that had been widely used in court and is
Speaker 1: now generally thought of by most dentists and people in
Speaker 1: this line of work as junk science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, just from researching this, it's like,
Speaker 2: what kind of judge is still allowing this in as evidence?
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess I just revealed my take on
Speaker 2: forensic dentistry or bitemark analysis specifically, because the other version
Speaker 2: you said identifying deceased people is really no, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's pretty much set. Most I didn't read anybody who
Speaker 2: was challenging it or it's legitimacy, And apparently it's been
Speaker 2: really useful over the years because the teeth are the
Speaker 2: strongest part of the body. They can survive fire, they
Speaker 2: can survive exposure to chemicals that could just get rid
Speaker 2: of the rest of the body. They can survive explosions
Speaker 2: up to I think two thousand degrees fahrenheit. They can
Speaker 2: take heat up to that as anyone who's made it
Speaker 2: far enough in breaking bad nose that eventually, if it
Speaker 2: gets hot enough, they'll pop like popcorn. But most of
Speaker 2: the time, if a dead person who's unidentifiable comes into
Speaker 2: a medical examiner's office, they have not been exposed to
Speaker 2: that level of heat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even if the teeth themselves are struggling to
Speaker 1: hang in there, tooth pulp or dental tissue on the
Speaker 1: inside of that tooth is very resistant to environmental attacks
Speaker 1: like incineration, immersion, like you can be underwater for well,
Speaker 1: I was about to say a million years, but that's
Speaker 1: probably not true, but immersion, trauma, decomposition, So extracting DNA
Speaker 1: from the inside of a tooth is a pretty viable thing.
Speaker 1: But before nineteen seventy four, all you really had going
Speaker 1: was identifying victims of a disaster, usually a natural disaster
Speaker 1: or human cause disaster. They did not really get into
Speaker 1: crime scene stuff. Because in nineteen seventy five is when
Speaker 1: that first became permissible in court, where a murder victim
Speaker 1: had a bite on her nose and three forensic dentists
Speaker 1: came along and said, hey, it's pretty clear this bite
Speaker 1: came from this person. It should be maybe the exception
Speaker 1: to the rule, but we should allow it in court
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that was a very fateful decision because as
Speaker 2: that case made its way through appeals and a final
Speaker 2: appellate court upheld it, that also simultaneously not only convicted
Speaker 2: the killer, it also it said, this is legitimate. Bitemark
Speaker 2: analysis is admissible in court. It's set a precedent, and
Speaker 2: that exception that those three forensic dentists in their defense,
Speaker 2: you know, went to batfor for use in this particular case,
Speaker 2: became the rule. And there was no longer like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is not actually that great of an idea. It was, hey,
Speaker 2: we've got this new way of prosecuting scumbags. Let's use
Speaker 2: it to the max. And there was a really famous
Speaker 2: case within just a couple of years of it becoming
Speaker 2: widely used in American court sorts. That's still celebrated today.
Speaker 2: Is one of the great successes of bitemark analysis because
Speaker 2: it's not like every single case is worse than the last. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there's enough bad cases and enough people who've been
Speaker 2: wrongly convicted and later exonerated based on bite mark evidence
Speaker 2: that it should not It's not it should not be allowed.
Speaker 2: You just go figure out who did it some other way.
Speaker 2: Stop using bite mark analysis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dozens of people, according to the Innocence Project. And
Speaker 1: we should point out from nineteen seventy five until just recently,
Speaker 1: like twenty sixteen is when they finally made affirm decision,
Speaker 1: which you know, we'll hold onto that one, but that's
Speaker 1: really when things changed. But I think the case that
Speaker 1: you were talking about is I've forgotten Ted Bundy. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, a notorious serial killer Ted Bundy would
Speaker 1: sort of wind up his serial killing career by wandering
Speaker 1: into the Kyomegas already house at Florida State University and
Speaker 1: bludgeoning and killing for students at sorority sisters there, including
Speaker 1: one victim where he bit her and left very clear
Speaker 1: bite marks. And those bite marks were instrumental in Ted
Speaker 1: Bundy's conviction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the two Kyomega women were who were who died
Speaker 2: who did not manage to live with Lisa Levy and
Speaker 2: Margaret Bowman. But he did some pretty terrible damage to
Speaker 2: some the other the other two, I guess. But that
Speaker 2: bitte mark apparently Ted Bundy had extremely crooked front teeth,
Speaker 2: so much so and the bite mark was clear enough
Speaker 2: that they used that bitemark analysis in part to convict
Speaker 2: him for those murders. Those were he apparently admitted to
Speaker 2: killing thirty women, possibly killed as many as one hundred
Speaker 2: and so one of the one of the cases he
Speaker 2: was prosecuted for were the Kyo Omega murders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So that's a good setup. We should
Speaker 1: just mention sort of as far as the identification, the
Speaker 1: non controversial part. Adults usually have thirty two teeth, foreign sizers,
Speaker 1: four canines, eight pre molars, twelve molars, and four wisdom
Speaker 1: depending on if you still have those. And when you
Speaker 1: go to the dentist, they you know, we've been to
Speaker 1: the dentist, and they do a lot of notating. They
Speaker 1: notate your teeth variations in your teeth changes in your teeth,
Speaker 1: if you chip a tooth, any dental work you've gotten,
Speaker 1: like crowns or fillings or bridges, or in my case
Speaker 1: for implants, periodontal disease, receding gums. There are x rays
Speaker 1: and there are just the tooth charts. And these are
Speaker 1: the dental records that we speak of when they say,
Speaker 1: you know, a body was identified, you know via dental records.
