This is a last resort for a lot
of these un-identified remains. These are lost souls. These family members are frozen
in uncertainty. He was found in a wooded area in British Columbia. On his skull there was an exit
wound for a bullet. Your skull is the foundation
that your face is built on. All that information
is in that structure. There is that moment where
you... it's not a skull anymore, I stop when I see
somebody staring back at me. [♪♪] I think this is one of the most
important jobs I'm ever going to do in my career. To bring 15 people
home, essentially. I think I'm
bringing people home. I'm really excited for this
journey, and it's been-- it feels like a
long time coming. [John] When I unwrap them,
they're incredibly beautiful. And they almost seem like works
of art in and of themselves. 'Cause your skull is the
foundation that your face is built on. Everything is broken down to
your ears, your hairline, the projection of your nose,
the thickness of your lips, corners of your mouth. Even the fold in your eyelids. All that information
is in that structure. What if somebody sees this
and is able to give this person their name back? They're...they're lost,
they've lost their name. I cannot tell you enough how
much I appreciate you guys willing to be here and donate
your services to help ID these victims. These are lost...
[Chuckles] Lost souls. These are-- these family members
are frozen in uncertainty, and hopefully with your guys help,
we can answer these questions. So, back in August, 2019,
I joined Joe Mullins' course to learn how to do
postmortem reconstruction and age progression digitally. It was during that class that
he mentioned this wonderful reconstruction class that he
actually taught once a year at the New York Academy of Art. He had been doing it since 2015,
and it had been so successful, that they had actually cleared
the shelves at the New York Medical Examiner's office
of all unidentified remains. And so, for his upcoming class,
he didn't have any skulls. So I said, "Joe, I think I can
get you some Canadian skulls." That was basically
the conversation. I didn't have any expectations. I didn't-- skulls is not what
Charity does, that's not her specialty, but she just went
home, and talked to the right people,
and just made it happen. [Charity] This is a last resort
for a lot of these unidentified remains. The other investigative avenues
have long been gone, there are no clues anymore,
perhaps there's no DNA, or nothing to compare to. You need, you know,
to be able to compare DNA to-- and fingerprints
are no longer there. So, this is--
this is our last hope. The 15 cases that the artists
are going to be working on today are from British Columbia
and Nova Scotia. So we have 14
from British Columbia, and one from Nova Scotia. They range in age from
approximately 20 years old, up to approximately
70 years old. They go back as far as
1972, up until September, 2019. So we have a wide range of
unidentified remains that were found in that time. They have been found in
different places throughout those regions. They were in different
states when they were found. But in the end, their skull,
their cranium, were in good enough condition that we
were able to scan them. And they were able to make
a very distinct, detailed replication of the actual skull,
and that's what the students will be working on. There's not a lot of
information on my guy. All I do know is that
he is a male, anywhere from 25 to 40 years old. He was found in a wooded
area in British Columbia. But other than that, there's not
a lot of information, except for the fact that he was found in
2016, but they believe that he had died years prior. He's an Indigenous gentleman. 5'7" to 5'9". He was between 45 and 55. But they think he possibly
could have been older than that. Also, he was found on the south
arm of the Fraser River, among some debris and
some logs at high tide. He's between
30 and 49 years old, of Mongolian, Asian descent. Six foot, 130 pounds,
long black hair. I hope I can, uh...
