The Forensic Dentist Who's Reviving Mexico's Unidentified Corpses (NSFW) Brian Anderson - Motherboard
go to original June 9, 2014

Reviving the Dead With DIY Forensics: Still Life (Full Documentary) (Motherboard)

CIUDAD JUAREZ - The man cuts a striking profile. He’s been dead for two years - a nameless hit-and-run victim, I’m told, left to bleed out on the side of some dusty road in this Mexico-US border town of 1.5 million people. The accident punched a hole in his forehead. From where I’m standing, hunched over an autopsy stretcher on which his body is strewn akimbo, I can see through to his pickled brain.

If I didn’t know any better, there's still life in this man.

It’s been 120 hours since Dr. Alejandro Hernández Cárdenas got to work. That’s when Hernández Cárdenas, an unassuming local dentist who splits his time practicing, teaching graduate forensic odontology courses at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, and identifying the unidentified at the Juarez Forensic Science Lab, submerged this man’s gnarled, sun-scorched body into what Hernández Cárdenas affectionately calls the “Jacuzzi.”

The translucent bathtub-sized tank holds about 60 gallons’ worth of an unknown chemical formula - Hernández Cárdenas’ secret sauce - that rehydrates corpses for identification. We’ve tracked this hit-and-run victim, an older man whose corpse Hernández Cárdenas handpicked from one of Juarez's municipal body refrigerators, over the course of a working week as it's soaked in the Jacuzzi.

Along the way, the doctor and his team have catalogued any and all identifying features, such as scars, moles, tattoos, and wounds, that came back into focus through Hernández Cárdenas’ method, and are now prepping the victim's revivified hands for fingerprinting.

Based on those fingerprints, together with compounding evidence from any features unique to him that have been restored thanks to Hernández Cárdenas’ process, we hope to have an idea of who this man was. At least that's the idea.

Read the rest at Motherboard

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