Speaker 1: It's because of all this work that you get over
Speaker 1: the years at the dentist. I guess if you, well,
Speaker 1: this doesn't have so much to do with bitemark analysis,
Speaker 1: I guess it could, but the records that seem like
Speaker 1: are mainly about identification.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also by laws, I think every state requires
Speaker 2: dentists to keep dental charts on their patients, and then
Speaker 2: they also have to retain them for set number of years,
Speaker 2: depending on which state demands what. So they do come
Speaker 2: in handy just the charts alone. Well, like, there's not
Speaker 2: going to be x raysed with them necessarily, there's not
Speaker 2: going to be any photographs just from the charts, and
Speaker 2: the the coding systems that they've worked out to codify
Speaker 2: teeth can conceivably give you enough information that you could
Speaker 2: use it in some form of forensic dentistry. That's how
Speaker 2: accurate the charts are meant to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So you know, we mentioned all the
Speaker 1: ways teeth can hang in there and stay you know,
Speaker 1: a part of your skull, and when other parts of
Speaker 1: your body have deteriorated, teeth can shrink, they can become fragile,
Speaker 1: but if you handle them gently and with care, you
Speaker 1: can preserve them and lacquer. And what will happen if
Speaker 1: you need to identify corpse usually is a dentist will
Speaker 1: go to the morgue. They will surgically expose the jaw
Speaker 1: and examine things. That's if you have, like you know,
Speaker 1: a pretty recent dead body that hasn't decomposed too much.
Speaker 1: If all you've got is a handful of teeth, that
Speaker 1: still maybe enough due to those X rays and charts.
Speaker 1: But if it's mass casualties, a dentist is gonna and
Speaker 1: these are forensic dentists, by the way, it's a specialty.
Speaker 1: They get a list of possible victims and then you know,
Speaker 1: you start comparing different records of the different people to
Speaker 1: try and sort out who is who.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it takes a special kind of dentist to
Speaker 2: do this kind of work, because by the time the cadaver,
Speaker 2: the corpse has made it to the forensic dentist, everybody
Speaker 2: else upstream has said, like, no, they don't have fingerprints,
Speaker 2: their face is unrecognizable. It just keeps going on and
Speaker 2: on and on until finally your last chance of identifying
Speaker 2: the person is forensic dentistry. And they'll often, i mean,
Speaker 2: like if it's a mass casualty, you know, you know
Speaker 2: who is on the plane. Apparently that's when it comes
Speaker 2: in handy a lot for plane crashes. You know, all
Speaker 2: the passengers on the plane, You go get their dental records,
Speaker 2: You hand them over to the forensic dentists and say,
Speaker 2: good luck, can you match any of these teeth with
Speaker 2: these charts? And they're they're i mean, they're a huge
Speaker 2: part of a forensic team in like mass casualty events.
Speaker 2: They're they're really important because again they're like the last
Speaker 2: hope of some families getting closure, being able to like
Speaker 2: give their loved one a funeral or something like that.
Speaker 2: Like that's the role that they're they're playing. They're not
Speaker 2: doing this because they like just playing with dead people's
Speaker 2: teeth or anything like that. Like they are helping other
Speaker 2: humans with their work by identifying disaster victims. I'm not
Speaker 2: extending that to bitemark analysis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of things you
Speaker 1: can sort of glean from looking at a person's teeth
Speaker 1: about that person. It's not the most exact science, but
Speaker 1: we know generally how fast teeth grow, about four micro
Speaker 1: meats per day, So you can estimate someone's age based
Speaker 1: on their teeth.
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, you can also like when your
Speaker 2: teeth develop as a human, it follows a set pattern. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you can go and look at somebody's development, especially
Speaker 2: if they're underage, I think twenty something or thirty five,
Speaker 2: and say, well, they have they've developed this tooth, but
Speaker 2: they haven't developed this tooth, so they're yeah, probably eighteenish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. They can get it in a wheelhouse. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can learn a little bit about someone's ethnicity because
Speaker 1: you know, some ethnicities have teeth that are a little different.
Speaker 1: Apparently some Native Americans and some Asian people have incisors
Speaker 1: that have scooped out backs. You can determine sometimes some
Speaker 1: socioeconomic background. If there's you know a lot of really
Speaker 1: expensive restoration work, that'll tell you that they probably had
Speaker 1: a lot of money or you know, at least money
Speaker 1: to afford that. Also, the methods that are used are
Speaker 1: used in some parts of the world and not in others,
Speaker 1: like some geographic areas. Person's lifestyle, like if they were
Speaker 1: a smoker, this is kind of fun. If you're a
Speaker 1: pipe smoker, man, if you play the play the bagpipes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a very distinctive wear pattern on your teeth.