reunite him with someone. I just feel like a sense of
responsibility of trying to construct a face in a likeness,
and um...and hope that someone will be able to recognize,
'cause he's been missing for more than 20 years. [Charity] One of the cases that
we have from Nova Scotia are the remains of an adult male
that was washed on shore after hurricane Dorian. So today, we have Joe Mullins,
who is actually working on his reconstruction, and hopefully
by the end of the week we will actually have an identity
for him, a face for him to release to the public. So, I have one of the
newest cases that we're working on this week. New as in it was discovered in
September of 2019, so the newer the case is, the more
likelihood that somebody is able to recognize it. [♪♪] So the information that each
student is given, they have a basic assessment to give them
the parameters as to how to put the face on there. We have age range, male or
female, general characteristics, any-- any like, say, trauma or
heals, fractures, or a broken nose, or crooked teeth, those
are great things to show because that's something
that people would see. That's something people
would recognize in life. We are able to piece-- piece
each feature back on the face, 'cause your skull
is the foundation that your face is built on. Well, on his skull, there was
an exit wound for a bullet, as well as-- I believe there was
some sort of blunt force trauma to the side, but the
bullet exited from the back. And then in his case file,
it also said that he may have been despondent within, like,
a year before his death. [Joe] You have a handout,
so probably for the next hour and 15 minutes,
I want you to get started on sculpting the muscles. It's an anatomical approach
called the Manchester method. So, when you're done you should
be able to count 11 muscles on your skull, but you
can't do them... You can't do them too thick. [Anita] The technique that we're
using, it's pretty amazing. There's scientific depth
markers of how thick tissue is on the face. So, the muscles are
a certain thickness, and then you're putting on these
tissue markers using straws, and then you're building
tissue out to those markers, and there's set markers
obviously for an average face, but they're a good
indication of where to start. [♪♪] And he has a really short chin,
like a super short chin. It's crazy. So cool. And is this okay? Yes. The only thing I'd stress is to
make sure everything is tying into that, you still
should see the outline, nothing on top of this.
-Yep. [student] It's really
interesting how the bone and marks really dictate
how the muscles are going to behave on top of it. The cheekbones are sort
of high and the mouth, it's not that big and so I'm
interested to see once we put the nose on how they're
really going to come together. [Joe] It's just amazing how just
to unlock those secrets that the skull is telling you. It's a wonderful collaboration
where art and science have to come together to put the
right face on these skulls. [Anita] My background has
always kind of been in art. Due to personal circumstances I
decided I wanted a career change much later on in life and so I
came to the school and I started last September. I think art should be a
really healing thing. It's very interesting when
you're working and touching even though it's a 3D printed version
of the actual skull you are touching somebody who no longer
exists in this world's face. In a strange way
you're feeling them, you're holding them in your
hands and you're trying to create life from the skull. So, was there a press release
that had information about this case? What-- with stuff
that is relevant? No, just the size,
just the pants. There was a picture of pants. -Size 36 waist?
-Yes. He was a short, about 5'9",
maybe a little bit taller, but he had huge leg muscles so
that's an indicator that gives us an idea of... It's not gonna be a skinny--
a scrawny individual. He's probably in his 40's,
so just a more rounded, healthy-looking individual. [Charity] I know that the
artists are gonna do an amazing job, they have a
world-renowned forensic artist teaching them, and I know that
the final outcome is going to be an amazing identity for them. It's gonna be their face,
that's going to appear for us. [♪♪] [Joe] I drive myself
crazy with the details. I can go back and forth. I'll cut the nose off,
re-sculpt it, I'll pull the eye out, reset it. Lots of back and forth,
but I'm thinking of-- I-- I have to get it right. For me, I have to have the skull
like looking straight at the-- I have to be eye-to-eye with
the skull that I'm working on. It's back to that, the pressure,
the intensity, the focus. I can't, I can't screw this up. If I get something wrong,
they're not going to get identified. That family is going to
be continue to be frozen in uncertainty. Those answers are
never going to come. So, noses... Like ears, you know,
the soft tissue, the cartilage, it's very
limited information that we get. We get the direction, if you
take your clay soaked finger and stick it in your philtrum and
push up you're going to hit your nasal spine and your nasal spine
acts like an arrow to tell you where your nose is pointing,
up, down, straight, out. So, we're going to set
some toothpicks in there to get that projection. Is that how far it's
going to stick out? Yeah, your tip is going to
be, like, right... One of my many favourite aspects
of this class is seeing how the students react to these cases. I enjoy seeing the
transition from Monday, Tuesday, where it's just
kind of the busy work. You don't really start to see
the individual features. When we start adding those
features, you're going to notice a difference. People are buzzing
and chattering around. Wednesday, Thursday it's quiet,
because the room is filled now with 16 extra people. This skull had a lot of
fractures that were on the skull before he died, and so
it's obvious that he had a pretty tough life. He had no teeth prior to death,
fractures on the side, up on the cheek,
his nose was broken. There was a lot going on. So, when I look at him, I just,
I wonder what he went through, you know, what he was
going through at the time of his death. Now that more features
are coming into the face, it's starting to do this funny
play of it turning from a job to now it's somebody
starting to ask me a question. You can-- he has a... Almost an expression on his face
as though he's asking if-- if I can help him. There's no way it
can't change you. It's such a powerful thing to be
a part of and to see come back to life something that was lost. [Joe] One of the cases from
the New York City Medical Examiner's office,
which was featured in a New York Times article,
a cousin in California saw the sculpture that was
featured in the article, and it sparked that recognition. [Woman narrating] Remember, the right
person has to see it, and just a coincidence, that
image made it all the way from here to California,
and he was recognized. We're getting close
to a hundred skulls, a hundred reconstructions
that we've made to-- for identification. Of those one hundred skulls,
I know that we have had four identifications... We had a couple of classes that
reconstructed skulls of migrants in Arizona that had died
crossing the Sonoran Desert, they actually took
side by side photographs. An actual photograph from when
they were alive compared to our reconstruction and the
resemblance was striking. What did I tell you about
the corners of the mouth? Anybody?
