The University at Buffalo’s dental school gained national attention with its forensic lab’s work featured on Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries,” which began airing its latest series on July 31.
A feature story written by the university’s staff and published on August 2 highlights Dr. Mary Bush, DDS, forensic dentist and associate professor of restorative dentistry, who took center stage in the story.
The case began in 2015 when the Pennsylvania State Police delivered a cooler to the forensic lab at the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine. The cooler contained an unidentified severed head discovered by a teenager in the woods near Economy, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. The lab was tasked with determining whether the head belonged to a torso found in a mausoleum in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
The investigation was complicated by the fact that police only knew the head belonged to an older woman interred in 1952.
“When we first saw the X-rays, I said, ‘There’s no way this is 1952 dentistry,’” said Bush. “There were several resin composites present, and that technology did not exist in the 1950s. Older faculty members confirmed that it was no earlier than the mid-1980s.”
Bush was interviewed in May 2023 by Netflix’s iconic mystery documentary show to share her insights for Episode 3, titled “The Severed Head.”
For more details, read the full feature written by Laurie Kaiser, News Content Director at the School of Dental Medicine, here.
