Elated with their success, Joe and Liz went back to the FBI to request a reconstruction using the model skull. But the guys at the Bureau are renowned for their caution, and they just weren't ready to get involved with this new procedure-particularly since neither the FBI's forensic artists nor its consulting anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution were familiar with the technology used to create the model.
Joe was devastated. But then the FBI agent offered one last suggestion-me.
My name is Emily Craig. I'm the forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a job that usually keeps me plenty busy with our own in-state cases-everything from mysterious bones found in the bed of a mountain creek to a backwoods homicide disguised by fire. My unique background as a medical illustrator and sculptor, along with my years of experience in forensic anthropology, means that special bone cases occasionally come to me from out of state, and, of course, I'm happy to help whenever I can. In fact, it was my earlier career in orthopedics that had made me familiar with the combination of medical and industrial technology used to create the model skull. And it was my forensic anthropology training that had spurred in me a newfound desire to give every victim a name. So when Joe told me the horrifying story of the young woman whose remains he'd found, I was glad that I might have the expertise to help identify her.
I had first learned of this new computer technology a decade earlier when I'd encountered it as an illustrator at the Hughston Orthopaedic Clinic in Columbus, Georgia. We'd sometimes resorted to this very process of bone modeling to help surgeons plan their most demanding surgeries, repairing severe complex fractures. Then, when I first entered graduate school in forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee, I tapped back into this amazing computer technology and worked up a research proposal for incorporating medical CT-scan technology into the traditional forensic practice of three-dimensional clay reconstruction. I was hoping to come up with a computer program that could reliably regenerate a person's face from the skull, combining the best of art and science. This was one of many times that my background in art and orthopedics and my work in anthropology would turn out to dovetail in unprecedented ways.
I went on to develop the process and to present my preliminary research findings at several international conferences, sparking the interest of the FBI. That's how they'd known to recommend me to Joe: They knew that I'd be on the cutting edge of any technique concerning computer-generated faces and CT scans.
But Joe didn't know about any of that background. All he knew was that I was one more scientist who had the power either to take his investigation further or to shut it down once and for all. So he was a little cagey about bringing up the rapid prototyping issue at first. He just started by asking if I might be willing to produce a clay reconstruction of the victim's face.
I wondered why this Wisconsin detective had reached out halfway across the country for a clay reconstruction that he should have been able to get someone to do right in his own home state. Then Joe explained that this job involved not only creating a standard forensic facial sculpture but also working with a computer-generated prototype skull-a job that even the FBI's experts weren't quite confident enough to take on. When I told him I'd do the job anyway, he was elated. As soon as I said I could do the work over the upcoming holiday weekend, he promised to get into his car the very next day so he could hand-deliver the skull replica to me that Friday evening.
Usually, facial reconstruction projects require close collaboration between a forensic sculptor and a forensic anthropologist, but I'm one of the few people who happen to be both. So there I was, alone in my kitchen at two a.m., trying to make a young woman's face come alive with nothing to go on but a laminated paper skull and a set of mathematical formulas telling me the average tissue depths for the face of a young Black woman. I'd played it safe to that point, using tiny erasers to mark the tissue depths and then covering them with clay, arranging the eyes and nose according to standard scientific guidelines. But those hard, cold data weren't enough. My reconstruction didn't yet resemble an actual human being enough to prompt anyone to recognize her. I knew I would have to let my intuition take over in order to bring this sculpture alive.
Slowly my hands took on a life of their own. Following some secret instructions, an intuitive sense of the subtleties of facial structure, my fingertips began exploring the contours of the victim's face. I shut my eyes, relying entirely on my sense of touch.
For a moment, I thought I had something. Then my hands dropped to my sides and I opened my eyes. A headache started to press against my temples as I sat there, frustrated, my statue staring blankly back at me.
Then, without having consciously planned to do so, I found myself reaching out to her left eyelid, tweaking its clay surface ever so slightly. Just that tiny adjustment made her finally begin to look alive. Suddenly, I knew exactly what to do next. Saturating a cotton ball with isopropyl alcohol, I rubbed it across the glass eyes I had inserted, trying to remove the greasy residue left by the clay. As the irises cleared and the corneas brightened, those eyes began to reflect the room light, as real human eyes do. Better. Much better.
Moving more quickly then, I dripped more alcohol into the inside corner of each eye, until large pools formed in the depression where the woman's tear ducts would have been. Slowly, the drops welled up and spilled over, running down the edges of her nose and into the corners of her mouth. She appeared to be crying-which was just what I wanted.
This macabre effect is one of my secret recipes, a way to test the accuracy of the topography of the mid-face area, between the eyebrows and the mouth. When tears fall from a real person's eyes, they follow a fairly predictable pattern down both sides of the face. If a reconstruction is even slightly off, its “tears” will flow erratically, curving back and forth in an odd snakelike effect, or following two irregular routes down each side of the nose. These tears flowed just as human ones do, and watching them flow down her cheeks, I felt my own tears slowly well up. As a scientist, I try hard to stay emotionally detached while I'm working on a case. I make an effort to “think like a murderer” rather than to identify with the victims. But that night I was exhausted, and when that last procedure made the face of that sculpture spring to life, I surprised myself. This woman had been butchered like an animal, and I hadn't yet even allowed myself to truly think of her as a person. She suddenly had a face-a young, innocent face-and the horror of what she had been through overcame me.
