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Eye Database For Identifying MIAs Now A Forensic Tool

News channel 8 photo by PETER MASA

Dr. Greg Berg, a forensic expert from Hawaii, has developed a database of optical prescriptions to help identify dead bodies.

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By TOM BRENNAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 14, 2008

TAMPA - Techniques Greg Berg developed to help identify the remains of missing military personnel is also being used to convict criminals.

Berg, a forensic anthropologist with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, was a guest lecturer at the University of South Florida this week. Students heard him describe how the eyeglass prescription database he created was used to help arrest and convict a Honolulu man of murdering a Japanese tourist.

Berg said today that scientific and technological advances are helping the military identify recovered remains and are expanding into the realm of law enforcement and the judicial system.

"New technology is allowing us to do more with less," he said.

For example, the eyeglasses recovered from a Honolulu pest control truck were run against Berg's database and helped tighten the legal noose against Hawaiian Matthew Kirk Lankford, who received a life sentence in August for the murder of Masumi Watanabe.

Berg said Watanabe's eye prescription was unique to her.

"It allowed authorities to link more and more bits of evidence to the defendant," he said.

And it is also quicker than DNA, blood or other forensic tests.

"Checking eyeglasses takes 45 minutes to an hour where blood and DNA takes days," he said. "That let authorities keep him [Lankford] behind bars while they made the other connections."

Berg said the eyeglass database and one based on dental fillings let anthropologists make identifications they couldn't a decade ago.

"It is a frequency game: 'Is this prescription or fillings common or rare?' " he said. "It is simple statistics, but they can be very powerful also – and that's their beauty."

Berg hopes technological progress will eventually help identify nearly 400 Florida service personnel listed as missing in action.

"For those families out there still waiting, never give up hope," he said. "We're working every single day to make sure that every last U.S. service person comes home."

Do you wear eyeglasses? Want to see how unique you prescription is? Use Berg's database to check. Go to www.jpac.pacom.mil/index.php?page=optosearch&size=....

Reporter Tom Brennan can be reached at (813) 259-7698.

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