http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/454ufwa.htmlhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248019...ensicart11.htmlFriday, November 11, 2005
Out of bones, a shooting victim reappears
Can forensic artist's work solve a 16-year mystery?
By HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
She was little more than a skeleton when construction workers found her 16 years ago. There was little left that anyone who knew her in life might recognize.
But the woman who was shot dead and left in an industrial area in Seattle's Sodo district now has a face once more -- and investigators are hoping that face will lead them to her identity.
"The artist's reconstruction of her is quite unusual," said Dr. Kathy Taylor, forensic anthropologist for the King County Medical Examiner's Office. "We're hoping that uniqueness will catch somebody's eye."
Using a scientific reconstructive sketch process, independent forensic artist Natalie Murry has breathed life into the long-cold homicide investigation with her drawing of what the woman may have looked like when she was alive.
It's a long, placid face, with eyes that look directly at the viewer and a head of short, curly hair.
Workers installing a fence between Interstate 5 and Airport Way South, near the Holgate Street Bridge, found her the morning of Oct. 3, 1989, beneath a wooden pallet left in some brush. Investigators believe she had died months before, killed by a blast from a shotgun.
The woman was probably white, Taylor said, between 5-foot-1 and 5-foot-4. Her hair was a dark brown or black, and was kinky, cut to about 2 1/4 inches. Investigators believe she was between 30 and 50 years old.
She was wearing maroon underwear, medium long johns, black and white wool socks and a gold Baylor brand wristwatch. Nearby, detectives found white, ankle-high Diadora tennis shoes, size 7 1/2.
She'd had dental work, including a partial upper denture.
Seattle police did their best to discover who she was, issuing descriptions of the items found with her and making public appeals for information.
"At the time, it was worked quite heavily," Taylor said. But nothing came of the effort, and the woman found behind the old Honolulu Freight Services on Airport Way South remained unidentified.
"We really don't have anything besides the skeleton to go on," Seattle police Sgt. Ed Striedinger said.
Investigators have done almost as much as they can to identify the woman. There were no fingerprints, Taylor said, but information on the woman's dental work was sent to the Washington State Patrol's Missing and Unidentified Person's Unit. No match with any reported missing person was made.
That's where Murry comes in. The former Kent police officer began as a composite sketch artist, making drawings based on descriptions provided by witnesses and crime victims.
Reconstructive sketching, she said, is all measurements. Using techniques developed to measure the thickness of facial tissue, Murry places tissue depth markers, basically white rubber erasers, on 21 spots around the skull.
She photographs the skull with the markers in place, places tracing paper over the photo and from there, draws the person's face.
She uses the direction and length of a bone called the nasal spine to determine what a person's nose looks like.
"It's amazing this one little bone will tell me so much about what you look like," Murry said.
In this case, she played it safe with the victim's nose, going for a look somewhere between pointed and blunt, because the nasal spine was a little worn and she had trouble determining how long it was in life.
"It's tough to say how much was missing there," she said.
Taylor said the effort to identify the murder victim has not ended. There are plans to submit her DNA to a national DNA database in the hopes that someone somewhere filed a missing person report and provided DNA that might be a match.
But it's a slim shot, and she has more hope that someone will recognize the woman from Murry's drawing, and help close the case.
"Clearly, someone is walking around who has committed homicide," Taylor said. "And that's very disturbing."
HELP ALSO SOUGHT IN NORTH BEND CASE
When she's not tracking down children snatched in parental disputes, King County sheriff's Detective Carolyn Griffin sketches missing children, criminal suspects, even reconstructive sketches of the dead.
One of her most recent drawings is of a man whose remains were found near North Bend on June 30, 1993.
Investigators with the King County Medical Examiner's Office determined the remains likely belonged to a white male. He was missing several teeth and had been dead two to three years before he was found.
Dr. Kathy Taylor, forensic anthropologist for the King County Medical Examiner's Office, said the man appears to have suffered a blunt force injury to his head.
"We certainly suspect he's a victim of homicide," she said.
But without an ID on the victim, the case has stalled. The Medical Examiner's Office this week released Griffin's sketch of what the man may have looked like in life, in the hopes someone will recognize him and help identify the man.
Since the complete remains were not found, Griffin had no idea what color the man's hair was, or even how big he was.
"The best information I could get was that he was a male and somewhere between 20 and 40 years old," she said.
But Taylor holds out hope someone will come forward.
"We're just trying to get our cold cases out there and solved," she said. "We never forget them."
P-I reporter Hector Castro can be reached at 206-903-5396 or hectorcastro@seattlepi.com.