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Bone finds: a challenge to forensic science
Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385 www.elsevier.com/locate/legalmed
Bone finds: a challenge to forensic science Melanie Ganswindt*, Edwin Ehrlich, Peter Klostermann, Wolf-Gunther Troike, Volkmar Schneider Institute of Legal Medicine, Free University Berlin, Hittorfstrasse 18, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Abstract The study presented here is based on 176 forensic dental reports compiled between 1993 and 2001. The bulk of the research took place in 1997, when major construction at Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof in central Berlin required the excavation of considerable quantities of earth. As building proceeded here, at ‘Europe’s biggest construction site’, it revealed not only a large number of long bones, but also a great many skulls and skull fragments. In five instances, complete skeletons were unearthed. Many of the bones ultimately proved to be of animal origin. The police were not instructed to open a single criminal investigation. Identifying and piecing together the material in this context makes tremendous demands of forensic osteology. Establishing the nature of these finds beyond reasonable doubt, and putting a name and date to them, calls for interdisciplinary co-operation between experts in odontology, anthropology, anatomy, radiology and veterinary medicine, not to mention historians. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Forensic osteology; Bone finds; Potsdamer Platz
1. Introduction For decades, the stretch of land around Potsdamer Platz lay fallow and deserted at the heart of the city of Berlin. After the destruction reeked by the Second World War, Potsdamer Platz found itself at the interface between the American, British and Soviet sectors, with the Berlin Wall running right across it. Only when the wall fell did life return to the Square, although to begin with only in the form of cranes and excavators. Probably no other building site has attracted as much attention in recent years as Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz. The wasteland, which became Europe’s largest construction site, has now been trans* Corresponding author. Tel.: 149-30-84451346; fax: 149-3084451353. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Ganswindt).
formed by this building into a completely new urban district, with office towers, hotels, homes and plenty of shops. As building progressed, a plethora of bone finds were reported. Let us take a closer look at the kind of things we can and cannot establish from examining the bones and bone fragments that have been revealed.
2. Materials and methods One hundred and seventy-six forensic dental reports serve to illustrate the problems associated with determining identification features. This research focuses, in particular, on bones and bone fragments discovered and excavated in 1997, during construction in the area around Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof.
1344-6223/03/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S134 4- 6223(02)0013 7-2
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
3. Results and discussion The Square’s image has, after all, not only been created by the outstanding buildings which line it. Spectacular discoveries by building workers hit the headlines of the daily newspapers again and again. In May–July 1997, as they penetrated deeper and deeper into the earth in the pit around the new railway node at Lehrter Bahnhof to lay foundations for government buildings, they found not only the remains of uniforms, but some 35,000 fragments of bone [1,2]. According to our estimates, this makes about 400–500 deceased persons. The bones were strewn untidily and without any obvious connection at a depth of 2–3 m beneath the ground. They belonged to people of all age groups and both genders. An odontological examination of some 8000 unearthed teeth did not produce a single filling, although a small proportion of the dental material did display rampant caries, with a number of individual teeth seriously decayed. The excellent condition of these sets of teeth, almost all of them still complete and without any fillings, indicated a long period in situ, dispersing suspicions that the bone fragments probably dated from the Second World War [3,4]. Experts from the Historical Museum were consulted, and with their help the shreds of uniform were declared unambiguously to derive from the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, although the precise cause of death could not be ascertained [5]. Reconstructing the manner in which death occurred is extremely difficult with bone fragments of this kind, if not impossible. Fractured bones and holes in the skull do not necessarily indicate a violent crime, as the damage may have occurred after death. Again, bearing in mind the conditions at the site where the finds were made, it was quite possible that the earth itself or the building materials lying there had been brought in from outside the area under investigation [6]. The soil and comparative geological analysis were not likely to throw much light on the matter. The additional research findings outlined below draw in their details on the 176 forensic dental reports from 1993 to 2001. Fig. 1 shows military finds, bones and bone fragments and a large number of long tubular bones. Fig. 2 shows the absolute number of bones and bone fragments reported. The highest frequency of
