Forensic scientists at the University of South Florida are giving authorities a hand with unsolved cases.

  • Workshop focuses on missing and unidentified persons cases
  • Clay reconstructions to be created
  • Final busts to be released on Friday

The anthropologists are teaming with others across the country to solve the cases and bring families some closure.

Bay News 9's Fallon Silcox said this is the second time USF has done this. Last year, they helped identify the remains of a woman who was found in Polk County and answered questions her family had waited so long to hear.

As part of the workshop this week, the forensic scientists will help solve 20 missing and unidentified persons cases from across the country.

Forensic artists will work with USF researchers and students, creating clay reconstructions of the victims' faces, all in hopes of generating new leads in the cases and identifying the people.

They'll use the latest technology to scan the skull, then use a 3-D printer to make a model of it. The artists will use that as a mold for their clay to create the person's face.

“We've actually exhumed several from John and Jane Doe graves, so they may have been buried for decades, some from the 1980's and 1970's even,” said Erin Kimmerle, a USF forensic anthropologist

“So the whole thing has been an effort to try and get them up to the modern day investigative standard, so we want to get DNA, isotopes, their age of death, all the sorts of things you can learn about a person from their biology and put all of that together into a package of who they were and hopefully get them identified,” Kimmerle said.

The final busts will be revealed on Friday, and we’ll show them to you on Bay News 9. At that point, anyone with information on any of the cases or missing persons will be asked to call Crime Stoppers.

The idea for the annual cold case workshops came from Joe Mullins, a forensic artist.

He has created countless age progression photos of missing children and skull reconstructions. Mullins will lead the workshop in USF’s lab.