By: Barbara A. Martin Bailey
Issue: February/March 2008
In 1984, a white female body, deceased, was located in a Broward County, Florida
canal. After investigators were unable to establish her identity, she was classified
as a “Jane Doe.” The case eventually turned into a “cold case” when
the investigators ran out of leads to pursue.
Unfortunately, such a case is far from unique. Each year, law enforcement
officers around the world deal with thousands of cases of unidentified remains
and missing persons. Officers work diligently to establish the identity of
victims, but they often face an extremely difficult task. Decomposition and other
damage obviously makes identification challenging. Also, when victims are found
in remote locations far from where they were last seen, it can be even harder
to make the proper connection. In those cases, trying to match missing and
unidentified persons is further complicated by the lack of a central database.*
With the added pressure of new cases, officers have little time and few resources
to try to develop new leads on old cases. Officers are left frustrated: despite
their hard work, their cases remain unsolved and a victim remains nameless.
THE DOE NETWORK AND PROJECT EDAN
That’s where the Doe Network comes in. Established in 1999, the Doe Network
is a group of volunteers who help law enforcement officers solve cold cases
involving missing and unidentified persons in North America, Europe, and Australia.
The group maintains an online database that can be searched by members of
the public, as well as by law enforcement professionals and medical examiners
(www.doenetwork.org).
In addition, law enforcement officers, medical examiners, and family members
can submit cases for missing persons from 1998 and earlier, and unidentified
persons who died in 2005 or earlier.
Volunteers from the Doe Network attempt
to match unidentified persons cases with missing persons cases, but there is
no interfering with an agency’s
investigation. If a possible match pops up, the volunteer forwards that information
to the proper law enforcement agency so that the agency can begin an investigation
and an identity can be confirmed. When the agency confirms the match through
dental records, fingerprints, DNA, etc., the agency then notifies the Doe Network.
The staff at the Doe Network can then clear the case from the open files and
place it into the solved data bank of their database.
Often, a photograph of
the unidentified person is a crucial piece of information for making a match
with a missing person. Sometimes, though, a photograph of the unidentified
person can’t be published because of decomposition or other damage to
the face. In those instances, a forensic artist can produce a facial reconstruction
that can serve as a portrait of the deceased. But in some cases, law enforcement
agencies don’t have their own forensic artist on staff to create facial
reconstructions or age progressions to submit to the Doe Network. In an effort
to alleviate this problem, the Doe Network formed a cooperative venture with
Project EDAN (Everyone Deserves A Name).
Project EDAN (www.projectedan.us) currently
includes a group of 18 certified forensic artists who do forensic artwork pro-bono
for law enforcement agencies
in North America, Europe, and Australia. For each case, a member of EDAN prepares
a flyer with art work for the submitting agency and then emails it to them. The
art work is then placed on the Doe Network’s web-site. All of this work
is done at no cost to the submitting agency.
WORKING A CASE
The unidentified female body located in 1984 in Broward County, Florida, mentioned
at the beginning of this article became one of the Doe Network cases. I know
because I am the EDAN artist who did the artwork (See Figures 1A-1C).
As
a forensic artist certified through the International Association for Identification,
I have been working in this field for nearly 39 years, and I have been a
part of EDAN since 2003. The goal with facial reconstructions is to create
an accurate image that will trigger a family member, friend, or witness viewing
it to make an identification of the deceased. To successfully create that
image, I work as part of a team with professionals from the relevant medical
examiner’s offices and law enforcement offices.
When working on a cold
case, every scrap of information is important; some small detail that may
seem insignificant at first glance may provide a clue to the
best way to reconstruct that person’s face. To glean as much information
as possible, I get the medical examiner’s report, along with any available
X-rays, dental information, crime scene photos, postmortem photos, and the case
incident report.
Facial Reconstruction
A facial reconstruction begins with the factual details from these reports.
All information about race, gender, age, height, and weight are crucial because
reconstructions are based on tissue depth charts that are set from these
parameters. When we have remains where we can’t determine the weight,
we use the normal weight for that type frame.
