Billingham Forensic Images

Monday 17 October 2011

3D Facial Reconstruction

                             3D Facial Reconstruction

                    The process of reconstructing the face using 3D facial reconstruction

Identity of an unknown person usually derived from skeletal remains. This process is used when all traditional means of identifying the remains have been done. The reconstruction is done from a clean skull, if the skull still has tissue attached to it the skull will need to be cleaned in order to start the process of reconstruction.

Tools needed
  • Oil Based Clay between 10-12 lbs
  • 6" Steel Ruler In Millimteres
  • Wire Tool Sculpting Tool
  • Flat Wooden Spatula
  • Point Wooden or Metal Tool
  • Boley-Style Gauge in Millimeters
  • Plastic Roller
  • X-acto Knife And Blades
  • Acetone Soluble Clear Glue
  • Cotton Balls
  • Vinyl Machine Erasers Strips, Used As Markers
  • #40 Grade Sand Paper
  • Stand For Your Skull (This Can Be Made)







Deaths of 1,000 unidentified people to be reviewed by police


Deaths of 1,000 unidentified people to be reviewed by police

Cold cases of non-suspicious deaths over last 50 years reopened using latest forensic techniques and public appeals
cold cases faces missing
Three of 20 e-fits released by police of people who have died on Britain's rail network over the last 35 years. Photograph: PA
More than 1,000 unidentified bodies found across England and Wales over the last 50 years could be named as a result of a sweeping cold-case review.
Police said they want to "put an end to the story" for many families left bereft by the disappearance of loved ones who have never been traced.
Officers have launched a £50,000 review using the latest forensic techniques and public appeals aimed at putting names on the files of non-suspicious deaths.
Sketches of the faces of 18 men and two women found dead on the railways and London tube network have been released to mark the first stage of the operation. Causes of death for the 20 include suicide, accidents and natural causes in London, Hertfordshire, Sussex, Coventry, Essex and Cornwall over the last 35 years.
The appeal was the result of a review by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which is responsible for the Missing Persons Bureau, and British transport police.
It will be followed by further reviews, starting with forces in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, where many unidentified bodies have been found off the south coast.
Peter Neyroud, 51, head of the NPIA, said police have not always offered a "terribly good service" when faced with relatives of missing people.
He said colleagues attempting to clear up unidentified bodies were faced with a mountain of ageing paperwork, some of which was badly compiled and in a poor condition. "Many of these cases go back almost as long as I have been around. A lot of this is to do with the fact that technology and methods of identification we have now were not available.
"It is extraordinary how many people know somebody or have somebody in their family who has gone missing. We want to work with forces across the country to find the end of some very sad stories."
The Missing Person Bureau database holds the names of around 44,000 people who have been missing for more than 72 hours. Some date back 60 years.
Police have picked 20 of the "more straightforward" cases from more than 1,000 unidentified bodies who they believe they may be able to name.
The cases date from January 1975, when a woman was struck by a train at Victoria tube station. The most recent was last December when a man died on tracks near Plumstead station in south-east London.
Detective Chief Superintendent Miles Flood of the British transport police, which released their sketches, said up to 300 people are found dead on the railway network every year.
"We have obviously fully investigated these cases. There is nothing suspicious about the deaths," he said. "These are people who died from natural causes or other means. For me, as a police officer, I do not like unsolved cases and although every case was investigated and every clue followed up, we have been unable to do so."
But, according to Neyroud, police have encountered some resistance from coroners when trying to reinvestigate deaths that were dealt with many years ago, particularly when trying to get DNA samples.
He added that advances in DNA testing include a new technique that could yield a result in 45 minutes without the need to send a sample to a laboratory.
Investigators are able to draw on expertise from the National Injuries Database, DNA and fingerprint databases, and age progression and forensic artists.
Anyone with any information about any of the people pictured is asked to call the British transport police on             0121 634 5613      .

Drawings that come alive

Decaying blurry photographs and even a CCTV grab were used to "bring to life" 20 unidentified bodies for a public appeal, an artist said yesterday.
Police facial imaging specialist Sharon McDonagh, who is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, said she used mortuary photographs to create her sketches.
McDonagh said many of the photographs were of poor quality and in bad condition, particularly pictures from files up to 35 years old.
She said her sketches were created in the style of modern e-fit suspect photographs because they have a good record of being recognised by the public.
In one case, that of a man struck by a train at Harpenden in 2004, the artist used an image from CCTV footage as no mortuary photograph was available.
McDonagh said: "I was given mortuary photographs of the deceased. What I normally try and do is combine an e-fit with free hand drawing.
"The public are quite good at identifying images from e-fits so I try to make the drawings look like them.
"Some of the photographs were from 1975 so they were quite blurry images.
"I am confident these images are good representations of these people and hopefully someone will come forward and identify them."

