3D printing technology available to Long Island police trying to solve cold cases

Experts at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner are offering Long Island police departments a unique service that uses special 3D printing technology to reconstruct the faces of the unknown dead and possibly identify them.

"The whole point of reconstructions is to provide leads, it is to engage family members to reach out to us and inquire about loved ones," said Angela Soler, a forensic anthropologist with the OCME in Manhattan who holds a doctorate in physical anthropology.

The OCME runs a program that uses special scanning equipment to create scores of three-dimensional models of human faces and then send the data to a 3D printer, which uses a special resin to reproduce a duplicate of the complete skull.

The plastic skull duplicate is then provided to students in the forensic sculpture program at the New York Academy of Art, who use forensic data about hair color and texture, skin depth, flesh color and special anatomical features to create a model of what the dead person looked like when he or she was alive.

'Tremendous utility'

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said he saw "tremendous utility" in the facial reconstruction program, especially if forensic experts are involved in the process. Tierney has over 300 cold cases, including those of unidentified bodies of murder victims, crimes he is trying to solve in the wake of a recent guilty plea by Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann in the killing of eight women.

"There are Long Island detectives who are working missing persons cases; they are welcome to reach out to our office," Soler said. "We could help with 3D printing and get [cases] into a facial reconstruction class."

A spokesman for the Suffolk County Police Department said the agency would not have any official available to comment on the facial reconstruction program and its possible use.

Nassau County Police Department spokesman Det. Joseph Oginski said he could not provide a comment on the facial reconstruction procedure.

The program was started around 2015 by former noted OCME forensic anthropologist Bradley Adams working in collaboration with academy adjunct professor Joe Mullins, who runs the school program. Adams, who did forensic examination of some of the bodies of the victims of Gilgo Beach serial killer, retired last year and Soler has taken the reins at OCME.

"If you have an unidentified body on Long Island that was decomposed or skeletonized, that [facial reconstruction] would be great use of time and resources," said Adams, who now teaches forensic science at Washburn University in Kansas.

According to the art academy website, the reconstruction project has gained traction with law enforcement agencies, including cold case investigators in Delaware and California, within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and medical examiners in Arizona who have used the program to recreate the faces of eight unknown border crossers who died in the desert.

Fabricating duplicate skulls

In a demonstration at OCME headquarters for Newsday, forensic anthropologist Justin Goldstein, who has a doctorate in anthropology, placed a facsimile of a skull on a special rotating platform, which slowly turned as a special laser scanned it. Once the scan was complete, the data was sent to a 3D printer on another floor that began to fabricate a duplicate skull, a process that would take about seven to eight hours, Goldstein said.

The finished facial reconstructions are then uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a publicly accessible federal database that contains case information of missing and unidentified persons in all states.

Most of the skulls used for reconstruction are from remains found within New York City, but they also may represent people who traveled to the city and died — either from homicidal violence, accident or illness — and had lived on Long Island, Soler explained.

"New York is a cosmopolitan city and we get individuals from all over the world and the tristate area, who unfortunately wind up here," noted Soler, referring to the unidentified bodies.

Discovering identities

As of the latest count, there are 1,183 unidentified remains found in New York City listed in NamUs, a number that is likely an undercount. Suffolk County has 39 and Nassau County has 20, according to NamUS.

Over the years — even without the use of 3D printing — OCME has helped Long Island investigators identify missing persons from remains found in the city.

"We have absolutely resolved cases from the early 1990s of individuals who were missing from Long Island and wound up in New York City," said Soler, who wouldn’t identify the cases because of the confidentiality requests of the families.

3D printing adds another tool in efforts to determine the identities of Long Islanders who died as unidentified persons in New York City limits. For that reason and because of the availability of 3D printer technology, OCME is willing to take referrals from Long Island police.

Interagency cooperation wasn’t the rule years ago, before the advent of the internet or refinements in computer technology and DNA analysis. But today, said Soler, her office can look at cold cases that go back to around 1990. At times, investigators have exhumed remains from Hart Island, where unidentified or unclaimed bodies are buried in New York City, although that task can be difficult because locating the resting places of the deceased can be problematic, Soler said.

Getting the word out

Mullins, who said he has done forensic facial reconstructions for some 27 years, said his course requires a disciplined approach by the student artists who are doing the work at the academy and he must be confident of their final work product.

"The way I teach the class, I just don’t put a [student] artist’s work out there as it is," said Mullins. “If they don’t hit the mark, then the responsibility falls on me."

"If they are a good artist, they will be a good forensic artist," Mullins said of the students.

Adams agreed that Mullins' expertise assures that the reconstructions done by his students have good quality control.

Mullins said the OCME initiative to get word out about the reconstruction program with news articles and database entries in NamUs is the best way to get images of reconstructions out to the public.

"A lot of faces created have been sitting on the shelf for five, 10 or 15 years," Mullins said. "The idea is to tell the story of these unidentified [persons] to as many eyes as possible. ... It doesn’t work unless it the [image] gets out there."

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.