The Medical Examiner’s Office continues to search for the identity of the man found on the shore of Choctawhatchee Bay on Christmas Day. He is one of 14 unidentified bodies being investigated by the First District Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We do everything we can to find out who these people are,” said Jeff Martin, the office’s director. “We take certain steps to try and find that identity.”
Cases such as the young man with brown hair, brown eyes and a chin-strap beard who was found at Garnier’s Beach can be particularly challenging.
“Typically, most bodies found in the water are in an unidentifiable state,” Martin said. “The body can be exposed to sea life, be scraped along the sand, rocks, trees.”
When people die in the water, their body goes through a different form of decomposition, depending on temperature and time in the water, Martin said.
If the weather is cooler the body will stay relatively preserved. In hot weather, the decomposition begins quicker and causes fat under the skin to take on what Martin described as a “soapy” consistency.
Investigators first attempt to get fingerprints.
“They usually have what we call washer woman hands,” Martin said. “The skin becomes really soft, just like when you’ve been in the shower or pool for a long time.”
Several methods can be used to obtain a fingerprint, such as drying out the skin; “degloving” or removing the skin to create a glove of sorts; or removing the hand.
Fingerprints can be found in databases for military personnel, some employers, government positions and through pawn shop purchases.
If fingerprinting does not work, investigators look at scars, marks and tattoos.
“We look at the markings that are unique for that person,” Martin said. “We can send that out to the media and check it against missing persons descriptions.”
If that doesn’t work, a fax of the person’s dental X-rays is sent to local dentists in hopes of finding a match.
“Our last resort is DNA,” Martin said.
It takes weeks to months for DNA results to be processed. Samples are sent to the University of North Texas, which processes DNA for cases across the country.
The results can be processed through national and state crime and missing person databases, as well as against registered DNA from military personnel, convicted criminals and DNA repositories taken from families of missing people.
“There are a lot of cases where we immediately know who we have on the table, but then there are times when we can’t find the ID,” Martin said.
“We have 13 cases, our oldest from 1970, plus the one from Christmas that are still unsolved, but we never stop looking.”