Problems of Forensic Sciences 2001 Vol. 46 (XLVI) 110-115
PCR ANALYSIS OF DNA FROM SKELETAL REMAINS IN CRIME INVESTIGATION CASE
Katja DROBNIČ
Forensic Science Laboratory, Ministry of the Interior, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Streszczenie
The objective of this presentation is to demonstrate the positive identification of skeletal remain of a murder victim by comparison of several short tandem repeat (STR) loci in sample from femur bone of decomposed corpse with the samples from personal articles of the presumptive victim. In April 1998, a 72-year old woman disappeared from her home. It was believed that she had been murdered. The presumptive victim was found dead after more than one year in a shaft of the suspect garage. For identification purposes, the crime scene investigators already in September 1998 collected the clothes belonging to the above mentioned missing woman and three teeth found in a paper sac marked by dentist. Two hairs found on the collected clothes and the epithelial cells found on the surface of a tooth were subject to DNA analysis. There was no possibility that these samples belonged to other people, because the presumptive victim lived alone and was known as unsociable. For the identification of the corpse, we obtained a portion of femur bone. The co-amplification of ten STR’s along with the amelogenin locus on the X and Y chromosome was performed using AmpFlSTR SGM Plus kit (Perin Elmer/ABD, CA). STR profiles were the same for the DNA recovered from the hairs and for theDNArecovered from the femoral bone of decomposed body. The combined power of discrimination for the used ten STR loci is greater than 0.99999999 in our population sample. In conclusion,DNAprofiling of personal articles is a very powerful method for the identification of murder victims or missing persons, especially on occasions when relatives are not available.
Słowa kluczowe
Forensic science; Human identification; Bone tissue; Short tandem repeat (STR); Articles left behind.