In Israel, the procedure for estimating shooting distance has routinely been used on all fatal shooting victims preceding autopsy since 1997, and these adhesive lifters are then archived indefinitely within the casework files. Biological materials sampled during autopsy from cadavers, on the other hand, are kept for only 1 year unless there is a specific request by the police to keep them longer. If DNA typing is possible from archived treated adhesive lifters, this may provide a future usable source of reference DNA from subjects when no other sample is available. This paper describes the procedure whereby DNA might be transferred to the tape, and the DNA profiling of the material on the tape is explained. In the first stage of the experiment, DNA profiles matching those of the known donors were obtained from both the treated and untreated adhesive lifters. The second phase of the experiment used adhesive lifters from actual casework sampled from cadavers following physical and chemical treatment that spanned a 5-year period. The results showed that the amount of time that elapsed between sampling/treatment of the adhesive lifters and DNA testing (silver-stain or fluorescent visualization) did not inhibit obtaining a viable DNA profile. Thus, the research shows that archived previously treated adhesive lifters may be used as possible reference samples of DNA in cases where DNA is no longer available from any alternative source. 1 table and 11 references