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Laurie Kaiser: Mary Bush has always loved mysteries. As a teen, she devoured Agatha Christie novels and was glued to pretty much every true crime series on television.

Mary Bush: I absolutely loved shows where you would hear a story and then see how forensic evidence led to resolution of the case.

Laurie Kaiser: Today, Bush is the one solving mysteries. A forensic dentist and associate professor of restorative dentistry at the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine, Mary Bush was among the first researchers to question the validity of bitemark evidence in the courtroom. Over the years, she has won numerous awards for her research, served as an expert witness in high-profile murder cases, and testified before Congress. Her tools are currently on display as part of an exhibition on forensic science at the Smithsonian. Bush is also known for victim identification, and was recently featured on an episode of the Netflix hit series “Unsolved Mysteries.” In her spare time, she has written two acclaimed crime novels.

Welcome to Driven to Discover, a University at Buffalo podcast that explores what inspires today's innovators. My name is Laurie Kaiser, and on this episode, I'll be talking to Mary Bush about her pioneering work on the admissibility of bitemark evidence in the U.S. court system and her generally remarkable career.

Welcome, Dr. Bush.

Mary Bush: Thank you for having me.

Laurie Kaiser: I want to ask you about your path to becoming a forensic dentist. Lots of young people love Agatha Christie and reading mysteries and watching true crime shows, but they don't necessarily grow up to be forensic dentists or forensic scientists. Did you always know forensics was something you would want to do? And why dentistry specifically?

Mary Bush: Actually, no, it was not something that I always knew that I wanted to do. When I was hired as a professor at the dental school, I was hired on a tenure track line, which meant that I had to engage in independent research. I had an interest in forensics, I was a dentist, so I put two and two together. And forensic dentistry is a specialty of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, so it only made sense that I would choose this avenue as my research goal.

Laurie Kaiser: Can you quickly describe for us what a forensic dentist does?

Mary Bush: In a nutshell, forensic dentistry is dentistry as it relates to the law. Three main avenues of forensic dentistry would happen to be bitemark analysis, victim identification—both in a singular case and a mass fatality—and age estimation. Those are the main branches of forensic dentistry.

Laurie Kaiser: Okay, well let's talk about bitemark evidence. How did it even become a thing in the courtroom?

Mary Bush: Well, the precedent for bitemark analysis was set in the 1970s, and what the court did is it looked at the methodology used in bitemark comparison, the tools that were used to make a comparison. So they looked at photographs, and photographs were not new techniques. Taking a photograph of a wound and admitting that as evidence was not a new technique. Making a dental mold was a well-established technique. Making tracings of the teeth was not a new technique. These were well established. So what the court did not do was challenge any science. Could you make a comparison? Could you take a photograph of a wound, take the tracings of the teeth, and with reliability be able to make a connection between a suspect and the wound on a victim?

Then, in the late 1970s, a landmark case, the Ted Bundy case, really brought bitemarks out into national prominence. It was really the bitemark on the victims that really tied Bundy to the case. Bundy eventually admitted that he committed these crimes, and it really put bitemarks into a spotlight at that point.

Laurie Kaiser: So what is it that makes bitemark evidence faulty?

Mary Bush: It's the skin. Skin stretches, it distorts. It's not a good recording medium. It's not like you're biting into something that really records the teeth accurately.

Laurie Kaiser: You said in other interviews that you had no intention of wading into bitemark analysis when you first became a forensic dentist. So what happened, and how did you get to this place?

Mary Bush: Well at the time we were engaging in independent research, and I had students that were working in my lab, working on their projects, with me as their mentor. And I had a student who wanted to engage in a bitemark project. And I really tried to convince him otherwise because bitemarks were very controversial at the time, and it was an area I did not want to get into. But the student was persistent, and eventually I said, okay, but we need to start looking into the background of bitemark analysis. You need to do a literature search to see what's already out there in the science before you decide to move forward.

And what I found is that there was very little in the science on bitemark analysis. So there really wasn't much to give us a good background. Most of the early literature was giving warnings that skin distorts quite a bit, and there might be some caution that needs to be exercised in bitemark analysis. So when we started doing the projects, I had to do a lot of literature background on skin to understand what the skin was. We also had to make an instrumative bite apparatus that we could make bitemarks with. And what we started to see, when we were just testing the biting apparatus, is that every bite that we made looked different from the set of teeth that created it—and looked different from each other.

Laurie Kaiser: Is it true, Mary, that 26 individuals were actually wrongly convicted based on bitemark evidence?

Mary Bush: That is true, and it's shocking when you see that people have been incarcerated for life, some on death row, based upon scientific—or non-scientific—evidence that was used to convict them.

Laurie Kaiser: So I would assume that there are people who are still in jail who have not been exonerated.

Mary Bush: Yes, I think so.

Laurie Kaiser: You served as an expert witness in some high-profile murder trials. What was that experience like?

Mary Bush: It was nerve-wracking, to say the least. When we went in to start testifying in trials, I felt that it was my duty to testify to the court simply on my research, and what I found out is that it started to take a very personal turn. There was no research that could really counteract what we were discovering in our projects. So there was an attack more so on me as a scientist, rather than on the science. It almost led to bullying attacks from the forensic dental community.

Laurie Kaiser: Has your testimony led to exonerating anyone accused of a crime?

Mary Bush: I want to hope that my work and the testimony that we did led to an awareness. So when we first started to testify, it was in a court of law, and in a court of law, the judges and the lawyers are not necessarily scientists. And the hope in a courtroom is that any fault in the science is going to be brought out through good cross examination. But we all know that, you know, maybe there's a little bit more to it in a courtroom when, you know, either side may not have a good handle on the science. So it could be, you know, who is more convincing?

