ANALYSIS OF DOCUMENT BELOW
The same man that did the analysis of the tramp shots for the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, also did some investigative work on
the Dorothy Hunt plane crash. First he was asked to indentify the body
of Dorothy Hunt, than he was asked to determine if HOWARD HUNT was a
tramp in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Snow is an expert on the
HUNT family!!!
REPORT OF AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT
(Identification Report)
UNITED AIR LINES, FLIGHT 553
BOEING 737
Midway Airport
Chicago, Illinois
8 December 1972
Clyde C. Snow, Ph.D.
Civil Aeromedical Institute
IDENTIFICATION
AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT: UNITED AIR LINES FLIGHT 553
BOEING 737
MIDWAY AIRPORT
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
8 December 1972
On the evening of 8 December 1972, 1 traveled from Washington, D.C.,
to Chicago, Illinois, to participate in the human factors investigation
of the United Air Lines Flight 553 which had crashed near Midway
Airport earlier that afternoon. Upon arrival, I was assigned to the
Human Factors Group with the request that I aid in the identification
of the victims. At this time (approximately 1:00 a.m., 9 December 1972),
I called the Cook County Coroner's Office and was informed that gross
external descriptions of all the bodies had been completed as well as
complete necropsies on two of the three male crew members. Further
work was suspended until the next morning.
On Saturday morning, 9 December 1972, I arrived at the Coroner's
office at 8:30 a.m. By this time, a United Air Lines team under the
direction of Dr. Joseph Kidera had been organized and was gathering
background information useful in identification from the victim's
next of kin. The evening before, the identification division of
the Chicago Police Department had begun sorting and cataloging
personal effects of the victims. The FBI Disaster Squad, under
the direction of special agent Beverly Ponder, had arrived from
Washington and immediately set to work to collect fingerprints from
those bodies from which prints,were obtainable.
Although final positive identification (in the form of a signed
death certificate) is the responsibility of the Cook County Coroner,
coroner officials lacking identification specialists of their own
agreed to accept as positive identifications those made through the
combined efforts of Dr. Kidera's team and the FBI Disaster Squad.
Unfortunately, before this arrangement was agreed upon several
bodies were released by coroner authorities on the basis of
clothing, personal effects, or visual identification by relatives.
A preliminary inspection of the bodies revealed that many were
too badly burned for fingerprinting and that identification would
have to be based on dental evidence. An inquiry to coroner officials
revealed that the dentist ordinarily used as a consultant in such
cases was not available on weekends. Since one crew member, at this
time, had not been identified and, at best, the identifications made
the previous evening could only be considered tentative, it appeared
that priority should be given to the organization of a dental identification
team. After clearing with Dr. Kidera, I was granted permission
to organize such a team by Cook County Coroner authorities.
The first member of this team was Dr. Kenneth Giese, D.D.S.,
the dental resident taking weekend calls at nearby Cook County Hospital.
When contacted, Dr. Giese immediately volunteered his services and
reported to the morgue at approximately 12:30 a.m., 9 December 1972.
Dr. Paul Goaz, D.D.S., Loyola University College of Dentistry, and
Dr. William Burch, also of the Loyola faculty, were contacted and
volunteered their services. Since the morgue was lacking in instruments
and supplies needed for dental identification, Drs. Goaz and Burch
brought much of their own equipment, including camera and film.
Although there were some exceptions, the following routines were
generally followed:
1. Each body was first examined by the FBI and if prints were
available they were taken.
2. The body was next examined by this investigator and two United
Air Lines physicians serving on Dr. Kidera's team. This
examination yielded an assessment of the individual's sex, age,
race, stature, weight, and evidence of old surgical procedures,
deformities, and anomalies useful in identification.
3. The dentition was then removed, cleaned, and charted.
4. The completed dental charts were then sorted into subgroups
on the basis of the individual's scx, race, and esti'mated age.
5. Dental and medical records of possible decedents obtained
by United Air Lines were then compared to dental charts of
the victims of the same sex, race, and approximate age to
obtain positive identification.
6. In a number of cases, tentative identification provided
by the victims' personal effects served to pinpoint ccrtain
victims who could then be rapidly identified by dental and/or
fingerprint evidence.
All personnel involved worked continuously until approximately
1:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Efforts were resumed Sunday morning at
8:00 a.m. and continued until 11:00 p.m. Sunday night when the last
victim was positively identified.
