When a human skull was found in the woods of Ascension Parish, the University FACES Laboratory team was called in to help identify the remains. But the case in Ascension Parish was hardly a FACES Lab’s first.
Since 2006, after successfully petitioning to University administration, as well as the Louisiana State Legislature on behalf of former Director Mary Manhein, the FACES Lab has managed Louisiana Repository for Missing and Unidentified Persons Information Program.
Ultimately, the FACES Lab has helped to establish a public, central database on unidentified remains and missing persons in order to be a catalyst for positive identification of these individuals.
Ginesse Listi, director of the FACES Lab, said one of the biggest goals is to help solve cold cases and match unidentified remains with missing persons on a national level by working with the coroner’s offices, local police and national databases.
“One of the problems you see all over the country is unidentified cases that become cold,” Listi said.
While some may not think our skeletons can identify much about humans, Listi said bones help the lab to identify a number of traits such as sex, age, ancestry and height.
When all of this information is collected and the person remains unidentified, that is when the FACES Lab will digitally reconstruct the face. To do this, the lab utilizes tissue depth standards and the skull to recreate an approximate version of what that person may generally look like. This is when Imaging Specialist Larry Livaudais comes in.
“What I do here is really a last ditch effort,” Livaudais said.
After the tissue markers are filled with clay and molded to depict what the unidentified person may have looked like, Livaudais said digitally texture-mapping the faces helps to make the face more life-like, thus increasing the chances that someone will be able to positively identify the person.
While the reconstruction is merely a generalization of the person’s physical features, Listi said this process has had success in solving cold cases.
“What it [facial reconstruction] did was it sparked somebody’s memory…something about that face looks familiar to someone who knew that person, and that’s what the goal is,” Listi said.
Listi said the most frustrating part of her job is when unidentified persons remain unidentified and that some cases simply are never solved.
Despite this, FACES has had much success in helping to bring closure to these cases. Since the lab’s inception, Listi said, FACES has collected data on over 244 missing persons and 125 unidentified persons. Of these, the lab has solved 21 cold cases, with two dating back 35 and 37 years, respectively.
“You can have all the information in the world about your unidentified person but if someone hasn’t reported that person missing, it doesn’t matter. They slipped through the cracks,” Lisiti said.
However, Listi said that they work to encourage the public to remain attentive and interested in helping identify these unidentified persons. One way the public can do this is by visiting the repository at www.IdentifyLA.lsu.edu and finding LSU FACES Labratory on Facebook.