I've been quietly following the search for Jessica. Whoever they found last night, Jessica or some other unknown soul, God bless that victim and their loved ones.
I am no medical professional or pathologist, but I've followed a few of these cases and, unfortunately, a few things learned on past cases have occured to me.
This below opinion is morbid/may be hard to read for some so
warning!
One, if the victim's body was left lying in the open, it would not be unheard of for portions of the body to be disturbed/removed by animal scavengers.
On the other side of the coin, some aspects of the victim may be be better preserved this time of year than if they'd been left out in the open in the height of summer. I looked up the temp history for the days Jessica has been missing, I'll try to link it here:
http://weathersource.com/account/of...n-id=12148&latitude=39.8756&longitude=-105.04
(if anyone can make that link, uh, not four lines long, that'd be great!) :blushing:
Anyway, it looks like Westminster had very cold night-time temps and cool 'mean' temps for a lot of those days. Not to be crude, but 8 plus night time hours of 29 degrees has a freezer like effect. Perhaps not perfect preservation, but certainly slowing things down.
On dental, as a former dental assitant (though I did nothing forensic!), I'd have to agree with some posters here--first, we don't know if she saw a dentist regulary, and if she had any identifying work. Even without work, our bites/ tooth allignment/tooth shape in x-ray or clay study model are still pretty individual, but first you have to track down the dentist, then you have to get him to answer the phone. Dentists generally don't get middle of the night emergency calls like an OB/Gyn would. Then you gotta get him to the office, copy and somehow deliver the x-rays. (This dentist may be out of state and he may not have electronic x-rays). All that said, once they had x-rays in hand and a forensic dentist on site, yeah, it would be a pretty quick yes/no ID.
All MOO and hope that helps....
