Body of Water: Can a Corpse Found in a Lake Be Reliably Identified?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

April 18, 2024

AP News reports:

A body that washed up on the shores of Lake Ontario in 1992 has been identified as a Buffalo man who is believed to have died going over Niagara Falls.

Vincent Stack went missing in Niagara Falls State Park on Dec. 4, 1990. DNA technology helped identify his remains, which drifted 15 miles to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and then 130 miles across Lake Ontario before washing ashore on April 8, 1992, the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

The remains were badly decomposed and mostly skeletal when they were discovered, the sheriff’s office said. The medical examiner determined that the unidentified person had been dead between six months and five years.

Thirty years later, in 2022, the sheriff’s office renewed its efforts to identify the remains and reached out to the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario, Canada for help.

Detective Constable Sara Mummery of the Ontario department assisted with obtaining a new DNA sample from the remains that had washed ashore in 1992 for comparison with missing person cases in both the United States and Canada, the sheriff’s office said.

In February of 2024 the authorities were able to match the DNA sample with genetic material collected from the family of Stack, who was 40 when he disappeared, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. The sheriff’s office notified Stack’s family of the identification.[1]

Historically, the most reliable method of identifying human remains, in halacha as well as secular law, has been visual identification by someone who knew the person. But a major obstacle to such identification is postmortem decomposition of the body, which can render it unrecognizable. Halacha goes even further and considers visual identification unreliable unless certain components of the face are intact and the identification is made within a certain interval after death.

In this article, we discuss these two conditions. Several weeks hence we shall iy”H discuss the identification of human remains via DNA.

Facial components

The Mishnah states:

They may not testify to the identity of a dead man (to permit his wife to remarry) except upon seeing the form of the dead man’s face with the nose.[2]

The Gemara elaborates:

The Rabanan taught in a breisa: If witnesses saw only the forehead without the form of a face, or only the form of a face without the forehead, they may not testify. They may not testify until both are visible, together with the nose.

Abayei, or if you will, Rav Kahana, said: From what pasuk? “The recognition of their faces testified about them.”[3]^,[4]

Rabeinu Tam rules that even if these features are absent, an identification is still valid if the entire rest of the body is intact,[5] but other Rishonim disagree.[6]

Time since death

Later in the above Mishnah, we have the following:

They may not testify to a dead man’s identity unless they saw the body within three days of death. R’ Yehuda ben Bava says: Not all men nor all places nor all times are alike.

The Gemara asserts, however, that in certain circumstances an identification is valid even later. It cites a precedential ruling allowing the wife of a man who had drowned in the Tigris River to remarry, though the body had been identified five days after death. The Gemara explains:

Water is different, for cold water contracts the body (making recognition possible even after three days).

But you said that water agitates a wound (i.e., so water can cause swelling and distortion of the features)!

That applies where there is a wound, but where there is no wound, water contracts the body (preventing bloating and distortion).

And this rule applies only if when the body was brought ashore, it was seen by witnesses within the hour. But if it was left waiting, it has surely become bloated (and unrecognizable).[7]

Poskim debate whether the extension for water is only until five days from death or indefinite.[8] They also debate the precise meaning of the Gemara’s condition that the identification be made “at that time”: Some understand this to mean that it must be made immediately (“without any delay at all”) upon retrieving the body, while others construe it to mean within either an hour or two hours of the retrieval, as long as bloating has not yet occurred.[9]

Some authorities maintain that if the face (and according to some, the body as well) is intact, an identification of a body found on land is valid even beyond three days,[10] and some extend this even to one found in water. Others disagree with this latter extension,[11] and some reject the validity of an identification after three days even in the case of a body found on land.[12]

[1]Authorities identify remains of man who went missing in Niagara Falls in 1990 and drifted 145 miles. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/niagara-falls-missing-person-remains-identified-dna-b62840e22240b1f47c2e5652c89eaa2e.

[2]Mishnah Yevamos 16:3.

[3]Yeshayah 3:9

[4]Yevamos 120a. For an encyclopedic discussion of these rules, see Otzar Haposkim E.H. kerech 5 pp. 19a-36c.

[5]Tosfos ibid. s.v. Ein me’idin.

[6]See Nimukei Yosef ibid. 45a in Rif pagination. Cf. Bais Yosef and Shulchan Aruch ibid. se’if 25; Otzar Haposkim ibid. pp. 169d-181d.

[7]Yevamos 121a.

[8]See Bais Yosef ibid. (se’if 26); Otzar Haposkim E.H. kerech 6 pp. 15b-16b.

[9]See Bais Yosef ibid.; Otzar Haposkim ibid. pp. 20b-23d.

[10]See Bais Yosef ibid. and Shulchan Aruch ibid. se’if 28; Otzar Haposkim ibid. pp. 68a-83c.

[11]See Bais Yosef and Rama to Shulchan Aruch ibid.; Otzar Haposkim ibid. pp. 83c-86d.

[12]See Bais Yosef and Shulchan Aruch ibid.; Otzar Haposkim ibid. pp. 87a-121a.