Speaker 2: Did you see any pictures of a skull with a
Speaker 2: with a where from pipe smoking? Yeah, it's crazy. It's
Speaker 2: like the person's teeth like curve up at some point,
Speaker 2: like I'm basically I think it was the right side
Speaker 2: of their face just from holding a pipe in their
Speaker 2: teeth for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then just sort of the obvious stuff like
Speaker 1: a family member saying like, no, they were definitely missing
Speaker 1: that tooth or that that you know, that distinctive crown
Speaker 1: with the diamond CWB for Charles W. Chuck Bryant, I know,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you got that. Still that was definitely
Speaker 1: their mouth or that tooth was broken. So beyond just
Speaker 1: dental records, like family members can sometimes help out.
Speaker 2: I also saw another lifestyle. One was something called a
Speaker 2: tailor's notch. This is pretty arcane, but if you find
Speaker 2: a tailor's notch, there's a chance that this was a dressmaker,
Speaker 2: a tailor or something like that, because they hold pins
Speaker 2: in their mouths.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, as part of their.
Speaker 2: Profession, usually in their teeth, and when you do that
Speaker 2: enough times, it actually wears a little indentation in the
Speaker 2: tooth that you normally hold the the sewing needle in. So,
Speaker 2: do you want to talk about the Black Death or
Speaker 2: just keep moving on.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break. Okay, all right, we'll take a
Speaker 1: break and we'll talk about the Black Death and then
Speaker 1: dive into the more controversial bitemark analysis.
Speaker 2: So we promised talk about the Black Death. Apparently one
Speaker 2: of the high profile I guess forensic dentistry cases recently
Speaker 2: was a study that looked at the teeth of or
Speaker 2: I think it extracted DNA from the pulp of the
Speaker 2: teeth of medieval villagers who died from the plague. And
Speaker 2: I guess they were able to exclude the plague in
Speaker 2: some cases, like people had died and it was falsely
Speaker 2: attributed to death from the plague. That seems almost inconsequential
Speaker 2: to me because the other thing that they did was
Speaker 2: definitively prove that you're seeing a pestis, which is a
Speaker 2: bacteria I think, a bacteria that's carried by fleas typically,
Speaker 2: So the rats came to town, the fleas around the
Speaker 2: so the bacteria was on the fleas, and that's what
Speaker 2: spread the black death, that's what they've long said. And
Speaker 2: they extracted that from the DNA of the pulp of
Speaker 2: teeth of medieval people who died from the plague definitely
Speaker 2: died from the plague, and said, yep, here's your smoking gun.
Speaker 1: There's your problem, right, Yeah, And it was something this old.
Speaker 1: A DNA isn't readily available. M DNA mitochondrial DNA can
Speaker 1: also be very useful.
Speaker 2: And I also saw the oldest tooth that they successfully
Speaker 2: sequenced a genome from by extracting DNA from the pulp
Speaker 2: was six thousand years old, from about four thousand BCE.
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and five. They managed to do that,
Speaker 2: and you know, those people are still talking about, like
Speaker 2: I did I ever tell you about the four thousand
Speaker 2: BCE tooth we extracted DNA from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, the smell of that toothbulp O Oh good.
Speaker 2: God, that was awful. I was not expecting that.
Speaker 1: All right. So now this is where things get a
Speaker 1: little hinky, because we're going to talk about the other
Speaker 1: aspect of forensic dentistry, which is the very controversial, very
Speaker 1: complex bite mark analysis, which and we'll get to the
Speaker 1: admissibility of it now in a bit. But they still
Speaker 1: do collect the evidence, which you know you should do.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's saying, like, hey, stop even doing
Speaker 1: this as far as evidence collection goes. But here's how
Speaker 1: they do that. If you see a bite mark or
Speaker 1: anything you think is a bitemark in a like a
Speaker 1: murder case, Let's say you call in that forensic dentist
Speaker 1: who's just sitting around like so happy. They don't have
Speaker 1: their hands in a live human being's mouth at the time, right,
Speaker 1: And they got to do it quick because time is
Speaker 1: of the essence, because bite marks can change a lot
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and especially if a body has been deteriorating
Speaker 1: for a few days, like the location of that bite
Speaker 1: may be entirely different because the skin is slipping and shrinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one. Also, bruising and lividity can
Speaker 2: also obscure a bite mark or change it or alter it,
Speaker 2: so they often have to wait for the bruise to
Speaker 2: heal if the humans still alive, or wait for the
Speaker 2: lividity the pooling of blood to just kind of come
Speaker 2: and go before they really examine it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're going to take pictures with a ruler next
Speaker 1: to it. You've probably seen that in some movies I have.
Speaker 2: I saw in Silence of the Lambs.
