When someone is burned to death, it is of course a common problem to make a visual confrontation identification to establish identity and therefore a dental identification has to be made.
Usually, even if the body is severe damaged, the teeth are well preserved. It depends upon that the tongue and the cheeks protect the teeth from the fire. The following was such a case, with well preserved teeth and the big detective people in common helped us to solve the case.

Everything started in a play ground in one of Stockholm´s southern suburbs. In the early morning hours a dog and its owner makes a horrible finding, namely a severely burned body on the ground. He calls the police who soon arrives. During their immediate preliminary exam, they can verify that it is a female body and they estimate the age very roughly to 15 to 20 years. The body is a lot burned but mostly superficial and some clothes remnants persist in the body.

No signs of assault or battery can be made and this is verified later after the autopsy. No identity papers are found on or near the body. The place near the body and the body itself smells gasolin.
We make our exam after the autopsy and can directly verify that the estimated preliminary age is incorrect. The lower third molars have their roots fully developed, so the age must be at least around 20 years. We can also verify a rather heavy attritition, reaching to the dentin even in some teeth. Our report thus informs the police that the female is at least 30 years and the autopsy has estimated her length
to 162 cm and the hair colour to be ash-blonde.

The case is reported in the Newspapers and a couple of days later a doorkeeper from a house nearby the playground shows up and says that he has not seen one of the tenants the last days. Reading about the case with the burned female in a Newspaper he became really suspicious an here he is now. Through relatives to this woman we get the name of a dentist and receive antemortem written records and radiographs.
An identity can be fully confirmed. She was 39 years old.
What had happened to her then? With all probability she had poured gasolin over her body and set herself on fire. After talking with neigbours and old friends to her, it proved that she had become an hermit the last time and spent a lot of time to religious
morbid brooding.