S383
finds was in 1997. This is the time when building began in earnest on Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof. Prior to this, bone finds were fairly rare. The type of bone found most frequently were skulls ðn ¼ 235Þ and skull fragments ðn ¼ 4360Þ, followed by long tubular bones. In 593 cases, the bones were of animal origin. In five cases, entire skeletons were exposed. In 27 cases, the bones were demonstrated to have come from children. Five skulls showed signs that the victim had been shot in the head, although this did not lead in a single case to a murder enquiry being set up. Post-mortem damage was observed in 154 instances. Other examinations addressed gender determination [7], age, body size and length of time in situ. Cause of death could only be ascertained in eight cases of these 156 (Table 1). Apart from six items which had evidently been preserved for anatomical or museum purposes, in two cases bones were found to have candle wax adhering to them and had clearly been used in rituals. Although, as already mentioned, it had to be borne in mind that bones discovered on this particular building site could have belonged to German soldiers fighting in the Second World War, only a small number of bones were attributed beyond any doubt to that period. The fate of just two soldiers from the last war was, however, finally established with the help of identity tags. In one of these cases, because the evidence left no doubt, an application for an official declaration of death lodged in 1959 was finally sewn up. Another problem is reflected in the large number of bone parts ðn ¼ 61Þ which were not buried deep in the soil but exposed in building rubble during excavation work – only in 26 cases, bone parts were unearthed at a depth of 200 cm. Under the Burial Act in the Federal State of Berlin, the police must be notified whenever a corpse in discovered. This makes life a little difficult for the developers on Potsdamer Platz, as they have to foot the bill for recovering the parts of the corpse, and while this is happening, all building work is halted. A large number of isolated bone finds can provoke considerable delays in the construction schedule. We cannot, therefore, entirely rule out the possibility that only about half the finds are notified in Berlin. At the same time, once the excavation work around Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof is completed, we can expect to witness a marked decline in finds of bones and bone fragments.
S384
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
Fig. 1. Findings of military accessories and large number of bones.
Whenever the discovery of a bone or part of a corpse is reported, Berlin police force regulations envisage the following procedure: first of all the police medical officer must be called to the scene if any doubt pertains as to whether they are human or
animal bones. If identification is feasible, the remains or partial remains must be transferred to the morgue. If the persons concerned are former ‘Wehrmacht’ soldiers, the agency responsible for informing nextof-kin (WAST) has to be notified. Identity tags and any other objects, which might assist identification, must be dispatched with the bones for further evaluation. Once the coroner has completed the investigation Table 1 Number of criteria evaluated
Fig. 2. Number of bone findings.
Criteria evaluated
Examined number
Determined number (%)
Number of persons Sex Age Height Case history Nature of injury Post-mortem damage Time period
156 199 306 157 164 156 156 156
141 (90) 86 (43) 229 (75) 26 (17) 58 (35) 8 (5) 154 (99) 47 (94)
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
and the mortal remains have been released for burial, notice must be sent to the Building Department of the local Borough Council, and if no other opportunity for burial presents itself, they are responsible for committing the remains to a grave in the local cemetery. 4. Conclusion The large quantity of bones ðn ¼ 1819Þ and bone fragments ðn ¼ 6672Þ discovered in the course of extensive construction work at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof poses major challenges to forensic osteology in terms of identifying and dating the material. Establishing how long the bones remained in situ, for which there is still no reliable scientific method, confronts the forensic expert with an especially difficult task. We saw that C14 was of little help to us, given the material we had to examine and the time period in question. Some other laboratory techniques displayed poor validity due to large fluctuations in both readings and assessments. Co-operation with other disciplines, such as anthropologists, historians, dental experts, anatomists and radiologists, proved valuable. From this perspective, forensic osteology holds out an interesting professional future, especially for young researchers.
