There are no two cases alike

A number of routine cases are reviewed: 1. A skull with a canine porcelain crown nicely glued in line was considered a study object, not a case of actual forensic interest (Fig. 1). 2. A murder victim was identified as a certain young girl; records including radiographs and plaster models showed no inconsistencies, but at least 28 concordant traits, among them characteristics in a root-filled central incisor (Fig. 2). 3. The body of a young suicide could be identified by means of one intraoral radiograph taken prior to one extraction, the only treatment listed in his dental record (Fig. 3). 4. After a fire, an unmarked rubber denture was found among debris; it showed burning along the distal palatal edge, so could not have been in the mouth of the owner during the fire. Being so completely deformed, it had to be discarded as evidence. 5. Another denture, removed from the mouth of a victim of the same fire, showed typical burning of the frontal parts, but also a stripe of burning along the midline (Fig. 4); accordingly, this victim must have inhaled flames before he died. 6. An old woman disappeared; in her home, police found an unmarked full lower denture left behind on her bed. When recovered dead several months later, this woman carried a full upper denture but no lower. Dental experts were not involved in this case but later saw both dentures; they had been made at different times and occluded badly. Did this woman have two sets? Or did the lower denture maybe originate from her murderer? The author urges that the FDI design an international system of denture marking. 7. A man was found murdered with an axe; police experts had reason to believe that he might have been executed somewhere else, but tooth 12 (Fig. 6)---found lying loose under the head---showed marks which proved that it had been exarticulated by one of the axe blows (Fig. 5). Consequently, the recovery site was also the execution site.