Andrei SOFICARU | Mihai CONSTANTINESCU
(“Fr. I. Rainer” Institute of Anthropology, Bucharest, Romania)
Keywords: Bucharest, Catholic priest, osteobiography, forensic identification, violence
Abstract:
In 2013, the authors exhumed some human remains from Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest, where the oral history claimed that Monsignor Vladimir Ghyka, a catholic priest who died at the age of 80 in a Communist prison, was buried. The aim of analysis was to verify the correctness of the oral history as the beatification of the Monsignor was in progress.
Sex assessment was based on the skulls and hip bones visual traits; age was estimated using cranial and post-cranial features. Martin system was used for metrics and Breitinger method for stature estimation. Evidence of dental pathology, infections, age related skeletal changes and traces of violence were recorded.
Funeral behaviour was interpreted using Weiss-Krejci model: death (A) at May 16th 1954 in Jilava prison; temporary deposition (C) in the prison cemetery; recovery (D) in 1968 by the family; buried (F) secretly in same year in Bellu cemetery; exhumation (T) at 23rd April 2013; bones are curated (V) at the Saint Josef Cathedral from Bucharest.
Forensic identification: the skeleton belongs to a male with minimum age-at-death of 65 years; the calculated stature is 166.36±4.8 cm while the living stature of V. Ghyka at 45 years, was of 174 cm; the spine displayed a kyphosis, visible in the pictures from his the late years of life; the skull was photographed in the Frankfurt plane and the kerf of the sagittal curve perfectly match the skulls profile from the prison photos. The injuries of the teeth crowns correspond conclusively with the fists beatings which according to the testimonies of the prison mates was submitted during imprisonment.
Although many victims of the communist regime were excavated in Romania, none of them was identified using forensic methods, and consequently the identification of V. Ghyka opens a direction of research, too little exploited in Romania.