What we started to do after testifying in a court of law is we moved into testifying in front of scientific organizations. So the first one was the Texas Forensic Science Commission, and their decision was to have a moratorium on bitemark analysis after all testimony was done. The second one was the President's Council on Science and Technology, and that was President Obama's Council on Science and Technology. And not only did they determine that there was really no science behind bitemarks; they thought that it was so bad, what was out there, that they shouldn't even devote any more funding towards making it a reliable discipline, because it just simply was not there. I also testified on Capitol Hill in front of Congress based upon the bullying attacks on the sides of the prosecution and in the bitemark community.

So the thing is, when you testify in front of a scientific organization, it's not like testifying in a court of law. They don't make a decision. They have a decision, but it's really just a recommendation to the courts. So if they declare a moratorium, say there's no science behind bitemarks, it really doesn't hold up in a court of law. It's a recommendation, and I want to hope that what's come out of that is now courts are becoming aware of the issues around bitemark analysis.

Laurie Kaiser: That must be validating doing that kind of work and seeing where it goes.

Mary Bush: It certainly is, yes

Laura Kaiser: And now, even more so, the tools of your bitemark evidence research are on display in a yearlong exhibit at the Smithsonian. That must feel pretty good. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Mary Bush: It does. For a long time, you know, when we were testifying and when we were undergoing the personal attacks, they were saying very, you know, negative commentary about the work that we did, trying to really negate what was there with negative opinions about it, rather than trying to fight it with science. They called the biting apparatus that we made a Home Depot vice grip, and it lessened the work. And to see it now on display at the Smithsonian really, really is validating to the work that we did.

Laurie Kaiser: What is the current situation now with bitemark evidence in the courtroom? Is it still being used?

Mary Bush: That's a very good question. I'm not sure. I don't hear about it as much as I used to. I'm hoping that it really is not as prominent as it used to be.

Laurie Kaiser: Well, let's pivot to victim identification. You've identified murder victims by analyzing their dental work. You also helped identify many of the crash victims from the Colgan Air Flight 3407 that crashed in Clarence just outside the Buffalo airport. What is an experience like that, of identifying victims in something like that, emotionally for you?

Mary Bush: Emotionally, it is very difficult. I mean, there's a horrible tragedy that occurred, and there's many lives that were lost. There's families that are grieving their loved ones. And what helps when you enter a situation such as that is that you have to be able to tell yourself that you're helping the families. You’re giving a name to their loved one and you're bringing their loved one back to them. And that really helps to get through something that is that emotionally difficult.

Laurie Kaiser: You recently ended up on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” that aired this summer on Netflix. Can you tell us about that case and how you ended up on the show?

Mary Bush: That case actually belonged to a colleague of mine, Dr. Ray Miller. He is a forensic dentist for Erie County, and the case came to him through the Pennsylvania State Police. And what had occurred is that a young man, I think he was about 15 years old, found an embalmed head not too far off the side of the road. About 80 miles away, there was a mausoleum that had been broken into, and that body was missing its head. So the police tried to put two and two together. We have a body without a head, and now we have a head without a body. They must match up together.

The only issue is that the body in the mausoleum was interred, I mean, the individual died, in 1952. And so now the question was, based upon the dentistry that was in the mouth of the victim, could this person have died in 1952? Looking at just the X-rays alone, it was doubtful that this had occurred. There was many distinguishing features in the dental work that led us to believe that this individual did not perish in 1952. And the Pennsylvania police actually brought the embalmed head to my husband's lab—he runs a major instrumentation lab on the South Campus—and we did an analysis on the materials that were there. And also, you know, we were able to look at the dental work physically, rather than just looking at the X-rays. And without a doubt, the dentistry was probably from the late 1980s, and that's really stretching it out. But there was no way that this dental work was done in 1952.

Laurie Kaiser: And then Ray Miller could not go on the show, correct?

Mary Bush: He could not, he unfortunately had a conflict during that time, and he asked me to step in for him, which was very gracious of him.

Laurie Kaiser: What was that like? Going to Pennsylvania and being filmed?

Mary Bush: It was nerve-wracking and exciting all at the same time. It was a wonderful experience to be part of a big production and understand what goes on behind the scenes. And of course, the reason why we're there is, again, trying to give a name to this victim, trying to bring this person back to their family. So that was the main reason to be there. Because the story was unsolved, nobody knew who this woman was. The goal was to make sure that, you know, if somebody was out there, that they would see this person and be able to give a name to this person.

Laurie Kaiser: And Mary, I don't know where you find the time with all that you're doing here at UB, but you've also written two crime novels. The first was “A Simple Lie” and the second, “The Secrets We Bury.” They're both set in Buffalo, and the main character, Valencia Knight, is a dentist turn death-scene investigator. I'm interested in the nexus between your life and these novels. The plots are quite grisly. Are they pulled from your cases that you've worked on?

Mary Bush: Actually, no. There's really no connection between any of the cases that I've worked on. There is a slight bitemark angle with the novels, there is a little bit of an issue with a bitemark that's come into play, and my hope was really to take the story in that direction in a subsequent book. I'm still deciding if I would like to do that or not. But with any character I think you create, you always have to give that person a little bit of yourself. But a lot of people do ask, is she an alter ego? Is she part of me? Maybe a little bit from how I created her, but no, she's her own character.

Laurie Kaiser: Thank you so much for joining us, Mary. This was extremely interesting.

Mary Bush: Thank you so much for having me.