cstewart0985
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Bones don't have scars or tats, and there may or may not be enough tissue for DNA extraction. It is quite possible they won't succeed in identifying all of the remains, which would be truly terrible for those left wondering, just as in the Pickton case.
Nuclear DNA is harder to get from skeletal remains, but they will go over the remains with hope of finding enough to get a sample. If they can’t get a sample from recovered tissue, etc., they can pull mitochondrial DNA from the bones. It offers a less than perfect match in comparison to the nuclear counterpart, but it would be enough for proof of death and identity in this case. In Andrew’s case he had 2 prior knee replacements and I strongly feel that is how they identified him as quickly as they did. Someone had speculated that as they have DNA samples for Andrew to compare to, that if they found something that could provide a DNA match they could have made it a priority. However, everything I have seen thus far (updates from LE) has been talk that DNA ID would take months, which makes me think Andrew was positively ID’d by other means.