Speaker 1: Right, oh, yeah, that's right. Bite photography is very specific
Speaker 1: and very precise, or at least it should be, and
Speaker 1: then you can magnify those photos and stuff. But while
Speaker 1: they're doing this, the first thing that they're going to
Speaker 1: identify is like was it a human bite or not?
Speaker 1: And seems like a no brainer, like I could even
Speaker 1: tell sure, But you found a study from twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite hold up. I mean, that's about animals
Speaker 1: and human differences, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a twenty fifteen study that found they
Speaker 2: used thirty nine experts. These were Board certified Forensic odontologists
Speaker 2: or members of the American Board of Forensic Odeontologists, the
Speaker 2: crediting body. I don't know why I went into that
Speaker 2: much detail, but there you have it. The official people
Speaker 2: in this study with this thirty nine experts. They showed
Speaker 2: one hundred photographs of bite marks and said, okay, we
Speaker 2: want some information about this. Are these Let's just start
Speaker 2: with is this a human bitemark or an animal bitemark?
Speaker 1: The easiest thing in the world. Was this a dog
Speaker 1: or an adult human biting this person?
Speaker 2: Exactly? And only eight percent of the photographs, so eight
Speaker 2: of one hundred photographs. I just did that, meth and
Speaker 2: I'm quite confident it's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you nailed it.
Speaker 2: Could ninety percent of those experts. I don't know what
Speaker 2: ninety percent of thirty nine is come to consensus that yes,
Speaker 2: this is definitely human or yes this is definitely animal.
Speaker 2: They did not believe. Yeah, they did not agree on
Speaker 2: the other ninety two photographs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think human and animal would be pretty
Speaker 1: easy to tell the difference of you know, apparently not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually if the animals wearing human dentures at the time, right,
Speaker 2: good point. Yeah, like that. You know that cartoon wolf
Speaker 2: from the old timey nineteen thirties cartoon. I don't think
Speaker 2: I know that, Oh, sure you do. He was always
Speaker 2: like his eyes would pop out of his head and like.
Speaker 1: He was oh yeah, you know, like uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotcha.
Speaker 2: So what else, Chuck?
Speaker 1: Well, this is a pretty disturbing but I guess helpful
Speaker 1: thing that I never knew. After they inspect the body
Speaker 1: for the bite marks and all that stuff, they will
Speaker 1: actually cut out the bike mark and preserve it.
Speaker 2: They're like, can I take this home?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they will cut the bipe mark from the skin,
Speaker 1: preserve it and formaldehyde, and then make a silicone cast
Speaker 1: of the bite mark, which makes total sense. I just
Speaker 1: never thought about how gross that would seem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty gross. I mean, the whole process
Speaker 2: from starting to finish is fairly gross.
Speaker 1: In that case, what kind of bite marks though they
Speaker 1: can they make?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm based on the kind of transfer pattern is
Speaker 2: what they call it. And it's not just specific to
Speaker 2: forensic idontology transfer patterns or what you're looking at when
Speaker 2: you look at the rifling on a bullet to try
Speaker 2: to identify what gun it came out of, which also
Speaker 2: apparently is junk science fingerprints. You're transferring your fingerprints, so
Speaker 2: it leaves a transfer pattern. Same thing with forensic idontology,
Speaker 2: and the different kinds of forensic patterns are based on
Speaker 2: the damage that the bites do. So if it scrapes,
Speaker 2: like if you're I don't need to put it any
Speaker 2: other way. That's considered an abrasian bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And artifact is when, yeah, when there's an actual part
Speaker 2: of the body missing from because of the bite. It's
Speaker 2: not just a bite mark, there's actually tissue or something missing,
Speaker 2: like an ear lobe. I think is like Evander Holyfield's
Speaker 2: ear lobe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was, I'd say mac Tyson bite.
Speaker 2: So he's got a fight on Friday.
Speaker 1: Oh is he fighting that guy Friday on Netflix? Shoot,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna be here. I want to see that.
Speaker 2: I'll tape it for you on the VCR.
Speaker 1: You take it all right to me the tape. We
Speaker 1: also have evulsions, that is when just some of the
Speaker 1: skin is removed, and I guess not an entire piece
Speaker 1: of the body. You have contusions, which is of course
Speaker 1: a bruise. If it's profusely bleeding, it's a hemorrhage. If
Speaker 1: it's a nice clean neat wound, then you have a
Speaker 1: very precise spider and they call that an incision. And
Speaker 1: then a puncture wound is a laceration.
Speaker 2: Yes, And then there's also the different like depths or
Speaker 2: the obviousness of the bite mark is another category that
Speaker 2: they use, and it starts from lowest to highest. It
Speaker 2: took me a minute to figure this out because I
Speaker 2: don't think the wording they used is really good. Agree,
Speaker 2: a clear impression means that there was significant pressure used.
