by Justine Ford
Another characteristic of Crouzon is bulging eyes, which the dead man had. He also had a large nose and a prominent jawline and possibly wore an upper denture plate in his mouth.
The man was between 172 and 174 centimetres tall and while most of his clothes had rotted away, he was still wearing a Leopard brand running shoe. ‘Leopard brand shoes were imported into Australia between 1980 and 1983,’ David says. ‘One of the original investigators tried to locate the importers and found them at Abbotsford but the business had closed down.
‘He then tracked down an ex-employee who had worked for the business for fifty years. The detective showed the man a photo of the shoe and the man confirmed it had been imported between 1982 and 1983 from Korea.’
When the original investigators were trying to work out who Silvan Dam Man was, they came back time and time again to a low-level underworld figure – to be known for the purposes of this account as ‘Mr Smith’. ‘Mr Smith had an extensive criminal history, was a known heroin user and dealer and was once involved in the prostitution industry,’ says David.
Not long after being released from Pentridge Prison for drug trafficking, Mr Smith, who’d been expressing concerns about his safety, went missing. In a statement, Mr Smith’s partner told police that on 6 November 1985, Mr Smith received a phone call at home in which someone asked him to help them with a vehicle at Clifton Hill. After Mr Smith went to help the caller – whose name he never revealed – he vanished.
Ten days later, on 16 November, the white Ford panel van with a distinctive orange stripe down the side that Mr Smith was known to be driving turned up at Macclesfield, about 5 kilometres away from Silvan Dam.
‘It was located coincidentally by an associate of Mr Smith’s partner, who was aware of his disappearance,’ David explains.
Mr Smith’s partner was able to identify the items in the car as belonging to Mr Smith, but around the same time, in another strange turn of events, the car was mysteriously destroyed by fire, prompting her to report him missing two days later on 18 November.
The word in criminal circles was that Mr Smith had been murdered and police didn’t doubt it, especially when they found out the startling similarities between him and the unidentified skeleton from Silvan Dam.
Not only did Silvan Dam Man have Crouzon syndrome – so too did Mr Smith.
It was against the odds because out of every million newborn babies, only sixteen will have the disorder.
The next step was a cranio-facial superimposition, in which a photo of Mr Smith’s face was superimposed over the skull of the unidentified man in an attempt to match landmarks on both. ‘The odontologist said it fit perfectly so that suggested pretty early on that it was Mr Smith.’
But was it?
‘Cranio-facial superimposition is generally not accepted as a means of identification but it value-adds to a circumstantial case,’ David points out, noting that the technique is a secondary, not primary form of identification like DNA or fingerprints. That meant that for years, investigators suspected Mr Smith was Silvan Dam Man but they couldn’t prove it.
When David Butler took over as the head of Taskforce Belier, he knew that advancements in technology might help him find out for sure whether the skeletal remains belonged to Mr Smith. ‘The original investigators did keep some histology samples, which our team recovered,’ he says. (Tissue samples from suspicious deaths are often kept by police in case they can help solve a case down the track.) ‘We had some toenail clippings but despite repeated testing in Australia, no result was yielded so we sent them to the United States and they came back with a partial nuclear DNA profile.
‘Unfortunately the DNA told us that it wasn’t Mr Smith. So after all those years we were able to eliminate him.’
With no plans to give up, David Butler and his team returned to their list of suspicious disappearances to work out who to consider next.
‘Sometimes the person we’re looking for won’t be on the suspicious list, and other times they won’t have been reported missing at all, which makes a case even harder to solve,’ David says. ‘But the suspicious list is the first place we look in situations like this.’
As David’s team member Detective Senior Constable Mark Rippon studied the list, his curiosity peaked when he read about a missing man to be known here as ‘Mr Jones’. Mr Jones was a well-known underworld heavy who went missing in 1985 and was presumed murdered. ‘In his case we had a full dental impression so in effect we had a carbon copy of his teeth,’ David says.
When Professor John Clement conducted an odontological comparison as well as a cranio-facial superimposition, he couldn’t rule out that the remains belonged to Mr Jones.
Eventually, Mark Rippon convinced Mr Jones’s family to give some DNA to confirm the investigators’ strong suspicion that the old bones were those of Mr Jones. ‘The DNA work in that case took probably twelve months,’ David remembers. ‘It’s just not like TV.’
And the result after waiting that long?
It wasn’t him, either.
‘We had a partial nuclear profile and nuclear DNA is pretty hard to get around,’ David says. ‘We were incredibly disappointed because this case has been active from day one of starting at Belier and it’s remained active for a very long time.’
David remains certain, however, that someone can still name Silvan Dam Man – and he wants them to come forward. ‘Somebody somewhere knows who it is or at least knows a nickname. If people want to remain anonymous they can, we just want to find out who it is.’
As for why people have stayed silent, there are a number of possible reasons. ‘There may be fear associated with it, that’s one reason.
