Next week: reconstructing the face

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.