Speaker 2: That's the lowest of the three categories. Yes, an obvious
Speaker 2: one signifies medium pressure, which that to me just just
Speaker 2: like shows that this is not accurate science. Medium is
Speaker 2: a type of fry order, French fry order, not the
Speaker 2: you know, depth of a bite mark, like medium is
Speaker 2: so subjective, right, Yeah, all three of these are and
Speaker 2: then noticeable. That seems to me like that would be
Speaker 2: the least of the three. That's the most, the most
Speaker 2: pronounced bite mark of all, because the biter used violent
Speaker 2: pressure to bite down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it should be obvious. Oh my god, and holy crap,
Speaker 1: for the love of god, what was this person doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. There's also some some other things that
Speaker 2: the bier can do during the biting, if they you know,
Speaker 2: if they like use their jaw a bunch. It's not
Speaker 2: just like one bite where they clamp down. If they
Speaker 2: bite in succession a few times, that was going to
Speaker 2: leave a totally different mark from one that is going
Speaker 2: to where they just clamp their jaw down or something.
Speaker 2: If they move their tongue, it will move the skin
Speaker 2: around and will affect the bite mark that's left behind.
Speaker 2: We should have probably given like heads up at the
Speaker 2: outside of this episode. Huh.
Speaker 1: Well, I think forensic dentistry is a creepy enough title, okay,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'll title it forensic Dentistry colon enter at
Speaker 1: your own Risk or something like that.
Speaker 2: Oh good one. And then there's another one too. If
Speaker 2: the victim is being is still, it might which to
Speaker 2: me means dead because nobody's gonna sit still. Well, they're
Speaker 2: being bitten hard enough to leave a bite mark that
Speaker 2: could be used against you in court. But you know,
Speaker 2: if they're moving, that's going to affect the bite mark
Speaker 2: that's left behind too. And then of course also the
Speaker 2: kind of tooth profile they have too.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, for sure. I mean if you're if I
Speaker 1: would have bitten somebody in a violent episode when I
Speaker 1: had my front tooth or my two front teeth missing,
Speaker 1: it would be pretty obvious when you saw that bite mark.
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, like you said, had crooked teeth, and so
Speaker 1: that will leave a crooked impression obviously you need chips
Speaker 1: on your teeth, are gonna make a more sort of
Speaker 1: jagged impression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you ate a bunch of chips and
Speaker 2: they're just stuck between your teeth, is that what you meant?
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's an ear lobe and some doriedo, So let's
Speaker 1: put that in an evidence backing.
Speaker 2: You're welcome for the plug.
Speaker 1: And then braces. You know, if you braces or implants
Speaker 1: or something or a bridge, that can leave a pretty
Speaker 1: distinctive impression for sure. Once and this is sort of
Speaker 1: how it used to work, but once they identify a subject,
Speaker 1: they're going to get a warrant to take a mold
Speaker 1: of a suspect's teeth so they can compare it. They'll
Speaker 1: take a lot of pictures of their mouth and stuff opening, closing, biting,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and then in the old days, they
Speaker 1: would go to court and compare those and a forensic
Speaker 1: dentist would take the stand and say, hey, that that
Speaker 1: bitemart looks like that person's mouth me jury. That can
Speaker 1: be a major reason why you convict.
Speaker 2: And in some cases they would say things like with
Speaker 2: one hundred percent certainty.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another thing that they say too, that we'll find that
Speaker 2: seems to not be at all true, is that each
Speaker 2: person's arrangement and teeth, like your mouth, everything inside your
Speaker 2: mouth is totally unique, like your fingerprints. And that apparently
Speaker 2: is not true at all, But you'll find it all
Speaker 2: over the internet as fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there are some professional dentists, in forensic
Speaker 1: dentists that still believe that. I mean that thing I
Speaker 1: sent you was from last year, yeah, and is on
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health US government website, and those
Speaker 1: four accredited dentists dental experts flat out say like a
Speaker 1: person's bite mark is unique like DNA or fingerprints. When
Speaker 1: and I guess we should probably take a break and
Speaker 1: get into the studies and stuff like that. But it
Speaker 1: seems like study after study is kind of confirmed that
Speaker 1: is just not the case.
Speaker 2: Well, let's take that break and we'll come back and
Speaker 2: we'll talk about all the controversies surrounding bitemark analysis as
Speaker 2: a part of forensic odontology.
Speaker 3: Man, that's a mouthful, all right.
Speaker 1: So you did some extra digging, and you know it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear from doing the research that this is basically
Speaker 1: known as junk science now to most people. Despite those
Speaker 1: four people who wrote the article on the National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Health. But there was a review in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two in a report from the NIST. What does that
Speaker 1: stand for?
Speaker 2: The National Institute of Standards and Technology. They're like a
Speaker 2: federal agency, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So they released this report that said and
Speaker 1: there were previous reports that we'll talk about too, I guess,
Speaker 1: but this is the most recent that said BYTEmark, analysis
Speaker 1: is not real science, and it's based on these three
Speaker 1: sort of faulty premises, one which you already mentioned, which
Speaker 1: is that a person's dental pattern is unique to that person.
