A few bone fragments...three molars...all that was found
of a motor vehicle accident victim two days earlier on a
highway in Québec. These few meager clues, lying
on a cardboard sheet on the 12th-floor forensic lab (Laboratoire
de sciences judiciaries et de médecine legal) at
the Quebec Provincial Police offices on Parthenais Street,
were all Dr. Robert Dorion needed to identify the remains.
"Every individual has dental features all their own,"
he explains. "When we can obtain the victim's ante-mortem
X-rays and compare them to the fragments found on the scene
of an accident or murder, it helps establish their identity."
Dr. Dorion is a dentist of a very special sort. In addition
to his private practice three days a week, he has devoted
the last 30 years to forensic odontology and teaching dentistry
at the Université de Montréal. His research
has earned him an Exceptional Achievement award in 2001
from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Recently
he was in Atlanta, Georgia to present his most recent work
on bites left on murder victims - a common, if perverse,
act among killers. A bite leaves traces, both on the epidermis
and also on the subcutaneous skin layers, and these traces
can also become clues that can incriminate suspects. In
the mid-1980s, Dr. Dorion developed an acrylic casting technique
that makes it possible to preserve a segment of the victim's
skin where the bite marks still appear distinctly, even
after several years.
The 2,600 cases that Dr. Dorion has studied in the course
of his career (not counting cases in other countries where
he has appeared as an expert witness) make him one of North
America's leading specialists in forensic dentistry. He
is the only specialist in this field in Québec, and
one of only four in Canada to be certified by the American
Board of Forensic Odontology, of which he is a founding
member. (Even in the US there are only a hundred forensic
dentistry specialists.) In this new era of globalized police
work, the FBI and RCMP are setting up an international crime
detection unit to help investigators pool their data on
missing persons.
DNA identification, the most popular technique in contemporary
forensics, holds no fears for the forensic dental team.
"You mustn't forget that rain, bacteria and decomposition
can alter a victim's DNA," the dentist explains. "What's
more, it's an expensive procedure and it takes time. Examining
dentition can take less than two hours, whereas you have
to allow at least two weeks for DNA identification."
In Kathy Reichs' first best-selling "Temperance Brennan"
thriller Déjà Dead (Pocket Books, 1997),
Robert Dorion figures as the heroine's colleague, Marc Bergeron.
"He had more in common with a Tim Burton character
than with the classic image of a forensic dentist,"
writes the novelist who works daily with Dr. Dorion. "I've
definitely got a few detective novels to write myself,"
he grins.
Researcher: Robert Dorion
Phone: (514) 873-3300, Local 409
