Anyone who recognizes the man in this sketch can contact either the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office at 330-643-2101 or Detective Sgt. Greg Feketik from the Twinsburg Police Department at 330-963-6221 or 330-425-1234.

The Twinsburg John Doe case is an especially tough one, and the Summit County Police Department and the Medical Examiner’s office need help identifying this man.  No dental records have been found that match his teeth.  I hope my facial reconstruction will jog someone’s memory, and that he will be recognized.

Background for Twinsburg Case

The remains of a young adult male were found behind a small factory in Twinsburg, Ohio in 1982.  The bones and body parts had been cut up and wrapped in plastic garbage bags and buried. It was believed the man had been dead several years when the remains were discovered.  There have never been any leads in the case.

Lawrence Angel, of the Smithsonian Institution, was the first physical anthropologist to examine the bones.  He determined the victim was an African American man in his early 20s to mid-30s. He was about 5 feet, 5 inches tall with a slight but muscular build.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer of Bath Township was questioned as a possible suspect for two days in 1991 by investigators from Bath Township Police Department and the Summit County sheriff.

Preparing the skull

Photograph of Twinsburg, Ohio John Doe skull with tissue depth markers.

The Twinsburg John Doe skeleton was only partial, and the skull was badly damaged on the forehead, nose, back of the head and both mastoid processes (lumps of bone near the ear).  It looked like the bones had been injured.  Imagining that someone may have died a violent death is very troubling, but this should not influence you to make the subject look ‘sad’ in your facial reconstruction.  The people who knew this man probably knew a young, energetic person and shared happier times with him.

I had to reconstruct the bridge of the nose.  Luckily some of the surrounding bone was undamaged, so it was possible to estimate the slope of the nasal bones.  The bridge of the nose is where tissue depth marker #4 is glued, so it’s important to reconstruct the anatomy here.

Except for one molar tooth the mandible was missing.  A new mandible had to be reconstructed, one that fit well with the upper teeth and the region of the temporomandibular joints (TMJs).  Tissue depth markers #7 – 10 and 18, 20 and 21 are on the mandible.

Twinsburg, Ohio John Doe skull (profile)

I measured, on the John Doe skull, how wide the mandible would have been and then found one just that wide (an adult, African American male) from the Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection and roughed out a clay copy, using some of the dimensions from the actual bony mandible, and the width of the TMJ region of the John Doe skull.  I inserted the real molar tooth that was found at the crime scene into its proper place in the clay mandible. 

A colleague, Anne Sanford, made a plaster cast of some anterior mandibular teeth from an adult male in the Osteological Collection, and I embedded these into the clay mandible so that they articulated with the upper teeth of John Doe in the way they would in a normal dentition (no marked overbite or underbite).  Unless we have evidence to the contrary, we always make the guess that the individual was ‘normal’.  If the proportions (evident in the skull) are reflected in the features the artist creates, this should produce a likeness that friends and relatives will recognize.  You would never want to make extra big ears, or really bushy eyebrows, or an elaborate hairstyle (unless there was some evidence for them) because this would be distracting.

It’s been more than 30 years since this man died.  I dearly hope that by sharing this information, and the images of his face, someone will recognize him and we can finally determine his identity.

Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, Ohio.

We met Linda in the Main Osteology Lab of the Physical Anthropology Department of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. This facility is home to the Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection; the largest well-documented human skeletal collection in the world.

In order to “resurrect the dead” Linda uses the skull of an individual to either sculpt or sketch an image of what the person may have looked like in life.  While she sculpts 3-dimensional models on occasion, this method is not often the best approach in forensic reconstruction cases.  It is more time-consuming and is sometimes impractical, especially if the skull is fragile. Most of the time, she creates a 2-dimensional sketch for the police department.

By looking at certain features of a skull, a biological anthropologist can determine the approximate age, gender, and ethnicity of an individual but it is up to forensic artists like Linda to “narrow down the possibilities” in order to trigger recognition by relatives and loved ones.

The first forensic sketch she did for law enforcement was based on the bones of a girl that were found in Portage County, Ohio in 1994.  The sketch was seen and recognized by a police officer working on a case of a missing girl from Rochester, Pennsylvania. This led to the DNA testing of the missing girl’s family in western Pennsylvania and the bones found in Ohio. It turned out that they were a perfect match.

