NCJ Number
227717
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 54 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2009 Pages: 905-908
Date Published
July 2009
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This paper reports on the procedures and findings to date of an effort to identify 1 of the as yet unidentified victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, a mass execution of 335 people perpetrated in Rome on March 24, 1944, by Nazi German occupation troops during World War II as a reprisal for a partisan attack in central Rome.
Abstract
Of the 335 victims, 323 corpses have been identified. The work reported in this paper pertains to the genetic and anthropological analysis of the remains exhumed from grave number 329. On a list of the prisoners selected for execution compiled by 1 of the Nazi officers were 75 Jews. Only one of these Jewish men is not among those identified to date ("MM"). He was a partisan arrested on February 18, 1944. On June 6, 2006, MM's brothers asked that the remains in grave 329 be exhumed for identification under their belief it was the grave of MM, upon which an unknown person had put a Star of David. The mitochondrial DNA analysis of bone fragments from the grave showed seven different nucleotide variations between the bone remains and two maternal relatives of MM. An exclusion is evident when two or more nucleotides differ between the sequences of two different samples. Since the samples did not originate from the same person or one maternal lineage, the analyses indicate that grave number 329 does not contain MM, but 1 of the other 11 unknown victims. These results confirm the usefulness of molecular genetics for forensic analysis and emphasize the urgency of applying it in identifying the remains of the 12 unknown corpses, since this kind of identification can be performed only if suitable relatives are available for comparison. 1 table and 25 references