The accompanying photo taken by Michael Karas of The Record of Bergen County shows Fair Lawn Police detective Michael Uttel holding a clay cast of a face, reconstructed by a State Police anthropologist to aid in identifying a badly-decomposed body.
A report in the newspaper said that the body had no remaining fingerprints and no remaining facial features when it was recovered three years ago. But scientist Donna Fontana, a specialist in extracting evidence from the most ravaged of human remains, built upon the man's skull and a full set of dentures that were still in his head to cast this detailed model. Every feature was carefully recast, the curve of the nose, the jut of the brow, the lines around the eyes.
Detective Uttel said that the bones were all they had, according to the newspaper. No other evidence, no witnesses. That set of dentures had no serial number, indicating that they were either manufactured before American dentures were printed with numbers or made in another country. The only clothing on the body when it was discovered was one black sock and one shoe that was several sizes too large for the victim’s foot.
The clay cast is a new tool that the police hope will help solve this mystery of who that man was, and how he died. If a relative steps forward, DNA samples can be compared.
On the popular crime-solving television series of today, computer models provide key information in a matter of minutes. In the real world, it does not work that quickly. But the modern marvels of investigative tools are out there, and this facial reconstruction is among them.
