Medicolegal Death Investigation

You have been dispatched to the scene of a homicide where a body was discovered in a field. The victim appears to have been shot several times and then burned. The identity of the deceased is in question, and the lead detective asks you whether DNA would be useful in this case to determine the identity of the deceased.

• What would you advise the detective?
• What type of DNA analysis is most useful on burned bodies? Is it useful in all cases in which there has been a badly burned body?
• Would you recover the DNA at the crime scene, or would you instead let the medical examiner recover the DNA evidence from the body?
• From what relative would a sample be taken from if a possible match were to be made?