‘On the other hand, I’m quite convinced there are people out there who think the police have already solved it and so they haven’t bothered to come forward.’
Whatever the reason, David’s banking on the passage of time to work in his favour. ‘Over time things change, relationships change, and people who were involved might now be willing to give us some information. This happened twenty-three years ago so whoever knows something is now twenty-three years older. They might have been young at the time so now they would be middle-aged people or older.’
There is, of course, the possibility that Silvan Dam Man wasn’t from Victoria at all. Police have some access to other states’ files but with no comprehensive, nationally linked missing persons database in Australia, it makes the work that much more difficult. ‘In some of these missing persons cases, the person is from overseas or interstate, or perhaps they’re illegal immigrants,’ David says. ‘But in this case I think we’re talking about someone who’s probably from Victoria or interstate…and they’ve upset someone.’
That’s for sure.
But even though Silvan Dam Man might have been a shady character himself, he stills needs to be identified, and his killer found.
‘At the end of the day he’s met a horrible end,’ Dave says. ‘That concrete slipper type stuff would make anyone think …’
Chapter 7
Matching the Missing and the Dead
A forensic odontologist’s story
‘We are able to put families back together.’
Doctor Tony Hill, Forensic Odontologist, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine
On CSI, matching the missing and the dead looks like something anyone in a lab coat could do in seconds, with their good-looking eyes shut.
But forensic science is a little more complicated than TV would have us believe – and a lot more time-consuming. In some cases it can take years for police and forensic experts to positively identify a body – a task that could be made a great deal quicker and easier if there were a national missing persons database.
One thing that TV has got right, however, is that forensic science is fascinating, and the more you know about how the experts match the missing and the dead, the more you want to find out.
What follows is a brief insight into the work of a highly specialised forensic o
dontologist, Dr Tony Hill, who has a passion for this most challenging work – the identification of human remains.
•••
Regardless of whether a forensic expert is identifying human remains thought to belong to a missing person, or those found in the wake of a disaster, the methods of identification are the same.
On occasions, the coroner will be satisfied for visual identification to be undertaken, but that’s not always possible, especially when a body has sustained extensive trauma or disfiguration following car accidents, aircraft crashes, drownings, falls from buildings, clandestine burials and fire.
When visual identification cannot be carried out, primary means of identification – fingerprints, DNA or dental record comparisons – must be used. It goes without saying that a skeleton has no fingerprints, and that not everyone has seen a dentist in their life. In other instances, DNA may have leeched from the bones of an unidentified body, making it impossible for scientists to obtain a profile.
In some instances forensic experts and police will turn to secondary means to establish identification, including an examination of the circumstances surrounding the person’s disappearance, their clothing, jewellery and any documents that may have been in their possession. But these methods are not considered definitive of identity. Documents are often stolen, for example, leading to a false assumption of identity, and clothing and jewellery can be common in appearance and have few unique characteristics.
In a nutshell, forensic experts must use all available information and techniques if they are to put a name to unidentified remains.
‘Eighty per cent of my work is concerned with the identification of people who cannot be visually identified,’ says Doctor Tony Hill, a forensic odontologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.
A forensic odontologist is a highly specialised and qualified dentist who uses evidence gathered from the teeth, facial bony structures and soft tissues to assist in the identification of an unknown individual. ‘It is also possible following an examination of material to estimate the age of an individual and so advise police as to the direction their investigations may take,’ Tony says.
Dr Tony Hill has been an odontologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine for over twenty years, the past eight years as the senior odontologist for the State of Victoria. Before that, Tony ran a very busy general dental practice and managed to devote time to both of his passions – dentistry and forensic work. Working in the forensic field has allowed Tony to use his extensive dental knowledge and skills to benefit the community, and has also satisfied his desire to marry dentistry with the law. ‘I’ve always had an interest in the law and when there was an opportunity to do a legal forensic course with a bent towards odontology, I jumped at it,’ he says.
A world expert in his field, Tony has worked in disaster victim identification around the globe: in Bali, following the 2002 terrorist bombing incident; in the wake of an Indonesian Air Garuda plane crash in 2009; and in Thailand following the Boxing Day tsunami of 2009. He’s worked on many disaster victim identification investigations around Australia too.
‘We’ve had multiple victims of disasters in Victoria – plane crashes in Myrrhee and Mount Hotham; the Kerang train disaster, which killed eleven people; the Burnley tunnel incident, and of course we assist colleagues in all states and also in New Zealand,’ he says.
Most recently, Tony was the Odontology Coordinator involved in the identification of victims of the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, which he describes as ‘a disturbing and harrowing time for all involved’.
‘We had a lot of families caught in the fire who had been trying to seek shelter – all huddled together, clinging to each other. We had whole families in showers, sometimes with their family pets. To separate adults from children, human from non-human was an immense task undertaken by a team of specialist forensic scientists including odontologists, anthropologists, pathologists, molecular biologists and technicians. To be a part of this dedicated team was a privilege.
