Credit: Richland County Coroner's Office.
National Missing and Unidentified Persons Day may not be for another 5 months, but that isn’t stopping the Richland County Coroner’s Office (S.C.) and Columbia Police Department from getting a head start.
On Friday, the investigators released a facial reconstruction of an unidentified man found in a wooded area found nearly two years ago. The coroner’s office says this is the first of about 20 cases they plan to release information on in the coming months as they prepare for a Missing and Unidentified Persons Day event on the recognized day of Feb. 3, 2023.
On Dec. 28, 2020, skeletal remains were found in a wooded area by a property owner. Forensic anthropologists estimated the remains to be that of a white male, 5’6”, most likely in his 60s with healed facial trauma and healed rib fractures. He lost all of his teeth prior to death, and investigators believe he may have been homeless.
The deceased is estimated to have died in the late summer or fall of 2020, about three months before his body was found. Police say he was found wearing only a t-shirt, and a pair of floral-pattered swimming trunk shorts and a button shirt were found several hundred feet away.
Columbia Police investigators have followed up on leads the last two years, but have been unable to identify the man. Forensic specialists at the Richland County Sheriff’s Department DNA Lab were able to extract DNA from bone, and have inputted the profile into CODIS and other DNA databases. However, there have been no matches to date.
On Friday, in addition to a re-release of this investigative information, the police department and coroner’s office debuted a new facial reconstruction of the unidentified man. To generate the image, they used the “combination method,” which utilizes tissue thickness information at certain landmarks of the skull as well as basic facial muscle anatomy information.
The forensic artist said they consulted with the anthropologist and coroner to determine the effects the healed facial fractures might have had on the face.
“We are hoping this facial approximation is a close enough resemblance that a loved one or close friend will be able to recognize him,” said a coroner’s office representative. The reconstruction took about two months to finalize.
The Richland County Coroner’s Office said it currently manages the profiles of 18 unidentified human remains cases listed on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) website.
This case is the first the office has profiled, but they expect to release information about the other 17 cases in the coming months as they prepare for an event on national Missing and Unidentified Persons Day on Feb. 3, 2023.
Missing and Unidentified Persons Day is meant to memorialize those who have gone missing in the U.S. and hyper-focus attention on identifying or bringing them home. Every year, more than 600,000 people disappear across the U.S.