Guilty by a Bite? The Teeth That Testified
In 1776, a silversmith named Paul Revere identified a fallen friend by the false tooth he had wired into his mouth. Teeth went on to name a murder victim in 1849 Boston and the dead of a Paris fire in 1897 — then courts asked them to do something much harder: name the person who left a bite. From a bitten block of cheese in 1954 Texas to the trial of Ted Bundy, men convicted with bite-mark testimony and later cleared by DNA, and what the science says today.
Every Then vs Now episode ends with what a surgeon would do today.
Chapters
- 0:00Paul Revere and the fallen friend
- 1:24Boston, 1849: the Parkman murder
- 2:56Paris, 1897: the Charity Bazaar fire
- 4:05Quick pause: the quiz
- 4:25Whose teeth made this mark?
- 4:43The cheese bite (Texas, 1954)
- 5:03The trial of Ted Bundy
- 6:12Wrongly convicted
- 6:58The science caught up
- 8:00Then vs Now: what teeth can still tell us
- 10:18Back to 1776
- 10:48Next episode
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Sources
Facts were checked against multiple sources. Key references (full list in the pinned comment on YouTube):
- DTIC, Paul Revere and Forensic Dentistry
- Harvard Countway Library (Parkman–Webster)
- Histoire de la médecine (France, Bazar de la Charité)
- AAFS 2019 (Doyle v. State, 1954)
- Local10 / WPLG (Bundy trial, 1979)
- Innocence Project — Ray Krone
- Innocence Project — Keith Harward
- Texas Tribune (2016 moratorium)
- PCAST 2016 report
- NIST bitemark review
- CDC MMWR 54(14) (2004 tsunami identifications)
- INTERPOL DVI Guide
Some visuals are illustrations or reconstructions. For education only — not medical or legal advice.