S385
References [1] Schneider V, Rothschild MA, Ehrlich E. Rechtsmedizinische aspekte der knochenfunde in Berlin materials. In: Aleksina LA, editor. The IV International Congress of Integrative Antropology, St. Petersburg: IP Pavlov State Medical University, 2002. pp. 419–421. [2] Troike WG, Schneider V. Entdeckung eines massengrabes bei ausschachtungsarbeiten referate der 7. Fru¨ hjahrstagung – region – nord der deutschen gesellschaft fu¨ r Rechtsmedizin. Bonn 1998:S98. [3] Berg S, von Ziehten P. Die datierung von skelettfunden. In: Leopold D, editor. Identifikation unbekannter toter. interdisziplina¨ re methodik, forensische osteologie, Lu¨ beck: SchmidtRo¨ mhild, 1998. pp. 107–152. [4] Oehmichen M, Geserick G. Osteologische identifikation und altersscha¨ tzung. Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 2001. [5] Rothschild MA, Schneider V. Mo¨ glichkeiten und grenzen der identifizierung an knochen aus massengra¨ bern. In: Oehmichen M, Geserick G, editors. Osteologische idenfikation und altersscha¨ tzung, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ mhild, 2001. pp. 57–66. [6] Kijewski H. Die bedeutung topographischer unterschiede im mineralstoffgehalt von knochen fu¨ r die liegezeit. In: Saternus KS, Bonte W, editors. Forensische osteologie: anthropologie, biomechnik, klinik, archa¨ ologie: festschrift fu¨ r steffen berg, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 1995. pp. 131–160. [7] Graw M. Morphometrische und morphognostische geschlechtsdiagnostik an der menschlichen scha¨ delbasis. In: Oehmichen M, Geserick G, editors. Osteologische identifikation und altersscha¨ tzung, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 2001. pp. 103–121.
Bone finds: a challenge to forensic science Melanie Ganswindt*, Edwin Ehrlich, Peter Klostermann, Wolf-Gunther Troike, Volkmar Schneider Institute of Legal Medicine, Free University Berlin, Hittorfstrasse 18, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Abstract The study presented here is based on 176 forensic dental reports compiled between 1993 and 2001. The bulk of the research took place in 1997, when major construction at Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof in central Berlin required the excavation of considerable quantities of earth. As building proceeded here, at ‘Europe’s biggest construction site’, it revealed not only a large number of long bones, but also a great many skulls and skull fragments. In five instances, complete skeletons were unearthed. Many of the bones ultimately proved to be of animal origin. The police were not instructed to open a single criminal investigation. Identifying and piecing together the material in this context makes tremendous demands of forensic osteology. Establishing the nature of these finds beyond reasonable doubt, and putting a name and date to them, calls for interdisciplinary co-operation between experts in odontology, anthropology, anatomy, radiology and veterinary medicine, not to mention historians. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Forensic osteology; Bone finds; Potsdamer Platz
1. Introduction For decades, the stretch of land around Potsdamer Platz lay fallow and deserted at the heart of the city of Berlin. After the destruction reeked by the Second World War, Potsdamer Platz found itself at the interface between the American, British and Soviet sectors, with the Berlin Wall running right across it. Only when the wall fell did life return to the Square, although to begin with only in the form of cranes and excavators. Probably no other building site has attracted as much attention in recent years as Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz. The wasteland, which became Europe’s largest construction site, has now been trans* Corresponding author. Tel.: 149-30-84451346; fax: 149-3084451353. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Ganswindt).
formed by this building into a completely new urban district, with office towers, hotels, homes and plenty of shops. As building progressed, a plethora of bone finds were reported. Let us take a closer look at the kind of things we can and cannot establish from examining the bones and bone fragments that have been revealed.
