Home videos are not just for entertainment anymore.

UT forensics experts have developed a technique for identifying remains

using images from home movies combined with unidentified remains that has

helped identify at least four missing people.

Murray Marks, Associate Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at UT,

and his associates came up with the idea about two years ago while trying

to identify a young girl’s body that was found in an attic. Once the

skeletal remains were located, they began trying to match them with missing

persons that fit the description. They located what looked like a match and

tried using photographs of the girl to compare the bone structure and teeth

with those of the remains.

The nature of the photographs made them ineffective in trying to identify

the body and they almost lost hope, but then someone suggested trying to

use a home video of the girl taken six months before she went missing.

Marks and a UT graduate student began studying ways to compare home video

images with actual remains in a style much like the one using still

photographs. They talked with experts in photography about the technical

work involved in the venture and came up with a plan.

The procedure begins with taking a home video and searching for about five

frames of different angles of a person’s face and body, especially shots of

teeth. Then, says Marks, they freeze these images and save them to a file

on a computer software program.

From there, they use a video device to get video graphic images of the

remains so that they can match the features in the home video images with

those of the remains. They do this by rotating the skeletal remains until

they fit the position of the video image and see if they can make a match.

“It’s very simple,” Marks said. “I can’t believe that no one else has

previously discovered this technique.”

After using this system to identify the little girl in the attic, Marks has

used this procedure in four to five other difficult cases. Out of the five,

only one has remained unidentified.

Investigator Mike Hyde from the Knoxville Police Department stated that

“the video method certainly played a part in helping us to confirm

identification of victims. We would definitely consider using this method

again in the future, but hopefully we won’t have to.”

One of the best things about this procedure, said Marks, is that it has no

socioeconomic bounds.

“Most everyone has a home video recorder, even if they do not have enough

money to go to the dentist regularly,” Marks said. This is very important

in many cases where the missing persons have no dental records to identify

them through, especially with young children who have never been to a

dentist.

With this new technique, forensics experts can capture video images of the

teeth (if the subject is smiling) and bone structure of an individual and

match remains with these images.