Forensics and families: lessons from Lockerbie

A single image often becomes newspaper shorthand for a tragedy. Think of the blasted 7/7 bus or the ragged facade of the Grand Hotel in Brighton after the IRA bombing, writes James Randerson.

When Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed on December 21 1988, it was the image of the aircraft's cockpit ploughed into the ground that would forever say "Lockerbie bomb". But that image was a source of great pain to the wife of one of the victims.

"For 12 years she had suffered, thinking that the body in the photo under a sheet was her husband," Kathryn Turman, director of the office of victim assistance at the FBI, told the American Academy of Forensic Science (AAFS) conference in Seattle yesterday.

Ms Turman was in charge of liaising with the families of the victims and passing on information as the forensic effort unfolded. She is still in contact with some of them now. In the Lockerbie widow's case, Ms Turman was able to put her mind at rest by telling her the body in the photo was actually one of the cabin crew.