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Next week: reconstructing the face

Nicola recounts what information we had at this time including the forensic examination and what leads that gave us to identifying the body.
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The SIO, at that point, was at a crossroads. And basically, there was nothing more that we could find. There were no missing persons that matched this description. Even out in the press, nothing came back as far as who this particular male could be. So one of the things that the SIO came up with is contacting an anthropologist, which was Martin Evison. He worked out which bones were missing, because there was a fingertip of one of the hands that was missing, and also the fact that both big toes actually had been screwed into the foot, which was a procedure they used to use for bunions.
39.4
So the university was involved at that stage, and it was his suggestion that we then used the department that could do a facial recognition by making a clay head.

The body in the bag was found in January 2000, but by March that year, the police were no closer to identifying Mr. X and moving the investigation forward.

The pathologist, botanist and the odontologist had gleaned as much information as they could from the body and from the bag. Despite this information, there was nothing that could positively identify who this person was.

When post-mortem deterioration makes it difficult to identify the dead, forensic facial reconstruction can hold the key to a positive identification.

In this video, Nicola and Jon explain why a forensic facial reconstruction was the next step in moving the investigation forward. This is the point we’ll return to in Week 2 of the course.

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Forensic Facial Reconstruction: Finding Mr. X

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