ANTHONY M
DESTEFANO
SOURCE:
NEWSDAY
CREATED:
MARCH 1, 2013
Experts say
isotopes can eliminate 90 percent of the world in an attempt to identify a
homicide victim and have been used to solve European criminal cases.
Canadian
police are using an advanced forensic technique to help determine the identity
of a homicide victim who may have traveled or lived in the area around New York
City in the months before he died in the late 1990s.
The forensic
tool, known as stable isotope analysis, determines the concentration of certain
isotopes in the body, which in turn can help show where a victim may have been
before death. Isotopes are variations of basic chemical elements and are
deposited in hair and bone through food and water consumption.
Experts say
isotopes can eliminate 90 percent of the world in an attempt to identify a
homicide victim and have been used to solve European criminal cases.
Could stable
isotopes be useful in the Gilgo Beach investigation, where four sets of remains
are still unidentified?
"Absolutely,"
said retired detective Paul Dostie, of Mammouth Lake, Calif., who used the
method to find the town in Mexico where a still-unidentified female slaying
victim came from. "When you don't have a match in a DNA database, you
don't give up; you go to other resources like stable isotope analysis."
Suffolk
County Medical Examiner Yvonne Milewski said she was familiar with the isotope
technique.
"We are
aware of the use of stable isotope analysis of human remains in human
investigations. We cannot comment on the ongoing Gilgo investigations. As a
general policy, the medical examiner's office would consider pursuing any
scientific method that could potentially provide additional information, and
possibly assist in a criminal investigation."
Asked if her
office has ever used the technique, Milewski said through a spokeswoman that it
had not been used in any "closed" case and declined to comment
further when asked if it was used in any open cases.
Deputy Chief
Kevin Fallon, spokesman for the Suffolk County police department, also said
investigators were aware of the isotope method and would use it if it were
deemed helpful. However, Fallon declined to comment on whether the method has
or is being used in any homicide or missing person case, in contrast to the
NYPD and Nassau County police, where spokesmen said their departments had never
used it.
While the
Canadian homicide victim, who tests showed was born around 1958, has yet to be
identified, police used isotope analysis to narrow down the geographic area
where he lived and traveled. The zone is an oval shaped area encompassing
Newfoundland in eastern Canada, northeastern Pennsylvania, New York State and
New England. The southern edge of the zone includes a fringe of the north
Bronx, as well as nearby suburban counties.
A smaller
search area allows police to focus their investigation of missing person
databases so they aren't looking for a needle in a giant haystack, said
superintendent John House, of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.
"This
allows you to make that haystack smaller," said House. "It doesn't
eliminate the haystack; it makes it a lot smaller."
After a
photo of a reconstruction of the man's head and face circulated in newspapers
in eastern Canada, investigators got a number of calls but no DNA match, said
House. Looking for new leads in the United States, House provided the image to
Newsday.
House turned
to isotope analysis by contacting Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, an expert in
isotopes, at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland. (Police labs can't do
isotope analysis in-house.) The science turns on the adage that "we are
what we eat," explained Meier-Augenstein in a telephone interview. While
isotopes are plentiful in nature, they are deposited in water and food
substances at different rates depending on geographic location, said
Meier-Augenstein. For instance, North American people consume more corn
products than Europeans so the isotope signature for the Carbon-13 isotope
would be greater than in a European person, whose primary source of dietary
sugar would be from sugar beets.
Global
distribution rates of stable isotopes for hydrogen and oxygen can be mapped
globally, although there are some variations, noted Meier-Augenstein. Because a
person absorbs stable isotopes from food and water, hair will act as a
recorder, providing a roadmap about a person's travel and help focus an
investigation, he said.
Copyright
2013 - Newsday
McClatchy-Tribune
News Service
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