Table I lists victims by body number, name, age, height, weight,
race and criteria used for identification. Of the 45 fatalities
(43 passengers + 2 occupants of the house struck by the aircraft),
33 victims (73%) could be positively identified by fingerprints
or dentition. Approximately 17 (38%) victims yielded partial or
complete sets of fingerprints. From this group, 12 positive
identifications were made from FBI fingerprint records.
a. Thirty victims were examined dentally and positive
identifications were made on twenty eight. The two remaining were
elderly, completely edentulous females one who was wearing a
complete set of dentures, the other without dentures. The cranium
of the dentured female also displayed a number of negroid skeletal
features while the other appeared to be caucasoid. A review of the
records revealed that the only edentulate females of this age group
involved in the accident were an eightythree year old negro passenger
and a seventy year old white resident of a house struck by the
aircraft. Inquiries to relatives revealed that the negro female
passenger was known to have worn her dentures at all times in public
and that they had been made at the Zollar Clinic in Chicago. When
contacted, Zollar officials were able to identify the dentures as
products of their laboratory.
b. One body that of an 8 month old male, white infant
was identified by exclusion since no other infants were listed
aboard the aircraft or known to be in the houses struck by the
aircraft. This identification was further supported by the positive
dental identification of the infant's mother.
c. The remaining victims were identified by personal
effects found on the body or, in a few instances, by visual
inspection by next of kin. Unfortunately, these bodies were released
by coroner officials before identification could be confirmed by
dental or finger print records.
Table 2 summarizes the methods employed for identification
of the 45 victims.
Fingerprints only 4
Fingerprints & Dentition 8
Dentition only 21
Exclusion 1
Personal effects/visual
Reliance on visual identification during the early stages of
the investigation resulted in several problems:
1. Body # 94, later identified as that of a male passenger
by dental evidence was originally identified as that of 2nd
Officer Barry J. Elder and autopsied as such. Although this
mistake was eventually rectified, it resulted in the loss of
autopsy and toxicological data on crew member Elder.
2. The badly cremated body of a young adult female was
mistakenly identified by a male relative as that of his 8 year old
niece. This mistake was also discovered and corrected through
dental identification.
3. The body of 1st Officer Coble was mistakenly classified
as "female" by morgue personnel on the evening of the crash.
This error caused an undue delay in identification of this
crew member.
Leaving the purely humanitarian aspects aside, positive
identification of victims of aircraft accidents is a fundamental
first step in human factors investigation. In this case, for
example, had the error in identificatioh involving the passenger
and crew member gone undetected, and had the passenger been under
the influence of drugs or alcohol, investigation would have been
seriously misled. Misidentification of one passenger for another
can negate the efforts of human factors researchers in reconstructing
the evacuation sequence or correlating injury with structural
deformation or restraint system failure.
For these reasons it is strongly recommended that in future
accidents NTSB insist on positive identification of all victims
through dermatoglyphic, odontological, anthropological or other
biological evidence (e.g. medical or surgical history, serology, etc.)
In the few cases which do not yield sufficient biological information
for positive identification to be established, evidence provided by
personal effects is acceptable only after all other victims have been
positively identified. Visual identification by relatives or
acquaintances should not be accepted under any circumstances.
It is also recommended that, whenever possible, no bodies be
released until at least all crew members have been positively identified
and preferably not before all victims (passengers and crew) have been
identified. This recommendation is made in order to avoid confusion
in those rare instances where dental or other information on two or
more victims is similar enough to require further doublechecking of
the bodies. Such comparisons are often difficult to make if one of
the bodies has been released since it entails bringing it back to
the morgue a procedure which is upsetting to the victim's family
and which may be impossible if the body has already been shipped
home for burial or actually buried.
6
It is recognized that many states and smaller cities do not
have trained identification specialists capable of handling the problems
posed by mass aviation disasters. Smaller airlines may also lack the
trained personnel and well equipped facilities for rapid and efficient
retrieval of personal data on passenger victims which Dr. Kidera has
organized for United Air Lines. It is recommended that in such cases
the Federal Aviation Administration help provide support which would
include the following:
1. Maintenance of rosters of U.S. dentists qualified by
experience and training in forensic odontology. Such rosters
should be organized by city', state, and region so that local
specialists can be mobilized when necessary.
2. Encouragement (through FAA Regional Flight Surgeon and
AMES) of local officials to include provisions for positive
identification of victims in disaster planning.
A small (two member) team of wellequipped identification
specialists authorized to travel to the scene of all major
accidents. The functions of this team would be to organize
and coordinate the activities of local personnel recruited
for identification services.
The difficulty of the task of identification of mass air
disaster victims increases exponentially with the number of victims
involved. In the past, the number of victims has seldom exceeded 150.
Judging from past experience, this number also represents the upper
limits of our capabilities of handling the problem of identification by
present procedures. With the advent of jumbo jets, we are faced with
the eventuality of accidents involving several hundred victims.
Therefore, research toward improvement in the procedures and techniques
of identification should be encouraged by airlines, the FAA, and NTSB.
CLYDE C. SNOW, Ph.D. 24 January 1973