NCJ Number
155737
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 40 Issue: 3 Dated: (May 1995) Pages: 349-355
Date Published
1995
Length
7 pages
Annotation
A reliable method for extracting DNA from teeth was developed and successfully applied to a set of 12 skeletons recovered from two 10-year-old Guatemalan mass graves.
Abstract
On February 14, 1982, a local Civil Patrol rounded up the residents of a Quiche Indian village in Guatemala to question them about antigovernment activities. Twelve men were taken to a classroom and beaten. That evening, the 12 men were observed by some villagers being led away from the school bound and blindfolded, never to be seen alive again. The next morning, the villagers discovered what appeared to be two large, freshly dug graves in a nearby ravine. In July 1992, the mother of one of the missing men petitioned a Guatemalan court to investigate the case. The court authorized an international team of forensic anthropologists and archeologist from Chile and the United States to assist the newly established Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology team in the inquiry. Using standard archeological techniques, the team excavated the two graves over a 5-day period in July 1992. At the same time, the team collected antemortem descriptions of the missing men; and maternally linked relatives of the men were asked to provide hair samples for mtDNA testing. The 12 skeletons were removed to a provincial morgue for anthropological examination. Using the extraction procedure developed in this study, the authors found that teeth are reliable sources of DNA amplification-based forensic methods. The teeth used in this study had been buried for 10 years, but still yielded adequate amounts of mtDNA for analysis. This article describes the extraction procedure and DNA analysis in detail. 3 tables, 2 figures, and 32 references