Speaker 1: And you know, there haven't been any studies that really
Speaker 1: confirmed this. There was a twenty thirteen study from the
Speaker 1: United Arab Emirates that found I think there's is that
Speaker 1: sort of a dental capital of the world because I
Speaker 1: saw a lot of dentists from like Saudi Arabia and AE. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that. I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I have a hunch that that's the case, so
Speaker 1: maybe someone will confirm or deny that. But that study
Speaker 1: found that fifty one percent of the two thousand dental
Speaker 1: charts that they examined were unique, some one more than
Speaker 1: half and the rest were identical to at least one other.
Speaker 1: The only thing I'll say in defense is that it
Speaker 1: may not be truly unique, but if forty nine percent
Speaker 1: are unique, then that's unique enough to talk about. Maybe
Speaker 1: not to be used in court, but enough to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my opinion, yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: But the fact is that study, and we should also
Speaker 2: caveat that with the fact that this study used dental
Speaker 2: charts only, and they made sure that they were highly
Speaker 2: high quality dental charts that they examined. But the fact
Speaker 2: that they were able to find dental charts that were
Speaker 2: identical between two people totally undermines the the idea that
Speaker 2: everybody's mouth is unique, everybody's teeth arrangement is unique.
Speaker 1: It seems like about half of them are. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you go by the data here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was two thousand dental charts. They didn't
Speaker 2: choose like three. Like this was a pretty decent, high
Speaker 2: quality study, And yeah, I think it totally undermines that.
Speaker 2: But like you said, yes, there's also enough uniqueness that
Speaker 2: you can kind of use this. And I think, like
Speaker 2: you said, nobody's really saying, like stop doing bitemark analysis entirely, right,
Speaker 2: and the actually in their defense, the American Board of
Speaker 2: Forensic Odentology says, they basically admit, like, hey, we made
Speaker 2: some mistakes in the past, we've cleaned up our act,
Speaker 2: we've revised our guidelines, and now if you're a legitimate
Speaker 2: forensic odontologist, the furthest you will go is to make
Speaker 2: three different calls. One exclude, meaning that this person's teeth
Speaker 2: could not have possibly made the bite mark that you're
Speaker 2: showing me, cops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not exclude.
Speaker 2: Which is only saying it's pos I'm not going to
Speaker 2: go any further than that, but it's their their teeth
Speaker 2: resemble enough this bite mark pattern, this bite pattern, that
Speaker 2: it's possible that this person made it, and then inconclusive,
Speaker 2: and that's as far as they're supposed to go. They're
Speaker 2: not supposed to in that sense, they're not I guess
Speaker 2: you could testify those three things. But if the prosecutor's like, okay, so,
Speaker 2: so not exclude, you're saying it's his right, They're they're
Speaker 2: supposed to bail essentially at that point. They're not supposed
Speaker 2: to go any further than that. That's the standard in
Speaker 2: the guidelines for forensic dentists doing biite analysis bite mark
Speaker 2: analysis today, but there's still plenty of people out there
Speaker 2: who are going beyond that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that's the kind of situation too
Speaker 1: where you also have to really educate a jury over
Speaker 1: like the data on what that really means, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, and say like, hey, half the time,
Speaker 1: these aren't unique, So you have to understand that going in.
Speaker 1: So you know that that was the first thing, and
Speaker 1: you know that there was that one case that you
Speaker 1: sent where and this kind of factors into number two.
Speaker 1: And number one was that they're they're unique. Number two
Speaker 1: is that the patterns can be accurately transferred to the
Speaker 1: human skin, because we've already talked about the fact that
Speaker 1: there can be a lot of distortion by skin's elasticity,
Speaker 1: and if the person like sort of does a sawing motion,
Speaker 1: it completely distorted the bite mark. But you sent that
Speaker 1: one case of the guy who was convicted who was
Speaker 1: missing a tooth entirely, which should show a pretty clear like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can exclude this one because the bitite mark didn't
Speaker 1: have a gap. But they were like, yeah, but if
Speaker 1: he grinded his teeth and kind of did a sawing motion,
Speaker 1: it could look like this, and he was found guilty,
Speaker 1: you know, and he was not guilty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was sentenced to jail, I think, was that
Speaker 2: Roy Brown?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, he spent almost twenty years in jail,
Speaker 2: fifteen years from ninety two to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: largely based on that bite mark analysis testimony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the both forensic dentists that worked on that
Speaker 1: case recanted their testimony, right, like completely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big one too. I think maybe
Speaker 2: in one of those cases where they were appealing it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was Roy Brown's, but there
Speaker 2: have been plenty of forensic on ontologists who have gone
Speaker 2: back and been like, what I was saying apparently is
Speaker 2: not right or grounded in science. I recant my testimony,
Speaker 2: and at least one judge that I read was like, well,
Speaker 2: we didn't really need you. The jury could have come
Speaker 2: to the same conclusion that the bitemark matched their teeth.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to overturn this case, which is
Speaker 2: nuts in and of itself. But Roy Brown is far
Speaker 2: from the only person who has been exonerated after being
Speaker 2: convicted on bitemark analysis too, right, Like, haven't there been
Speaker 2: like at least twenty six people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least twenty six That DNA evidence is now cleared,
Speaker 1: where bite mark analysis was, if not the smoking gun,
Speaker 1: like a pretty key part of the jury's you know finding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember when I was saying, some expert witnesses on
Speaker 2: the stand say like this, it's one hundred percent match.
