Running my fingers lightly over the replica's eye sockets, I found the place where the palpable ligaments would be inserted — the tiny ligaments that anchor the corners of each eyelid. The insertion points are located by means of subtle bumps that I couldn't see, but that my fingertips found immediately. I marked each one with pen because that's where the corners of the eyelids would go, and I wanted to remain aware of that positioning through the rest of my work with the eyes.
If I'd been using an actual skull, I'd have put some cotton into the eye sockets to protect the fragile bones for further forensic analysis. On a replica, that wasn't an issue, but I did need to keep the eyes from falling backward into the sockets. Folded-up Kleenex worked quite nicely.
Then, using a small block of clay, I made a little pedestal for the first artificial eye, which I'd bought from a surgical supply house that makes eyes for people who need prosthetic implants. These false eyes look eerily realistic and come in all sorts of colors — for a Black woman, I had chosen the darkest brown available, with a slight yellow tinge to the surrounding “white” sclera. I stuck the eye onto its little clay pedestal and quickly mortared it into place with more strips of clay.
Soon both eyes were in and I began adjusting their position. I wanted my sculpture to have a perfect gaze — each eye centered precisely in its orbit, protruding just the right distance in relation to the surrounding bone. The eyes should be level, too, and they should look together in the same direction. One of my tricks is to shine a single bright desk lamp into the eyes and look at the reflection. In a perfect gaze, the light is reflected exactly the same way in both eyes, so I spent half an hour adjusting first one eye, then the other. My reward was a steady, earnest gaze resembling that of a living person.
I took a late dinner break and went back to apply the clay. Here was where my artistic intuition came into play. Although I am ultimately a scientist, I've learned over the years that simply following the mathematical formulas isn't enough. If my facial reconstruction is ever to come to life, I have to venture beyond the formula and allow my intuition to guide me to create all those individual little details that ultimately distinguish each face from every other. I have to make creative leaps — but leaps that are entirely supported by scientific data. It's this fusing of art and science that makes the difference between a scientifically correct but somehow vague face and a vivid, lively image that someone might actually recognize.
Luckily, my intuition had lots of data to work with. When Joe had brought me the skull, he'd also handed over several photographs taken at autopsy and a copy of the autopsy report. The pathologist had found that this young woman was basically healthy, with an average amount of well-distributed subcutaneous fat. Since her genitalia were still present, he'd known she was a female. He'd estimated her age based on the youthful condition of her internal organs — mature, but showing no age-related changes in the heart, reproductive organs, or arteries.
He had also determined that this woman was African American, based on the color of her very dark skin. Of course, skin color can undergo rapid and dramatic changes after death, but this woman had other Negroid features as well. The pathologist had mentioned her black, coarse, and extremely curly body hair. And despite the fact that her face was no longer visible — the flesh had literally been cut away from the bone — the anthropologic analysis of her skull told us that she had once had wide-set eyes; a well-rounded or “bossed” forehead; and a wide flat nose. Until I finished applying the clay, I would have said “African American,” too.
But when my sculpture was done, something in the facial contours caught my eye. Somehow, the extreme flatness of the mid-face and the almost vertical shape of her front teeth and jaws made hers look different from the other African-American skulls I'd seen. Certainly, this woman wasn't White. But I couldn't quite believe she was a Black American, either.
What other choices were there? I e-mailed my concerns to Dr. Leslie Eisenberg, a consultant to the pathologist who had done the autopsy and one of the foremost anthropologists in the country. For a time, Leslie considered my speculation that the woman might be one of the native Hmong tribespeople from the mountains of Vietnam who had relocated to Wisconsin as a result of the Vietnam War. The Hmong have dark skin, too, and relatively flat facial features, but unlike this woman's, their hair is usually straight.
Maybe Indonesian, I suggested, and Leslie politely considered that possibility, too. Eventually, we both concluded that this woman was Black — but the unusual combination of features continued to bother me.
At least my reconstruction was done. I took another look at her innocent young face and wondered if we would ever find out who she was — and who had killed her. But my work wasn't done yet. I wanted my finished product to look as much like a person as possible. A forensic sculpture will never be as accurate as a sculptured portrait or “bust” that has been made from a photograph or taken from life. Because I have only the shape of the skull to guide me, any reconstruction I create will be an approximation at best, a caricature at worst: an artificial face with enough similarities to the victim that it might trigger recognition in someone, but far from a perfect portrait. So I wanted to give all possible help to the man or woman who might see my work, to increase the chance that he or she would recognize our victim.
I placed a long black wig on the sculpture and combed it carefully into place. Later, I'd try out two or three other wigs, taking photographs of each version. Meanwhile, I “dressed” my statue in a pink striped T-shirt, and for an extra touch of realism I dabbed fresh lipstick over the lips, just enough to add a little color and shine.
I'd created the sculpture at home, but I arranged to meet Joe and Liz at my office before work that Tuesday morning, exhausted but excited after my three-day working weekend. Liz, I knew, had been skeptical from the beginning about Joe bringing in an outsider — a Kentucky artist to solve a Wisconsin case. Like most law enforcement investigators, she was a bit territorial, especially about such a high-profile case — and I later learned that she'd worked several other cases in which facial reconstructions had proved futile. Though she had little faith in this effort, Joe was eager but reserved, his eyes continually wandering to Liz to check out her reactions.
“Come on back to my lab,” I said after the introductions were made. I pointed to my sculpture, sitting on the counter in the center of the room, and waited.
When they saw it, the expression on their faces didn't change and neither of them said a word. Each of them glanced quickly at me and then back at the model. Joe reached out to touch the hair, and Liz gently placed her hand on his wrist to stop him.
I was sure they hated it. Nervously, I broke the silence with a lengthy description of the digital photographs I had taken of my work, assuring them that the computer printouts minimized the little flaws and surface irregularities that showed up so glaringly in the clay. “You can see here—” I began, pointing to the pictures lined up on the counter beside the model. Liz shook her head and I fell silent again.
“And I've got these other wigs—” I began once more, reaching for them. This time Liz held up one palm for silence.
I searched desperately for my well-worn explanations of the limits of forensic sculpture. How it could never be portrait-quality — we just don't have the data for that. How, nevertheless, many people seem able to leap over the crude quality of a forensic image and jump to a flash of recognition, particularly when a loved one is involved. How often I had seen forensic images succeed — and, to be honest, how often I had seen them fail.