2. Materials and methods One hundred and seventy-six forensic dental reports serve to illustrate the problems associated with determining identification features. This research focuses, in particular, on bones and bone fragments discovered and excavated in 1997, during construction in the area around Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof.
1344-6223/03/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S134 4- 6223(02)0013 7-2
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
3. Results and discussion The Square’s image has, after all, not only been created by the outstanding buildings which line it. Spectacular discoveries by building workers hit the headlines of the daily newspapers again and again. In May–July 1997, as they penetrated deeper and deeper into the earth in the pit around the new railway node at Lehrter Bahnhof to lay foundations for government buildings, they found not only the remains of uniforms, but some 35,000 fragments of bone [1,2]. According to our estimates, this makes about 400–500 deceased persons. The bones were strewn untidily and without any obvious connection at a depth of 2–3 m beneath the ground. They belonged to people of all age groups and both genders. An odontological examination of some 8000 unearthed teeth did not produce a single filling, although a small proportion of the dental material did display rampant caries, with a number of individual teeth seriously decayed. The excellent condition of these sets of teeth, almost all of them still complete and without any fillings, indicated a long period in situ, dispersing suspicions that the bone fragments probably dated from the Second World War [3,4]. Experts from the Historical Museum were consulted, and with their help the shreds of uniform were declared unambiguously to derive from the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, although the precise cause of death could not be ascertained [5]. Reconstructing the manner in which death occurred is extremely difficult with bone fragments of this kind, if not impossible. Fractured bones and holes in the skull do not necessarily indicate a violent crime, as the damage may have occurred after death. Again, bearing in mind the conditions at the site where the finds were made, it was quite possible that the earth itself or the building materials lying there had been brought in from outside the area under investigation [6]. The soil and comparative geological analysis were not likely to throw much light on the matter. The additional research findings outlined below draw in their details on the 176 forensic dental reports from 1993 to 2001. Fig. 1 shows military finds, bones and bone fragments and a large number of long tubular bones. Fig. 2 shows the absolute number of bones and bone fragments reported. The highest frequency of
S383
finds was in 1997. This is the time when building began in earnest on Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof. Prior to this, bone finds were fairly rare. The type of bone found most frequently were skulls ðn ¼ 235Þ and skull fragments ðn ¼ 4360Þ, followed by long tubular bones. In 593 cases, the bones were of animal origin. In five cases, entire skeletons were exposed. In 27 cases, the bones were demonstrated to have come from children. Five skulls showed signs that the victim had been shot in the head, although this did not lead in a single case to a murder enquiry being set up. Post-mortem damage was observed in 154 instances. Other examinations addressed gender determination [7], age, body size and length of time in situ. Cause of death could only be ascertained in eight cases of these 156 (Table 1). Apart from six items which had evidently been preserved for anatomical or museum purposes, in two cases bones were found to have candle wax adhering to them and had clearly been used in rituals. Although, as already mentioned, it had to be borne in mind that bones discovered on this particular building site could have belonged to German soldiers fighting in the Second World War, only a small number of bones were attributed beyond any doubt to that period. The fate of just two soldiers from the last war was, however, finally established with the help of identity tags. In one of these cases, because the evidence left no doubt, an application for an official declaration of death lodged in 1959 was finally sewn up. Another problem is reflected in the large number of bone parts ðn ¼ 61Þ which were not buried deep in the soil but exposed in building rubble during excavation work – only in 26 cases, bone parts were unearthed at a depth of 200 cm. Under the Burial Act in the Federal State of Berlin, the police must be notified whenever a corpse in discovered. This makes life a little difficult for the developers on Potsdamer Platz, as they have to foot the bill for recovering the parts of the corpse, and while this is happening, all building work is halted. A large number of isolated bone finds can provoke considerable delays in the construction schedule. We cannot, therefore, entirely rule out the possibility that only about half the finds are notified in Berlin. At the same time, once the excavation work around Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof is completed, we can expect to witness a marked decline in finds of bones and bone fragments.