Speaker 1: That happened.
Speaker 2: A good guy named Roy Cron he did ten years
Speaker 2: based on BikeE mark analysis. Because you got to understand,
Speaker 2: if you're a juror and the prosecution is saying, like
Speaker 2: this person is an expert in forensic odentology, and that
Speaker 2: expert tells you, the jurors, there is one hundred percent
Speaker 2: match between that man's teeth and this bite mark on
Speaker 2: this murder victim, it's going to be tough to overlook
Speaker 2: that For the average jur I would.
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah, for sure. And you know, the big change
Speaker 1: that you were talking about with just excluding that came
Speaker 1: about in twenty sixteen. We've mentioned some other studies. There
Speaker 1: was one we didn't mention in two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: when the National Academy of Sciences released a report about
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with a lot of forensic science,
Speaker 1: but one of those was bitemark analysis, and they basically said,
Speaker 1: and this was in two thousand and nine and it
Speaker 1: still took till twenty sixteen to make that change official,
Speaker 1: was they said, there's no scientific studies that support the
Speaker 1: assertion that bite marks provide sufficient detail for positive identification.
Speaker 1: And then a few years after that, doctors from the
Speaker 1: American Border Forensic Identology, like, we said, that's the sort
Speaker 1: of the main body or is the main body? Participants
Speaker 1: in a study there of certified dentists, an overwhelming number
Speaker 1: of them couldn't even agree whether they were looking at
Speaker 1: a bite mark at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was another thing too, I think from that
Speaker 2: same study where they took the same experts and went
Speaker 2: back to them eight weeks with the exact same photos
Speaker 2: they'd shown them eight weeks before, and some of those
Speaker 2: experts didn't even agree with their previous assessments.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was and they weren't like, hey, you
Speaker 2: said this before, what do you think now? It was
Speaker 2: like they I think they thought that this is a
Speaker 2: new set of bite marks and they were just basically
Speaker 2: guessing is what they found. So it's been pretty thoroughly debunked,
Speaker 2: but people still use it. The Innocence Project really taken
Speaker 2: an interest in this, and I think rightfully. So we
Speaker 2: did an episode on that with guess Paul Is on
Speaker 2: Remember Correctly and Yeah. So they're a group that go
Speaker 2: around and basically free people who were railroaded or wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 2: usually based on DNA evidence that wasn't heard in their case.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that they've done is
Speaker 2: taken interest in bite mark analysis. And one of the
Speaker 2: roles they play now is I don't know how they
Speaker 2: keep their finger on the pulse, but if a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: which is very rare these days from what I understand,
Speaker 2: tries to introduce bite mark analysis into a case, the
Speaker 2: Innocence Project will show up and be like, we object
Speaker 2: to that. This is not science, this should not be admitted.
Speaker 2: And I think they're fairly successful.
Speaker 1: They throw tomatoes at them, for sure. There was another
Speaker 1: case you found pretty striking when a guy named John Kunko.
Speaker 1: He was convicted of rape and assault in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: and the main evidence that got him convicted was identification
Speaker 1: of his voice by the victim, a comment he supposedly
Speaker 1: made at a party, and then bite mark on the
Speaker 1: victim's shoulder. All the evidence was a problem. The comment
Speaker 1: that the party that he supposedly made was not corroborated
Speaker 1: by I always have trouble with that word.
Speaker 2: It's a hard one.
Speaker 1: Corroborated by any other people at the party. The voice
Speaker 1: ID was made from a police officer's imitation of Kunko
Speaker 1: and his lisp to the victim, so I have no
Speaker 1: idea how that got through. And then I believe the
Speaker 1: bite mark was infrared light analysis of a bite mark
Speaker 1: that had already healed.
Speaker 2: This is a big one. So there was a forensic
Speaker 2: onontologist from Mississippi named Michael West, and he essentially just
Speaker 2: changed careers to be an expert witness in forensic onontology.
Speaker 2: That's how he made his living. And he came up
Speaker 2: with a technique called the West phenomenon, wherein you can,
Speaker 2: according to him, using some special goggles and a UV light,
Speaker 2: you can basically resurrect a bite mark that's healed years
Speaker 2: later and see it well enough that you can compare
Speaker 2: it to a suspect's bite and use it to convict.
Speaker 2: He totally made it up, apparently, at least in the
Speaker 2: first case that he used it on. He took photographs,
Speaker 2: but he wouldn't share him with anybody, So it was
Speaker 2: just his testimony that this person was convicted on, and
Speaker 2: it became a tool of the trade. So other people,
Speaker 2: including John Conco, were convicted in part because of this
Speaker 2: West phenomenon, which was part of an overall junk forensic science.
Speaker 2: So this is the junkiest of the junk that people
Speaker 2: were being convicted on.
