"...fingerprints were used to make a tentative match."

[Steve Everist]

http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/200 ... d-id-body/

DNA used to ID body

By Adam Koob (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Friday, June 6, 2008

NATCHEZ — The Adams County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed the identification of a woman’s body that was found floating in the Mississippi River on April 19.

Deputy Maj. Jody Waldrop said dental records and DNA were used to identify the body of Mary Jones, 55, of Markham, Ill.

A boater near the Carthage Point Road area originally found Jones’ body. The Adams County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Team recovered the body later that day.

Waldrop said once an autopsy was conducted, and drowning was listed as the official cause of death, fingerprints were used to make a tentative match.

Jones’ prints were run through a national fingerprint database where they matched a 1976 arrest record in Chicago for Mary Taylor.

Waldrop said the Chicago Police Department was contacted but they had no additional information from Taylor’s arrest record.

“They did not have any missing persons with that name or birth date,” he said.

Waldrop then began cross-referencing several national databases and found a missing persons alert from Markham.

However that alert listed the missing woman as Mary Taylor, not Mary Jones.

After contacting the Markham Police Department, authorities there contacted Jones’ family and learned Taylor and Jones were the same person.

“It was her maiden name,” Waldrop said.

Authorities in Markham sent Jones’ toothbrush to a lab in Brandon so DNA from the toothbrush could be matched against DNA gathered during the autopsy.

“It matched up,” Waldrop said.

Dental records were not confirmed until last week and the family was then notified.

And while Jones’ identity has been confirmed, exactly what she was doing in Natchez is a bit of a mystery.

Markham is more than 800 miles from Natchez.

While Waldrop said there is no reason to suspect foul play Jones’ case is still under investigation.

“She was estranged from her family and we know she had mental illness,” Waldrop said.

Police reports from Markham indicate Jones’ sister had not spoken to her for a few months before she was reported missing in March.

Jones was reported missing by a family member March 26; her body was not recovered until April 19.

Waldrop also said toxicology test results showed show no signs of drugs in Jones’ system prior to her death.

While it was previously reported Jones was under the influence of alcohol at the time of her death, toxicology results show she was well under the legal limit to be considered intoxicated.

Adams County Coroner, James Lee, said he notified authorities in Markham on Monday that a definite identification was on made Jones.

Lee said Jones’ cremated remains were sent back to her family on Thursday.

[Lab Rat]

Sounds good to me.

If you get a "hit" on someone in AFIS and havent done the hard copy comparison isnt it "tenative"?

Probably told the PIO they had a "tentative" identification and he ran with it...to the media.

[Alan C]

I guess even after the AFIS hit the identification of the body as the woman her family knew as Mary Jones was still tentative. But there's nothing tentative about the identification (OK, individualization) of the fingerprints with the ones the FBI had on file for Mary Taylor.

[David Fairhurst]

My take is that they had the AFIS hit identifying the body with a fingerprint record but didn't know whose fingerprints those were. It was only when they took the DNA from the toothbrush that they could be sure that this was the body of the missing woman. If Chicago PD had no further info on the arrest, mugshots etc, how could they be sure? They might just as well have tried checking latent prints from the bathroom mirror, maybe they did, but it was the DNA that was successful in this case.
I think that "tentative" here relates to the match between the fingerprint record and the missing person, not between the body and the fingerprints.

Badly worded but not wrong.