John Wayne Gacy Exhumations






More than 30 years after a collection of skeletal remains was found beneath John Wayne Gacy's house, detectives have secretly exhumed bones of eight young men who were never identified in hopes of answering a final question: Who were they?
The Cook County Sheriff's Department says DNA testing could solve the last mystery associated with one of the nation's worst serial killers, and authorities on Wednesday asked for the public's help in determining the victims' names.
Investigators are urging relatives of anyone who disappeared between 1970 and Gacy's 1978 arrest — and who is still unaccounted for — to undergo saliva tests to compare their DNA with that of the skeletal remains.
Detectives believe the passage of time might actually work in their favor. Some families who never reported the victims missing and never searched for them could be willing to do so now, a generation after Gacy's homosexuality and pattern of preying on vulnerable teens were splashed across newspapers all over the world.
"I'm hoping the stigma has lessened, that people can put family disagreements and biases against sexual orientation (and) drug use behind them to give these victims a name," Detective Jason Moran said.
Added Sheriff Tom Dart: "There are a million different reasons why someone hasn't come forward. Maybe they thought their son ran off to work in an oil field in Canada, who knows?"
Authorities also hope to hear from people who came forward back in the 1970s, convinced that their loved ones were buried under Gacy's house but without any dental records or other evidence to confirm it.

In other cases, some potential Gacy victims who had been reported missing were later mistakenly recorded as being found after police received tips that they supposedly were sighted.
So "people may have been told the person they were looking for was located, when in fact they weren't," the sheriff said.
The department is prepared to hear from thousands of people from across the country.
Gacy, who is remembered as one of history's most bizarre killers largely because of his work as an amateur clown, was convicted of murdering 33 young men, sometimes luring them to his Chicago-area home for sex by impersonating a police officer or promising them construction work. He stabbed one and strangled the others between 1972 and 1978. Most were buried in a crawl space under his home. Four others were dumped in a river.
He was executed in 1994, but the anguish caused by his crimes still resounds today.
Just days ago, a judge granted a request to exhume one victim whose mother doubted the medical examiner's conclusion that her son was found under Gacy's house. Dart said other families have the same need for certainty.
Asked about the price of the effort, Dart said the lab is doing the analysis for free, and the costs will not be exorbitant. To not take advantage of the DNA technology would be "somewhat immoral," he said.
"Here are eight people who had futures, who could have done so much for society (and) instead this evil monster destroyed them. And we're really going to just sit here and say, 'You know, they're forgotten, let's keep them forgotten'? he said at a news conference. "Talk about the final insult."
The plan began unfolding earlier in the year, when detectives were trying to identify some human bones found scattered at a forest preserve. They started reviewing other cases of unidentified remains, which led them back to Gacy.
"I completely forgot or didn't know there were all these unidentifieds," Dart said.
It was not a cold case in the traditional sense. Gacy admitted to the slayings and was convicted by a jury. But Moran and others knew if they had the victims' bones, they could conduct genetic tests that would have seemed like science fiction in the 1970s, when forensic identification depended almost entirely on fingerprints and dental records.
After autopsies on the unidentified victims, pathologists in the 1970s removed their upper and lower jaws and their teeth to preserve as evidence in case science progressed to the point they could be useful or if dental records surfaced.

Detectives found out that those jaws had been stored for many years at the county's medical examiner's office. But when investigators arrived, they learned the remains had been buried in a paupers' grave in 2009.
"They kept them for 30 years, and then they got rid of them," Moran said.
After obtaining a court order, they dug up a wooden box containing eight smaller containers shaped like buckets, each holding a victim's jaw bones and teeth.
Back in June, Moran flew with them to a lab in Texas.
"They were my carry-on," he said.
Weeks later, the lab called. The good news was that there was enough material in four of the containers to provide what is called a nuclear DNA profile, meaning that if a parent, sibling or even cousins came forward, scientists could determine whether the DNA matched.