Creating facial reconstructions
for young children can be especially difficult. In the past, we lacked information
for this age group; new research specific to children now allows us to create
more accurate work for them. As Caroline Wilkinson states in Forensic Facial
Reconstruction, “Until 1963, there were no published juvenile facial
tissue depth measurements, and anthro-pometrical studies concentrated on
facial growth patterns rather than facial standards. However, there has been
a great deal of anthropological research into age and sex determination,
and the growth of juvenile skulls.”1 Most age determinations
of preadolescent children are now based on dentition formations. Determining
gender in very
young children, however, can still be challenging because there are few facial
differences present between males and females until puberty.
Drawings
Forensic artists may also provide separate drawings for specific details to
accompany the main forensic artwork. For example, artists will sometimes
render an enlarged detail drawing of the mouth and teeth area to bring attention
to problems like a chipped front tooth or dental caries. These features would
stand out in someone’s mind and might help them make an identification.
An artist might also create a single view or a detailed image of scars, tattoos,
or other distinguishing marks. Drawings can also be made of jewelry worn
by the deceased. Again, these details cannot be overlooked because they are
closely associated with the person whose identity is being sought.
But the
forensic artist’s work extends beyond trying to accurately record the
anatomical features of the victim. Any good artwork should breathe a bit
of life back into that person. Gary Faigin explains this point in The Artist’s
Complete Guide to Facial Expression: “In [Leonardo da Vinci’s]
case, the result of all his meticulous effort was not just anatomical drawings.
The men in his battle scenes, just like the women in his portraits, have
faces more real and more alive, than any that had appeared in paintings before.
Science in the service of art led to the mastery of expression.”2
In
other words, the forensic artist must stay within the rules of facial reconstruction
procedures, but the artist can take a certain amount of restricted license
to recreate a personality type. For example, the artist can look for clues
to the victim’s personality from the victim’s appearance. After
all, we present an image of ourselves to the world with our clothes, hairstyle,
and other accoutrements, and artists through the ages have been man’s
reporter and recorder of his times and era. From the choices the deceased
made about his or her appearance, the artist may gain some insight into the
type of activity he or she was preparing for. The artist may also find other
clues at the scene. For example, a broken bracelet or only one earring may
be significant in identification. Used appropriately, these clues can add
important details to forensic drawings.
On the other hand, forensic artists
should be careful to present the victim as he or she most typically appeared.
Even if the deceased was found with a very formal hairstyle, for example,
the artist should probably make the deceased person’s appearance less
like “just out of the beauty shop” and more like every day. After
all, this is probably how this person appeared to family, co-workers, neighbors,
and acquaintances.
All of the drawings I’ve included here are rendered
in pencil; in black and white. I feel that black and white sells the personality
better. People
tend to get distracted by color. You may have noticed this problem with witnesses — they
can remember seeing a red pickup truck, but they can’t recall the make
or model or any other helpful features. With facial reconstruction, you want
to avoid anything that might distract someone from making an identification.
Black and white drawings also have some additional advantages over color:
they are easier for a reprinting process, inexpensive for a department to
copy, and are produced in a faxable size.
One drawback to using black and
white is that it sometimes makes it difficult to maintain the subject’s
youthful appearance. However, keeping that youthful quality is actually a
problem in any facial reconstruction technique;
it just arises for different reasons and has different solutions. In a black
and white drawing, the problem occurs because the more lead you use, the
more you age the subject. To correct for this problem, I might take out some
contrast, remove some lines from under the eyes, or tip the nose up a bit,
etc., to create a more youthful appearance.
Forensic artwork, then, is like
composite drawings: it is not a photograph of a person but an attempt to
capture the features and qualities of that
person, thus enabling someone to recognize him or her. And of course, the
artwork also has to be available and visible which is why the Doe Network
and Project EDAN are so important.
