Remembering Bali bombings, ten years on

Ten years on, one image remains burned into my consciousness - a char-blackened human arm still wearing an amazingly pristine silver watch.

In any other context this arm would not be recognisable. It's angular, misshapen and blacker than hell. It looks like part of a tree branch after a bushfire.

But it is an arm. It is protruding from a bucket full of body parts in the morgue at Bali's main hospital, Sanglah, in Denpasar.

Hours earlier it had been attached to a vibrant young Australian man who no doubt had been enjoying the holiday of a lifetime.

How is it possible to know this? Adam Condon, who helped identify teammates from Sydney's Coogee Dolphins rugby league team, says some corpses are wearing expressions of happiness, as if their last moment was frozen in time, joyful and carefree.

There were excruciating deaths, for sure. But for many victims the end came too suddenly to be felt or recognised. It is one comforting thought amid a nightmare of dancing demons.

But whose arm was it? Maybe the watch will help provide an answer.

There is no point airbrushing macabre images like this from history because they are part of the grim reality that confronted profoundly shocked families who came to this hospital 10 years ago to find out if their kids, their brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, were still alive.

Or whether they were on the horrific death list that would eventually number 202, 88 of them Australians and three Kiwis.

On revisiting the morgue this week I bump into some of these family members and friends who are making the same cathartic journey. It's a comfort to chat with them, and I hope they feel the same.

I recall the gaunt, pale faces of a decade ago, hoping against hope they will not see something like that silver watch, or a birthday ring or pendant, or a familiar body piercing or tattoo on a body-less arm or foot, anything that will confirm their worst fears.

Most of them know the awful truth anyway. You can see it in their eyes. But they will not believe it until they see it, and in some cases they will not believe it even after they've seen it.

Adelaide couple John and Tracey Golotta do manage to identify their daughter, 19-year-old Angela. But they come back to repeat the process no fewer than four times - "just to make sure", to use their own words of heartbreak and disbelief.

Coping with grief seems unbearable at the best of times, but in such macabre surroundings it is surely too much to ask of anyone.

Sanglah's morgue is designed for a holiday island, not a terrorist atrocity. There are 10 refrigeration units, not 200.

So many mutilated bodies are piled up that the decomposing corpses themselves threaten to become a health hazard. Most lie in the outdoor heat of the tropics, wrapped in orange, yellow and white plastic bags. They form two long lines under a walkway.

Unattached body parts - and there are dozens - are kept in separate containers inside.

The stench is nauseating. Authorities have to rely on an ever-dwindling mountain of ice slabs to keep the bodies cold. They are also short of embalming fluid, and at one point even scalpels.

Scores of coffins lie in the grounds waiting to be filled.

There is no escape from this wall-to-wall grief, not even in sleep, for those few silent hours are also the time of nightmares.

The suffering of the families is raw and palpable and contagious. Some find comfort in talking, others don't. A hug, a look, a gesture seem the only means of conveying to these near-catatonic souls your empathy and compassion.

Some of the families talk volubly about those they have lost. Now and then they break down in tears, and when they do it is often while considering a seemingly innocuous question. How old was he? What was her name? Maybe it's the suddenness and brutality of the past tense. Maybe the devil is in those tiny but very personal details.

That whole fraught time is a blur of tears and pain, a mishmash of images.

And then there is the arm. It floats in my mind like the arm of the weighted-down corpse bobbing up above the water in the final scene of the movie Deliverance. Does that arm really rise, or is it just a bad dream? Who knows?

But this Bali arm is real. It has become for me a symbol of the indescribable pain of 202 families. Like their pain, it never completely goes away.

Thursday 11 October 2012

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10839775

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Cold Cases Heat Up Through New Approach to Identifying Remains

ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2012) — In an effort to identify the thousands of John/Jane Doe cold cases in the United States, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher and a team of international collaborators have found a multidisciplinary approach to identifying the remains of missing persons.

Using "bomb pulse" radiocarbon analysis developed at Lawrence Livermore, combined with recently developed anthropological analysis and forensic DNA techniques, the researchers were able to identify the remains of a missing child 41 years after the discovery of the body.

In 1968, a child's cranium was recovered from the banks of a northern Canadian river. Initial analysis conducted by investigators, using technology at the time, concluded that the cranium came from the body of a 7-9-year-old child and no identity could be determined. The case went cold and was reopened later.

The cranium underwent reanalysis at the Centre for Forensic Research, Simon Fraser University in Canada, where skull measurements, skeletal ossification, and dental formation indicated an age-at-death of approximately 4 1/2; years old. At Lawrence Livermore, researchers conducted radiocarbon analysis of enamel from two teeth indicated a more precise birth date. Forensic DNA analysis, conducted at Simon Fraser University, indicated the child was a male, and the obtained mitochondrial profile matched a living maternal relative to the presumed missing child.

