A new method to detect methylation profiles for forensic body fluid identification combining ARMS-PCR technique and random forest model

•ARMS-PCR technique could effectively detect the methylation levels in a simple and cost-effective manner.•22 body fluid-specific CpG sites were included in development of the multiplex assays.•The random forest model performed well in predicting single source body fluids with high prediction accuracy (99.66%).•Random forest model is a practical and promising prediction method for the mixed body fluid identification.