Remains of a body were found in a dam on the Seine River in the suburbs of Paris, France. The autopsy showed a saponification process for the few remaining soft tissues, which dated the death back to more than a year. The limbs and head were missing, so identification by fingerprints or dental records was impossible. An identity document that belonged to a man who had been missing for 3 years was found in the cloth items; however, because there was no previous biological sample available for this man, DNA analysts were asked to confirm the identity of the body by a reverse paternity test, which involved identification of the presumed father by comparison with the genetic profile of his son. The mother (the wife of the deceased man) was included in the test so as to discriminate in the genetic profile of the son the paternal and the maternal alleles. The results found that amplification for nuclear DNA failed for the highly degraded soft tissues, but it was successful for DNA extracted from the bone. The distinctive aspect of this analysis involved the extraction method by aid of silica columns (Qiagen), a simple, rapid, and reliable procedure that avoids organic solvent manipulations or lengthy protocols. The limitation caused by the low volume of the column was overcome by loading it with digested bone three times before the washing procedure. The procedure yielded an eluate suitable for further amplification of nuclear DNA on an old, degraded sample. This allowed the typing of sex (AMG locus) and 10 additional STR loci. The body's identity was confirmed by the DNA profiles of his son and wife. 1 figure, 1 table, and 10 references