The multidisciplinary analyses resulted in a legal identification 41 years after the discovery of the remains, highlighting the enormous potential of combining radiocarbon analysis with anthropological and mitochondrial DNA analyses in producing confident personal identifications in forensic cold cases dating to within the last 60 years.

"There are thousands of John Doe and Jane Doe cold cases in the United States," said Livermore scientist Bruce Buchholz, who conducted the radiocarbon analysis in the case. "I believe we could provide birth dates and death dates for many of these cases."

Age determination of unknown human bodies is important in the setting of a crime investigation or a mass disaster, because the age at death, birth date and year of death, as well as gender, can guide investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible matches.

Using the Laboratory's Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Buchholz determined that the radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s remains in the dental enamel, the hardest substance in the body. The radiocarbon analysis shows that dating teeth with the carbon-14 method estimates the birth date within one to two years.

Above-ground testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War (1955-1963) caused a surge in global levels of carbon-14 (14C), which has been carefully recorded over time. The radiocarbon technique determines the amount of 14C in tooth enamel. Scientists can relate the extensive atmospheric record for 14C to when the tooth was formed and calculate the age of the tooth and its owner.

In forensic cases where teeth are unavailable, the radiocarbon analysis of bone also can provide useful information whether the time of death occurred prior to 1955 or afterward.

In the missing child case, Buchholz determined radiocarbon values for two teeth, which once analyzed showed that that the average of the crown's enamel formation span occurred between 1959 and 1961.

"In a conservative estimate, the carbon-14 value for the crown's enamel would correspond with a birth year between 1958 and 1962," Buchholz said.

In summary, the 14C dates in combination with the age-at-death estimate using anthropological techniques suggest that the child was born between 1958 and 1962 and died between 1963 and 1968.

The research also has implications for the identity of victims in mass graves or mass fatality contexts, where a combined DNA and radiocarbon analysis approach provides the additional benefit of distinguishing between maternal relations.

Besides Livermore and Simon Fraser University, other institutions participating in the research include the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Journal Reference:

Camilla F. Speller, Kirsty L. Spalding, Bruce A. Buchholz, Dean Hildebrand, Jason Moore, Rolf Mathewes, Mark F. Skinner, Dongya Y. Yang. Personal Identification of Cold Case Remains Through Combined Contribution from Anthropological, mtDNA, and Bomb-Pulse Dating Analyses. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2012; 57 (5): 1354 DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2012.02223.x

Thursday 11 October 2012

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121010141458.htm

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Forensic doctor recalls trauma of Bali bombings

THE Bali bombings were so huge that six of the 202 victims and 38 body parts remained unidentified three months later.

Forensic pathologist Dr Putu Alit, who played a key role in the difficult and drawn-out identification process, recalled this week the trauma, sleepless nights and frustrations that followed the terrorist attacks in Kuta's central nightclub area 10 years ago.

Dr Alit, who still works at Denpasar's Sanglah hospital, said many bodies were so badly disfigured that identification in some cases took up to three months.

"Not all we can identify," he told AAP.

"We still have about six victims and 38 body parts (unidentified after three months) because they are in bad condition."

The explosions were so massive, particularly the almost 1,000-kilogram bomb that detonated in a white Mitsubishi van outside Kuta's Sari Club, that some victims were said to have virtually vaporised, leaving no remains. Even 10 years later two are still unnamed.

Interpol protocols require two identifiers, primary and secondary, Dr Alit explained.

Primary identifiers include fingerprint, dental and DNA evidence.

Many young Australians raised on fluoridated water had either no or incomplete dental records, and some victims were too badly damaged to be fingerprinted.

This meant that DNA evidence was used in about half of all cases.

In the absence of primary identifiers, at least two secondary identifiers must be found, including medical, property and photographic evidence.

One Swedish victim was identified by a unique upper arm tattoo.

"It was very specific," said Dr Alit.

Other indicators included medical scars, necklaces and rings, which were especially helpful if they bore the owner's name.

In the case of one Australian teenager killed, the brand of jeans she was wearing helped, in addition to primary identifiers.

Dr Alit was part of a dedicated team that worked virtually around the clock in the days and weeks after the bombings, from 8am until they fell asleep, often after midnight.

The delay in confirming victims' names was a source of frustration and anguish for Australian families at the time, but authorities had to be 100 per cent sure of identification.

"At the beginning it was a riot (a confusing scene) with many, many victims coming," Dr Alit recalled.

"Many had severe burns and victims came in many body parts."

He said it was difficult for medical staff to keep their emotions in check in the face of such an atrocity.

"Because we are doctors we must be impartial, neutral," he said.

"We must do no sad, not appear like that. We only must do our duty."

Thursday 11 October 2012

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/doctor-recalls-trauma-of-bali-bombings/story-fn3dxix6-1226493677919

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