So as you look again at these examples
of my Project EDAN drawings, you’ll see that I’ve tried to capture
both the factual details and the personality of each person. For the 1984
case, I began with the experts’ reports that indicated that the unidentified
person was a white female, 5'4" tall, 110-120 pounds, 18-25 years of
age, with bleach processed blonde hair, in a layered and curly hairstyle.
All three views (Figures 1A-1C), along with the full description, appear
on the Doe Network.
In the second case, (Figures 2A-2C), the victim was also
found in a Broward County, Florida, canal — but this time in 1975.
Again, I gathered as much data as possible and discovered that this unidentified
person was a
white female, 5'4" in height, 115-125 pounds, 18-25 years of age, and
had what appeared to be shoulder length, reddish-brown hair cut in long layers.
The dental records for this case also indicated that the victim had a gap
between her teeth. The gap was not especially large, so it isn’t noticeable
in my drawings. That information is still very important, so it is included
with the full description of the case that appears on the Doe Network.
Although
neither of these women has been identified yet, there is still hope that
the right person will see the forensic artwork and make an identification.
Finally, I’ve included the last case to illustrate the positive results
the Doe Network and Project EDAN can help law enforcement achieve. In this
case, an unidentified female, the victim of a homicide, was discovered in
Tennessee in 1997. After an initial investigation, officers were unable to
learn her identity. The case was featured in Tennessee newspapers and even
on cable Court TV programs, but no one came forward to identify the victim.
In 2004, I created a facial reconstruction drawing (Figure 3A) using postmortem
photographs provided by Tennessee law enforcement.
A Doe Network volunteer
in Texas learned about a woman reported missing in 1996 from South Carolina.
After seeing the forensic artwork for the unidentified woman, he noticed
similarities to the missing woman. Figure 3B shows a photograph of the
missing woman.
Once the Doe Network volunteer saw the connection between the unidentified
body and the missing woman, he contacted officials from Tennessee and Texas
and gave them the missing woman’s name. When law enforcement officers
found the missing woman’s fingerprints on file, they compared them
with the homicide victim and got a match.
In March 2007, the victim was
identified as 32-year-old Ada Elena Torres Smith.
Now, an unidentified
person has her name back and can be returned to her family. After so
many years of not knowing what happened to her, this family can now grieve
and
give her a final resting place. And now that law enforcement officers
have a name for their homicide victim, they can reopen their investigation.
BRINGING CLOSURE
This case demonstrates the real value of the Doe Network and Project EDAN.
Volunteers from EDAN provide the forensic artwork that can be the spark that
evokes a response in a viewer. The Doe Network then provides the database
that displays that artwork and other information on unidentified and missing
persons. The Doe Network also takes advantage of the time and skills that
volunteers have available. These volunteers can perform some of the preliminary
research that needs to be done before a cold case can be reopened. Since
it functions as a clearinghouse, the Doe Network can link a variety of different
agencies once a match is made. And perhaps most importantly, at a time when
many law enforcement agencies are struggling with budget short crises and
cut backs, they don’t have to worry about receiving a bill for services
rendered from the Doe Network or Project EDAN.
In the end, law enforcement
officers and volunteers from the Doe Network and Project EDAN share the
same hope: to give the unidentified back their name
and bring closure to cold cases.
*The U.S. Department of Justice has taken an important step towards addressing
this problem with NamUs (www.namus.gov). Eventually, this site will link two
databases: one for missing persons and one for unidentified persons. The unidentified
persons database, which launched in July 2007, is now searchable; the missing
persons database will be added by September 2008; and by 2009, the system should
be fully operational, allowing one database to be searched against the other.
For more information, read “Justice Department Launches Missing and Unidentified
Persons Databases” By: David W. Hagy, Ph.D., Forensic Magazine®December
2007/January, 2008. http://www.forensicmag.com/articles.asp?pid=180
Barbara A. Martin Bailey is an active and certified IAI Forensic Artist.
As a forensic artist, she is currently assigned to the Forensic Science Laboratory
with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office in Pontiac, Michigan. She is
the American Director for the regional IAI group, Michigan-Ontario Identification
Association, and she can be reached at martinba@oakgov.com.
