Mystery authors, take note. Ideas can come from a variety of places, and sometimes it's hard to top the real-life mysteries. Case in point, two pilots got more than they bargained for in 1997 when they went looking for the wreck of a DC-4 which had crashed into a glacier on the side of Mount Sanford in 1948, reported to be carrying a planeful of gold. Instead, they found a severed and mummified arm and hand, from which Alaskan State Troopers took a set of fingerprints, later embalming the limb. Unfortunately, the prints weren't clear and DNA analysis was unsuccessful because the tissues had become too dehydrated. Thus, no I.D.
Fast-forward nine years later when Dr. Odile Loreille at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab in Maryland developed new methods that allowed her to read the mitochondrial DNA, and Edward Robinson, a professor of forensic science at George Washington University, used a newly-developed rehydrating solution and special imaging techniques to produce a complete set of useable fingerprints. After merging the two new technologies, authorities were able to verify that the remains belonged to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from Roanoke, Virginia, who died in the fateful crash.
Latent fingerprint expert Mike Grimm said, "This is the oldest identification of fingerprints by post-mortem remains."
