The team at the FACES Lab is currently analyzing the remains of a young female found Saturday in the woods of Catahoula Parish.
 
The Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory, or FACES Lab, provides identification services for law enforcement by using age-progression technology to help identify missing or unidentified children and adults.
 
Mary Manhein, FACES Lab director, said she received a call from the Catahoula Parish Sheriff’s and Coroner’s offices Friday night asking for her team’s assistance with identifying a human skull found by a hunter in the woods near Harrisonburg.
 
Manhein said she and the team drove to Harrisonburg on Saturday morning and spent the day searching for the rest of the remains, which were located in the same general area as the skull.
 
“Sometimes you don’t find everything,” she said. “In this case, we were able to find most of the remains.”
 
Manhein said the team brought the remains back to the University where they did further testing and discovered they belonged to a young white female.
 
“We know she’s been dead from anywhere between three weeks and four to six months,” she said. “She was also between the ages of 12 and 16 years old.”
 
Manhein said the team discovered the girl was shorter than 5 feet 4 inches, had thick brown hair and wore braces on her teeth with pink rubber bands.
 
Little is known about what may have happened to her, Manhein said.
 
“Nobody knows who she is. We put out bulletins, but no one’s been reported missing in that area,” she said. “We don’t know if she was a runaway or if she was abducted.”
 
But Manhein said they were able to determine from the victim’s dental records that she had a gap in her smile.
 
“That’s a real identifier,” she said. “Because she has such good dental work, we can tell she was well taken care of.”
 
If the victim is not identified within the next few weeks, Manhein said the team will conduct DNA tests on the remains and enter them into a national online DNA database for all missing persons and unidentified remains.
 
 
 
 
—————
Contact Sarah Eddington at [email protected]