World Notes Brazil

Despite scientific tests and personal testimony from those who knew the man as a fugitive, there were still skeptics who refused to believe that the skeleton exhumed near Sao Paulo last June 6 belonged to Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal whose medical experiments in the concentration camps earned him the sobriquet Angel of Death. Last week investigators revealed new evidence that seemed to provide irrefutable proof: Mengele's dental X rays.

After deciphering obscure references to a dentist in Mengele's diary, two U.S. consular officials tracked down eight X rays that were taken in 1976. The X rays, which clearly showed the unusual gap between Mengele's two front incisors, exactly matched those taken of the skull unearthed last summer. "Reasonable scientific certainty," said American Forensic Expert Lowell Levine, had become "absolute certainty."