As the forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, my job is to analyze bones, fragments of extremities, and charred human remains, helping to determine how people died, who they were, and sometimes even what they looked like. On any given day, you might find me beside the smoking wreckage of a plane crash, sifting the ashes of a burned-down backwoods cabin, or in my lab, carefully cataloguing a suspicious-looking pile of bones. I'm often the one to tell the pathologist whether we're looking at homicide or accident, and the evidence I collect might prove crucial in helping investigators decide upon their next step. Sometimes, I'm the detectives' last chance to find a killer or the family's final hope for closure in the loss of a missing loved one.
It can be gruesome, but I love my job. I thrive on the challenge of solving a mystery, of working with complex puzzles that call upon every ounce of my wit and resourcefulness. I cherish the men and women with whom I work, and I feel honored to be accepted as one small part of the team of law enforcement and medical workers who strive so hard to bring justice into the world. That mission, above all, is what drives me, even when I'm working late into the night on a seemingly hopeless case.
It's taken me half my life to find this work that I love so much. My first profession was as a medical illustrator, working with Dr. Jack Hughston as he developed pioneering surgical techniques in sports medicine. I was proud of the contributions I had made to the work of surgeons and researchers, but after two decades of creating sketches, models, and computer-generated animation, I started looking for a way to become a scientist in my own right. When a detective I happened to be dating started telling me about his cases, I became intrigued with the world of law enforcement. When his recommendation led to my creating a facial reconstruction of an unidentified homicide victim, I was hooked.
Coping with the aftermath of violent human behavior has its rewards, but also its pitfalls. From the moment I entered the world of murder investigations, I had to learn that my life was no longer my own. I would be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, through holiday weekends and times that had theoretically been set aside for vacation.
There were emotional demands as well. If I was truly to understand what had happened to the men and women whose remains I handled, I had to understand the depravity of human violence that had led to their deaths. I was sucked down into this vortex of murderous hate and malice each time I dealt with mutilated body parts and skeletal remains of murdered victims.
Still, it's been an exhilarating journey, and I wouldn't change it for the world. I've crawled deep into Kentucky coal mines and clung to the rock faces of steep mountains. I've worked lonely murders out in the backwoods and mass disasters in the centers of major cities. I've met killers who turned themselves in to the authorities so they could get free medical care from prison doctors, and I've brought comfort to survivors who refused for decades to give up hope of finding out what happened to their missing loved ones. My cases have ranged from the tragic to the downright bizarre, from the awe-inspiring to the purely depressing, but my profession is now my passion: the ultimate challenge-and the ultimate reward.
1. Death Comes Knocking
– HORACE
MY FIRST CASE STARTED just as so many cases begin for me today-with an unidentified victim. A couple of bass fishermen had found some decomposed and partially skeletonized remains on the edge of West Point Lake, one of the huge Chattahoochee River impoundments that separate the lower portions of Alabama and Georgia. The man had been shot in the head and his body had washed up onto the riverbank. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) had been working the case, but after several weeks, they still had no identification for the victim, and it looked as if this murder might be headed for the cold-case files.
I was still a civilian then, a medical illustrator at a nearby orthopedic clinic, but the police thought I might be able to help by doing a clay facial reconstruction of the victim. When police officers escorted me into the forensic morgue for the first time, I had my first whiff of the smell of decayed human flesh. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced, and I felt an overpowering sense of repulsion. Yet I was also drawn to the mass of bone and decaying tissue that once had been a man-I'd never seen anything like it before. It was slimy and grayish, with bits of bone and rotting leaves and twigs sticking up randomly from a form that I could still recognize as human-but this form had flattened, melted into the black vinyl of the body bag.
As the investigators began to tell me what they knew, I was amazed at how much they'd already learned simply from examining the remains. Enough pelvic soft tissue remained to reveal that this victim was a man; and the coroner, Don Kilgore, had estimated his height from the size label sewn into the trouser remnants that still clung to his leg bones. Now Don gently held the head, which had decomposed down to bare bone, and he showed me the bullet hole, explaining how he could tell where the bullet had entered the man's head, and at what angle. Don had been lucky: He'd recovered a.45-caliber bullet from inside the skull. If police could only link a suspect to the victim, they might be able to solve the crime by comparing bullet evidence.
But the first step, as in every murder investigation, was to identify the victim. Don pointed to some fillings in the man's teeth. If they could just get someone to suggest a name for the victim, he told me, they could probably match the man's teeth to a missing person's dental records. They were starting to lose hope, though. This victim's remains had been here in the morgue for way too long already, and so far no one had come forward with a name.
That's where I came in. At the time, I was dating a detective, Brian McGarr, and all I knew of crime was what I'd heard from him, as he kept me up nights with long, grisly stories of his latest homicide cases. He, in turn, had the incredible good luck to hear all about my exciting work as a medical artist and sculptor, which he at least had the good grace to pretend to find fascinating. Still, maybe he was more interested than I thought. When the West Point case continued to go unsolved, he was the one to suggest to the GBI and the Muscogee County coroner that they commission me to do the facial reconstruction that might help them identify their victim.
Brian and I had a relationship that nicely blended the personal and the professional. He was able to share with me confidential information about police work because I was a volunteer emergency