What do they line up with? [woman] The pupil. [Joe] It goes down to the--
it's on the medial side of the iris. I was taught you go down to the
centre and that's going to tell you where the
corner of the mouth is. [student] It-- it's down? Yeah. So, it's...it comes
straight down. It's at the bottom of that,
you're pointing straight down. So, how do you know
when you're done? Me, personally, I know when
I'm done, there's a moment, I'll be working on the back,
sculpting the hair and I'll flip it around, there's
that moment where you, it's not a skull anymore. It's like I stop when I see
somebody staring back at me. It looks like a sad,
concerned...face. Whatever it is, you start
thinking about, what was he doing before he passed away?
What was he thinking about? Was it a homicide, did he... A suicide?
Those are all the thoughts. Just the expression has that,
like he is pondering something. That is just my
personal opinion. That's not what
I was shooting for. That is what happened. It's amazing. It is unbelievable to literally
start from nothing and see it develop to something that has so
much psychological weight to it. As it gets more detailed,
you kind of get more-- you can't help but get more
personally involved in it. The weight of it is really real. It became someone
looking at you. They say the eyes are
the window to the soul... So, like...
There it is. Today there is definitely
somebody staring back at you. And you are just
asking those questions... Am I doing you right? I am looking at this person
and kind of going, "Tell me, tell me,
do you look like this?" "Should I move this?" It is almost like a dialogue
that goes back and forth. Between you and this
person in front of you. This is a very
strange feeling, actually. [Anita] This journey on this
course has definitely made me think about becoming
a forensic artist. The fact that I could actually
use my art to help people has always been part of what
I think my art journey is. This has changed me
in a different way. [Joe] There's millions of skulls
out there, and there's millions of fine artists out there that
just haven't flexed that forensic muscle yet. So, hopefully with this type
of exposure and attention from this class, we can inspire
and just keep doing this, until there's no more skulls. How amazing would that be? [Indistinct conversation] So, we are going to
take a group photo. If you are done
scoot it over there. Look what you guys did
in the course of a week. Granted it got a
little hectic at times, but if you are inspired to
do this, remember, there are thousands-- not to oversell,
thousands and thousands and thousands of skulls
across the US. And that's just in the US. [Charity] I saw Anita crying,
and now I am going to cry. [Laughs] So, thanks Anita. Well, this has been an
amazing project to work on. Just being part of it and I can
tell you that being in this room and watching these faces come
alive has just been incredible. [Charity] I want a picture
with everybody! Somebody take a
picture for me, please. [Camera snapping] [Joe] You are a
forensic artist now. You've done a facial
reconstruction on an unidentified human being. That hopefully you can--
the talents and skills that you brought to this classroom
you can make a difference, it's going to make a difference. It already has. You've given these--
all these people a chance to get their ID back. Give them their names back. And imagine what the
thanks we can thank you, but imagine what the families
are going to feel like when they have those answers. Because of something
you did in this class. [♪♪] [♪♪]
At 16:23 With all due respect, I don't see the "striking resemblance" here, there's really not much or better yet there's no striking similarities between the actual person and the reconstruction, eye shape, eyebrows, nose, jawline, lips, ears, etc., all look different, the only resemblance I see here is the gap between the nose and mouth and maybe the size of the head, I'm pretty sure the same skull is going to yield different results depending on the person who's working on it because constructing soft tissue is mostly guesswork.
Then again, I respect what they are doing, but I'm not impressed with that comparison.