S384
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
Fig. 1. Findings of military accessories and large number of bones.
Whenever the discovery of a bone or part of a corpse is reported, Berlin police force regulations envisage the following procedure: first of all the police medical officer must be called to the scene if any doubt pertains as to whether they are human or
animal bones. If identification is feasible, the remains or partial remains must be transferred to the morgue. If the persons concerned are former ‘Wehrmacht’ soldiers, the agency responsible for informing nextof-kin (WAST) has to be notified. Identity tags and any other objects, which might assist identification, must be dispatched with the bones for further evaluation. Once the coroner has completed the investigation Table 1 Number of criteria evaluated
Fig. 2. Number of bone findings.
Criteria evaluated
Examined number
Determined number (%)
Number of persons Sex Age Height Case history Nature of injury Post-mortem damage Time period
156 199 306 157 164 156 156 156
141 (90) 86 (43) 229 (75) 26 (17) 58 (35) 8 (5) 154 (99) 47 (94)
M. Ganswindt et al. / Legal Medicine 5 (2003) S382–S385
and the mortal remains have been released for burial, notice must be sent to the Building Department of the local Borough Council, and if no other opportunity for burial presents itself, they are responsible for committing the remains to a grave in the local cemetery. 4. Conclusion The large quantity of bones ðn ¼ 1819Þ and bone fragments ðn ¼ 6672Þ discovered in the course of extensive construction work at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz and Lehrter Bahnhof poses major challenges to forensic osteology in terms of identifying and dating the material. Establishing how long the bones remained in situ, for which there is still no reliable scientific method, confronts the forensic expert with an especially difficult task. We saw that C14 was of little help to us, given the material we had to examine and the time period in question. Some other laboratory techniques displayed poor validity due to large fluctuations in both readings and assessments. Co-operation with other disciplines, such as anthropologists, historians, dental experts, anatomists and radiologists, proved valuable. From this perspective, forensic osteology holds out an interesting professional future, especially for young researchers.
S385
References [1] Schneider V, Rothschild MA, Ehrlich E. Rechtsmedizinische aspekte der knochenfunde in Berlin materials. In: Aleksina LA, editor. The IV International Congress of Integrative Antropology, St. Petersburg: IP Pavlov State Medical University, 2002. pp. 419–421. [2] Troike WG, Schneider V. Entdeckung eines massengrabes bei ausschachtungsarbeiten referate der 7. Fru¨ hjahrstagung – region – nord der deutschen gesellschaft fu¨ r Rechtsmedizin. Bonn 1998:S98. [3] Berg S, von Ziehten P. Die datierung von skelettfunden. In: Leopold D, editor. Identifikation unbekannter toter. interdisziplina¨ re methodik, forensische osteologie, Lu¨ beck: SchmidtRo¨ mhild, 1998. pp. 107–152. [4] Oehmichen M, Geserick G. Osteologische identifikation und altersscha¨ tzung. Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 2001. [5] Rothschild MA, Schneider V. Mo¨ glichkeiten und grenzen der identifizierung an knochen aus massengra¨ bern. In: Oehmichen M, Geserick G, editors. Osteologische idenfikation und altersscha¨ tzung, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ mhild, 2001. pp. 57–66. [6] Kijewski H. Die bedeutung topographischer unterschiede im mineralstoffgehalt von knochen fu¨ r die liegezeit. In: Saternus KS, Bonte W, editors. Forensische osteologie: anthropologie, biomechnik, klinik, archa¨ ologie: festschrift fu¨ r steffen berg, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 1995. pp. 131–160. [7] Graw M. Morphometrische und morphognostische geschlechtsdiagnostik an der menschlichen scha¨ delbasis. In: Oehmichen M, Geserick G, editors. Osteologische identifikation und altersscha¨ tzung, Lu¨ beck: Schmidt-Ro¨ hmhild, 2001. pp. 103–121.