Speaker 1: Did he also sell the special goggles on his website?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he sold them as X ray goggles that
Speaker 2: you could look right through people's clothes with.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a picture of him with his uh
Speaker 1: looking at his hand and the bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with exclamation points come up off of his head.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, I mean this is everything changed in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. One of the big things that happened, and
Speaker 1: I think there was a case in Texas a guy
Speaker 1: named Stephen Cheney was released by the Texas Court of Appeals.
Speaker 1: And this is the Texas Court of Appeals. They're not
Speaker 1: big on releasing, right, you know, convicted criminals. I noted
Speaker 1: that too, But the Texas Forensic Science Commission in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen because of this you know, kind of fraudulent bitemark
Speaker 1: evidence in Stephen Cheney's case, they were like, we need
Speaker 1: to stop this, and I think that was kind of
Speaker 1: a big case that kind of, you know, really jump
Speaker 1: started the whole We maybe not scraped the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but where they ended up, which is it can exclude,
Speaker 1: but it can't positively identify.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just use it to exclude. That's what most
Speaker 2: people can agree on for bitemark analysis is as far
Speaker 2: as they Yeah, Chuck, to ever tell you about Paul
Speaker 2: Revere in forensic id antology, No.
Speaker 1: But hey, it's a good little historical cherry on top, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Paul Revere in addition to being a blacksmith,
Speaker 2: he was a dentist too, and one of the things
Speaker 2: he did he was one of the first forensic ononologists
Speaker 2: who used dental records based on his own knowledge too.
Speaker 2: He made, you know, dental work for a lot of
Speaker 2: people in the Revolutionary War, and he identified some of
Speaker 2: those people, including doctor Joseph Warren, the man who sent
Speaker 2: him on his fateful ride where he shouted the British
Speaker 2: are coming, the British are coming.
Speaker 1: Boom pal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty amazing. Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. Thanks.
Speaker 2: I think that's it for forensic onontology, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and man, that may be it for our long,
Speaker 1: long running forensic suite. I can't believe that there could
Speaker 1: be anything else, But I also said that last time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I disagree, but yes, we'll find out. I think
Speaker 2: I'm going to go find something.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean someone will write in and be like, guys,
Speaker 1: you've covered crimes and clean up. That's better analysis, fingerprinting.
Speaker 1: I mean, the list goes on and off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you forgot forensic foot smelling, Go do that one.
Speaker 1: Maybe what I didn't know about that's it. It was
Speaker 1: the dog I smell Frido's right.
Speaker 2: Nice. Oh, actually I can do this old school too,
Speaker 2: because if you want to know more about forensic demistry,
Speaker 2: you can go check out a how stuff works article
Speaker 2: that we use in part for this episode. That is
Speaker 2: kicking at old school, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the rare articles that we didn't cover
Speaker 1: that is still good for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And since I kicked at old school, then it's
Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to call this another ADHD follow up.
Speaker 1: This is a this is a good one. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I had to write in after the ADHD episode. During
Speaker 1: the first episode, I had to pull over into a
Speaker 1: parking lot because, honestly, guys, I started crying. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have ADHD and I have never had my life
Speaker 1: explained on a podcast before. Everyone's experiences are different, for sure,
Speaker 1: and I think you did an incredible job explaining the
Speaker 1: base challenges. I also appreciated Chuck's hesitancy to call it
Speaker 1: a disorder. It is to find it disorder, but so
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong medically with calling it one. But it
Speaker 1: does hurt just a little, even as an adult, when
Speaker 1: people call it a disorder without thinking about the person
Speaker 1: who has it. I appreciated the optimism with which you
Speaker 1: both spoke about the challenges and how they can be managed,
Speaker 1: especially Josh. The only thing I would add to that
Speaker 1: is the subtopic would be to find people who accept
Speaker 1: you before they try and change you. When I feel
Speaker 1: that people love and accept me as me, I am
Speaker 1: far more willing to accept their help with managing my ADHD.
Speaker 1: Don't approach someone like you're going to fix them. Approach
Speaker 1: them because you love them, and they will receive your
Speaker 1: honest offer to assist.
Speaker 2: Man. That is some good ADHD advice right there.
Speaker 1: And just good life advice. Your podcast reminded me that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people out there like me,
Speaker 1: and I hope that a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: are trying to take this particular challenge do amazingly positive
Speaker 1: things with it. And that is from Steve.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Steve, what a great email.
Speaker 1: Yeah, appreciate it, Steve. That those episodes were a big
Speaker 1: deal for us for a lot of reasons, and it
Speaker 1: seems like people responded, so we're proud of.
Speaker 2: Them for sure. If you want to be like Steve
Speaker 2: and tell us that you had to pull over because
Speaker 2: you were so overcome by something we did or said,
Speaker 2: we love that kind of thing, especially if it was positive,
Speaker 2: not because it was so terrible that you had to
Speaker 2: pull over. But even if that was the case, you
Speaker 2: can still email us either way. Send it off to
Speaker 2: Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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