‘Sometimes we were helping sort through bones and other times we were looking at dental records,’ he continues. ‘Some children didn’t have dental records so we’d be looking at assessing the age of the unidentified bony remains in an attempt to establish the identification of the individual who had been recovered.
‘Many of us knew the area, had visited the area and knew people involved in the disaster that unfolded. It was close to home,’ he adds. ‘It really was.’
It’s pretty clear that odontology – or any kind of forensic identification role – is not for the faint-hearted, and that was never clearer than after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand, where Australia had at least three odontologists on site for an entire year. However, not every country supplied dentists with a forensic background.
‘You can’t take an ordinary High Street dentist and say, “Away you go” [to the scene of a disaster]. You can’t pick any dentist and say, “Examine these people who are dead”, because most will find the situation confrontational, difficult to comprehend, and mistakes will be made. Many untrained dentists will develop ongoing long-term psychological problems,’ Tony explains.
‘They might have seen a dead body during their studies but then suddenly they’re in a mortuary with three hundred, four hundred, one thousand dead bodies surrounding them! They return to their home country after such a mission, with very little or no debriefing counselling or psychological help and as a consequence suffer terribly.
‘In Thailand we had two Swedish dentists, another from Norway and two from France – they all had to be removed from the mission and returned to their home countries because of difficulties they were experiencing. You have to have a fully trained and experienced team of dedicated odontologists to undertake such a task if success in the operation is to be assured.’
Identifying the dead is a serious, scientific, respectful undertaking, and one that a growing number of young TV crime show viewers, who want to look at dead bodies, would do well to avoid. ‘What such people are seeking is totally abnormal and totally out of left field,’ Tony says. ‘They generally have a misguided sense of reality, a morbid fascination with the dead and a belief that this is a glamorous and chic area to be seen in – how wrong can one be! Under no circumstances do we employ, encourage or promote those sorts of people. They’re in it for the wrong reasons.’
Tony has always been in the forensic profession for the most noble of reasons. For his first fifteen years he worked as an odontologist as a service for the State of Victoria, and was called on whenever the police or the coroner needed him. ‘It was my civic duty to do it,’ Tony says.
Over the years, Tony has used his incredible experience and attitude to help police with some of Australia’s most disturbing cases, including the still unsolved 1991 murder of thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Karmein Chan, whose decomposed body was found in the northern Melbourne suburb of Thomastown the following year. ‘Karmein Chan had to be identified,’ Tony says. ‘That was done dentally in those days.’
There was also the heartrending case of Jaidyn Leskie, a toddler who went missing from the Victorian town of Moe in 1997, only to be found dead in a dam, sparking a high-profile homicide investigation. ‘He was reported missing at fourteen months of age,’ Tony recalls. ‘He was in the water for six months so when they found him he would’ve been twenty months of age, had he lived.
‘His body had been weighted down in the dam but his body had floated to the surface.
‘Jaidyn’s clothing was identified by his mother, Bilynda Williams, and the DNA taken from the child matched hers, so his identity was never in doubt. What was in dispute, however, was the age of the child when he was killed,’ Tony says, ‘so the job of the forensic odontology team was to look at his skeletal remains and the maturation of his teeth and assess the age of the child at the time of his death.’
The team assessed the toddler’s age to be around fourteen months. This evidence was never tested in co
urt.
(Bilynda Williams’ erstwhile boyfriend, Greg Domaszewicz, was tried over Jaidyn’s murder but found not guilty in 1998.)
More recently, Tony was able to identify the remains of a woman named Edwina Boyle, whose husband, Frederick William Boyle, had shot her as she lay in bed then kept her body in a barrel for twenty-three years. It wasn’t until Fred’s son-in-law was helping with a clean-up at the Boyle family home in 2006 that Edwina’s remains were discovered.
‘It was an incredible case,’ Tony says. ‘Wherever the husband moved, the barrel moved. He was arrested and brought to the Homicide Squad and said he had no idea what was in the barrel.
‘But the initial investigating police officer, some twenty-three years previous, had collected the dental records for Edwina when she was first reported missing,’ he continues. ‘The dental records for Edwina matched identically with the dental information we obtained from the deceased individual in the barrel and thus we were able to tell the homicide investigators, in a matter of minutes, the identity of the missing deceased in the barrel. The homicide unit were able to complete their investigations and bring to closure another homicide mystery.’
Tony explains a little more how the process works. ‘In most cases, police generally have an idea who the unidentified person might be so they ask the family for their dental records, which the police bring to me.
‘I look at the dental records – the fillings, the teeth that person has had out, any crowns or other restorative work in the person’s mouth, the dental charts and x-rays. I then construct a composite chart from this information which tells me what the person’s mouth looked like whilst they were alive – the ante-mortem record.
‘I then compare this ante-mortem record with the information collected from all unknown deceased persons that we have on file. If the ante-mortem record matches the post-mortem information, then we can say with a degree of accuracy that we have established a positive identity of the unknown remains.’