Citation

Wilson EK. J. Forensic Sci. 2017; 62(5): 1127-1133.

Affiliation

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, 590 Moffet Street, Bldg. 4077, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, American Society for Testing and Materials, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1556-4029.13401

PMID

28105649

Abstract

Re-investigation of previously unidentified remains from the Korean War has yielded 55 new identifications, each with corresponding records of prior anthropological analyses. This study compares biological assessments for age at death, stature, and ancestry across (i) anthropological analyses from the 1950s, (ii) recent anthropological analyses of those same sets of remains, and (iii) the reported antemortem biological information for the identified individual. A comparison of long bone measurements from both the 1950s and during reanalysis is also presented. These comparisons demonstrate commonalities and continuing patterns of errors that are useful in refining both research on Korean War cold case records and forensic anthropological analyses performed using methods developed from the 1950s identifications.

Published 2017. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Language: en

Keywords

age-at-death estimation; ancestry assessment; cold cases; forensic anthropology; forensic science; stature estimation