82 Forensic dentistryidentification documents, apparently killed by an oncoming train, whose
badly damaged body was fingerprinted and later identified when the post-
mortem fingerprints matched an antemortem fingerprint record on file at
New Scotland Yard.^6
In the United States, the U.S. Armed Forces is credited with the early
recognition and use of fingerprints as a means to identify the dead. Harris
Hawthorne Wilder and Bert Wentworth in the book Personal Identification,
published in 1918, describe the case of a body floating in the Hudson River
near Fort Lee, New Jersey. Visual identification was impossible because of
the condition of the remains; however, the victim’s clothing led investiga-
tors to believe that the man was in the military. As a result, postmortem
fingerprints were recorded and forwarded to the War Department, which
ultimately matched the recovered prints to an antemortem record on file
in Washington, D.C.^7 Wentworth and Wilder also describe the creation of
military dog tags containing an etched recording of a soldier’s right index
impression for the purpose of identifying war dead.^7
The creation of military identification tags containing fingerprints corre-
sponded with the U.S. entry into World War I (WWI). While no detailed
account exists regarding the use of fingerprints to identify U.S. war dead
from WWI, there are documented cases involving the use of fingerprints
for casualty identification. One such instance concerns the sinking of the
SS Tuscania in 1918. The Tuscania was transporting American troops to
Europe when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing approximately
two hundred of the twenty-two hundred soldiers onboard. Because of the
swirling seas and rocky coastline off the Scottish island of Islay, many of
the recovered bodies were damaged beyond recognition, but could be identi-
fied through the use of fingerprints.^8 From WWI onward, fingerprints have
played a principal role in U.S. military victim identification efforts.
While law enforcement initially adopted fingerprints as a means of crim-
inal identification, their use for victim identification also became important.
One of the first FBI identification cases occurred in 1925 when the Portland
Police Bureau submitted fingerprints of a decapitated corpse, recovered from
the Columbia River in Oregon, to the FBI for identification purposes.^9 When
compared to fingerprint records in the national repository, the FBI was able
to establish the identity of the body, providing a crucial lead in the open
criminal investigation. Eventually, the use of fingerprints for human iden-
tification evolved into one of the primary tools used today by law enforce-
ment, medicolegal professionals, and disaster mortuary response teams
for personal identification. This expanded civil application of fingerprints
was initiated by the FBI, which in 1940 recognized the need for the scien-
tific determination of identity in mass fatality incidents. As a result, the FBI
Disaster Squad, a worldwide response team that assists with disaster victim
identification efforts through fingerprints, was established. This Disaster