Mexican prosecutors said Tuesday that an Austrian forensics lab has been unable to find any more DNA that could be used by conventional means to identify charred remains that might be those of 42 missing college students, but said they have authorized a final, unconventional effort.
The Attorney General’s Office said the University of Innsbruck reported that “excessive heat” damaged the mitochondrial DNA in fragments of teeth and bones, “at least to the point that normal methods cannot be used to successfully analyze them.”
Failure to positively identify the remains would be a setback for the government, which has struggled with widespread, often violent protests demanding that the students be returned alive, and with relatives’ skepticism about the official belief they are dead.
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The police and Abarca allegedly had ties to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang. Police allegedly turned the students over to Guerreros Unidos gunmen, who took them to a local dump, killed them and stacked their bodies on a pyre and used diesel, wood and old tires to burn them.
Authorities are holding more than 70 people in the case, which also forced the governor of Guerrero to resign.
