Identifying remains a tale of the teeth

Browned by age and exposure to the elements, the scattered bones discovered Saturday down a bramble-tangled slope near Enumclaw could have gone the way of so many other corpses found in Washington: unidentified.

Instead, investigators announced Monday that the remains were definitively those of Pammy Annette Avent, a 16-year-old girl who left her mother's Rainier Valley residence in 1983 and never came home.

More than two decades have passed since the teenager -- long considered a likely victim of one of the nation's most prolific serial killers -- disappeared.

But, because Green River serial homicide investigators followed a state law -- a protocol crucial to any missing-person investigation -- it took forensics experts less than two hours Monday morning to positively link the remains to Avent.

Like with most missing-person and unidentified-body cases, Avent's teeth held the key.

Dental records have accounted for about three-quarters of the 39 positive identifications made of recovered victims attributed to the Green River Killer -- including Avent's, the first Green River victim identified since 1991.

"We can't stress enough how important dental records are for missing-persons cases," Detective Katie Larson, a Green River Homicide Task Force member, said yesterday. "For Pammy Avent, they made all the difference."

Upon request from forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor, state forensic dentist Gary Bell e-mailed computerized images of Avent's dental records on file with the state's Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit to the King County Medical Examiner's Office at 9:17 a.m.

By 11:15 a.m., Avent's records had been matched to X-rays taken earlier Monday of teeth in a skull found near a tree at the search site on Saturday.

The quick identification of Avent offers a valuable lesson for police in the importance of retrieving dental records of the missing -- an act required by law, but one that police routinely ignore.

Since 1983, state law has mandated that police in Washington obtain, where available, dental records for all people missing longer than a month. But a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer analysis of more than 20 years of state data shows that police departments failed to even check if such records existed in more than 60 percent of all active missing-person cases.

Even with a larger caseload than most departments, the King County Sheriff's Office is among the best police agencies in Washington at complying with the dental-records law -- an accomplishment the department largely has earned through years of trial and error in chasing an elusive serial killer.

Experts say that once someone disappears, quickly retrieving that person's dental records -- if they exist -- will give investigators a jump start should a corpse turn up later. As with Avent's case, having such records on file ahead of time can save investigators valuable time in having to hunt for records that may no longer exist, allowing for a quick comparison between the teeth of the missing to those of the dead.

But what are the benefits of such a quick identification?

From an investigative standpoint, experts say, such timing can be crucial.

In a yearlong investigation of missing-person cases in Washington, the P-I found that by not collecting dental records, police can face delays in body identifications, stall homicide investigations and allow killers to get away with murder.

Such a glaring error occurred in the case of Michelle Vick, a 14-year-old who ran away from her home in Mattawa in 1998. Local police failed to retrieve Vick's dental records after her mother reported her missing. And so, when a corpse turned up nearby four months later, investigators were unable to identify it.

In the 17 months it finally took to identify the remains as Vick's, the man now suspected of killing her had time to flee the country.

In Pammy Avent's case, the time it took to identify the bones found Saturday may not have been as crucial. Investigators already have a suspect in custody for seven of the Green River killings: Auburn truck painter Gary Ridgway.

But for family members of other possible victims, the quick identification meant everything.

Avent was among seven girls and women long considered victims of the Green River Killer, but whose remains had never been found. When searchers discovered the bones, investigators focused on that small pool of candidates in trying to identify the remains.

"After 20 years of waiting, it meant a lot that we were able to contact her family, as well as the six other families, and let them know," Larson, with Green River task force, said. "All of them deserve to know one way or the other as quickly as possible."

As the task force continues to search a killer's possible dumping grounds, the identification of any remains discovered in the future are bolstered by groundwork laid by investigators years ago, Larson said. As with Avent, investigators already have compiled dental records and DNA samples to help identify the six Green River victims who remain missing, she said.

But for nearly 100 bodies that have been found across Washington that remain unidentified, the search continues. And because police in Washington have retrieved dental records for only about 13 percent of all active missing-person cases, there's a good chance the identities of those nameless dead can be found among the reported missing, experts say.

But without the dental records, they simply can't be linked.

That's why Bell, the state's forensic dentist, yesterday pointed to Avent's case as an example to learn from. King County followed the law, and Avent's records were ready and available when needed.

"If King County hadn't collected her dental records upfront, the chances of them recovering them at this point in time, 20 years later, are pretty slim," Bell said.

That means that a set of bones could still be unidentified, he said. And a family still left wondering.