PROFILE
L .1
[IS
n)
As chief forensic dental
consultant for Wayne
County, Dr. _ Allan
Warnick is helping
take a bite out
of crime.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Assistant Editor
—J he killer might have
gone free were it not for
_ his teeth.
A charming and friendly
man, he lured victims with a
sad story of his broken arm.
He was having trouble get-
ting things into his car.
Perhaps you could help?
His prey were always wo-
men. They were murdered,
their bodies left in open
fields or abandoned lots.
Police can't even estimate
how many he might have
killed over the years.
Then Ted Bundy made a
mistake. He bit one of his
victims, a student at a
Florida university. His teeth
marks would later become a
key piece of evidence against
Mr. Bundy, who was ex-
ecuted last year in Florida.
To the untrained eye, bite
marks might not look like
much: some scratches on the
knuckle, a cut in the arm.
But to Dr. Allan Warnick,
teeth marks are as unique as
a signature.
"The chances of two people
making the same bite mark
are 2.1 billion to one," he
says. "Bite marks are very
distinctive, very in-
dividualistic."
He's a dentist in general
practice in Livonia, but
Allan Warnick is no or-
dinary dentist. He's also
chief forensic dental consul-
tant to the Wayne County
Medical Examiners Office
and to medical examiners in
Oakland, Macomb and
Monroe counties.
What this means is that at
least one day a week Dr.
Warnick can be found at the
morgue, trying to identify
corpses from their teeth. Or
maybe working with the
Michigan State Police,
analyzing bite marks in a
murder case. Or maybe look-
ing over the last remains of
an unknown victim of a
plane crash: a tooth with a
filling or a bit of bridgework.
"Whenever you see papers
refer to 'dental identifica-
tion,' that's me," he says.
A native Detroiter, Dr.
Warnick graduated in 1964
from the University of
Detroit School of Dentistry.
By the time he was 15, he
knew he wanted to enter the
medical field, he says. He
Dr. Allan Warnick: "If you can
get just one tooth with a
distinctive mark, I can make an
identification."
saw dentistry as combining
his love of art and science.
His career as a forensic
dentist began when he was
in the Air Force. A plane
crashed nearby while Dr.
Warnick was stationed in
Maine. The colonel called
him in and told him to work
on the case; he was pleased
with the results. "He told
me, Tor the next two years,
you'll be our expert on
this,' " Dr. Warnick recalls.
In 1967 Dr. Warnick went
into private practice, and his
career in forensic dentistry
was all but forgotten until
1980. That year, his interest
was renewed after a social
worker talked to him about a
child abuse case involving
bite marks.
Today, Dr. Warnick is the
only board-certified forensic
dentist in Michigan, one of
92 in North America. Before
he can even be eligible to
take the boards, a dentist
must have worked five years
in the field.
One reason for the strict-
ness is that forensic dentists
must be qualified beyond a
shadow of a doubt, Dr. War-
nick says. "In some cases,
bite marks mean someone
can be put away for life."
Part of Dr. Warnick's job
consists of identifying
corpses when this cannot be
done either visually or
through fingerprints. Com-
paring the dental work of
the deceased to dental
records of missing persons,
he makes about 50 identifi-
cations a year.
When corpses' dental work
does not match with persons
missing locally, Dr. Warnick
turns to the FBI's National
Crime Information Center
(NCIC), which lists men and
women missing throughout
the country. The NCIC
check is successful about 30
percent of the time.
Some corpses are never
identified, Dr. Warnick says.
Their cases remain open.
Dr. Warnick's job becomes
all the more complicated in
mass disasters —like the
1987 crash of Northwest
Flight 255 in Romulus —
where "60 to 90 percent of
the identifications are done
dentally," he says.
He explains: while much of
the body may be destroyed in
a fire or crash, it's likely at
least some of the teeth will
survive. Teeth, Dr. Warnick
says, "are forever."
He recalls one case in
which a bomb exploded as a
man was making it. The
man's body was torn apart,
but six of his teeth were
found complete.
"If you can get just one
tooth with a distinctive mark,'
I can make an identification,"
Dr. Warnick says.
Identifications are often
made by placing X-rays of
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