Ongoing Work

Training new artists in the art of forensic clay facial reconstruction

"Wednesday, Thursday, it's quiet, because the room is filled now with 16 extra people."

- Forensic Imaging Specialist Joe Mullins, Who are they? Reconstructing faces of the dead - The Fifth Estate

Who are they? Reconstructing faces of the dead - The Fifth Estate follows Forensic Imaging Specialist Joe Mullins as he guides forensic art students through the process of reconstructing the faces of 15 unidentified people. 14 of the skulls, provided by RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) officer, Cpl. Charity Sampson, were recovered from British Columbia. The last skull was recovered in 2019 when the then-unidentified man’s remains washed ashore after Hurricane Dorian.

Throughout the video. students work diligently on 3D replicas of the 15 unidentified people’s skulls. The importance of what they're doing is evident by the respectful, often emotional, way they speak about their subjects, their fingers running across the soft clay faces. "They're lost. They've lost their names." says Mullins. "This is a last resort for a lot of these unidentified remains. The other investigative avenues have long been gone, there are no clues anymore, perhaps there's no DNA, or nothing to compare to..." says Cpl. Sampson.

The ending of the video tells us the man whose face Joe Mullins reconstructed was identified on January 20, 2020. His name was Brent McLellan, and he was 43 when he passed away. McLellan’s family was able to identify him from the photo of the boots he was found wearing when he was found.

Though not identified through Mullins’ reconstruction, the challenges that came with identifying Brent McLellan’s remains, and the relief his family felt when they were returned, are reminders of why this work - and any work that deals with the identification of the unidentified - is so incredibly important.