After obtaining the bones from the police department, Linda prepares the skull by gluing the lower jaw into position.  Next, she takes careful measurements to determine specific characteristics of the skull.  She then cuts and glues on markers fashioned from mechanical erasers. These “tissue depth markers” indicate how far the soft tissue and skin would have extended out in life.  Next, a colleague takes two photographs of the skull:  one from the front and another from the side.  These are then printed at exactly life-size and taped to a board over which tracing vellum is then attached.

Linda Spurlock putting the finishing touches on a forensic sketch.

To start a sketch, Dr. Spurlock draws the outline of the face based on the tissue depth markers.  She then draws in eyeballs, the widest part of the nose, and marks the dimensions of the mouth.  On the profile, she determines the projection of the nose and sketches in the forehead, nose and lips.  Next, she adds ears, hair, some shading, and fills in some of the features based-once again-on the unique qualities of the skull.  She considers herself lucky if there are a few hair samples remaining on the skull from which she can determine length, texture and color. It also helps if there are articles of clothing or a belt found with the remains. These can help determine the size and weight of an individual, and informs her decision about which standard of tissue depth markers to cut (slender, normal or obese).

Dr. Spurlock admits that even her best sketch will not be evidence enough to identify a person in a court of law.  Additional information including DNA samples, dental records, and unique medical hardware (like an artificial hip) may lead to the “positive ID” of an individual.

The older a case, the less likely it is that the individual will be recognized.

Most of the time, she works on cold cases in which the victim has been dead for several years or even several decades. In 2009, Linda was asked to sketch the likeness of a man whose bones were found in Twinsburg, Ohio in 1982. Even though it has been more than 30 years since this man was killed, Dr. Spurlock hopes that someday he will be recognized- the first step in solving the crime and catching the murderer.

Anyone who recognizes the man in this sketch can contact either the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office at 330-643-2101 or Detective Sgt. Greg Feketik from the Twinsburg Police Department at 330-963-6221 or 330-425-1234

Web Extra – Linda Spurlock's First Forensic Reconstructions and Sketches

Linda shares how she first learned to do forensic work, both for anthropology and law enforcement.

Artist's rendering of A. afarensis using stone tools. By Viktor Deak, copyright California Academy of Sciences

Originally reported for KQEDnews.org.

The next time you reach for your high-carbon, stainless steel chef’s knife to trim the excess fat off a bone-in Porterhouse steak, you may want to raise a glass to your ancestors who roamed Africa millions of years ago.

A Bay Area researcher and his team made a startling discovery when they unearthed a pair of bones recently in northeastern Ethiopia: the earliest evidence of stone tool use by upright human ancestors 3.4 million years ago – nearly a million years earlier than scientists previously had believed.

“The moment that sort of primitive species, not so primitive anymore, started to use those tools, it started to open up the type of species we are today,” said Zeresenay Alemseged, chair of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

“That primitive stone tool they made 3.4 million years ago is the precursor for all the technologies that we have today.”

Alemseged’s research appears in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

Zeresenay Alemseged in his office at the California Academy of Sciences. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Meat at the ancient watering hole

The discovery could help rewrite understanding how humans evolved, because stone tool use and meat eating were key steps taken along the evolutionary path leading to the big-brained species we are today.

“Brain tissue is extremely expensive to grow and maintain, so meat provided a dense source of calories, and additional nutrients like fats and proteins that are important for growing big brains”, said Teresa Steele, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis.

The species at the center of the research bore only a passing resemblance to today's Homo sapiens. Known as Australopithecus afarensis, the human forebears were long-limbed, about four feet tall, resembling chimpanzees that walked upright but also partially lived in trees. They were thought to have eaten mostly leaves and fruits. But now scientists have a more accurate picture of their diet and behavior.

“This new discovery clearly shows that the picture we had was wrong, because the species was not only using tools, but was using tools to interact with large mammals, to exploit meat from very large mammals and no other non-human species can do that,” said Alemseged.

They weren’t so much hunting their meals as scavenging them, he said, because their legs weren’t built for chasing prey. Alemseged believes they would venture into the open grasslands of East Africa to find dying or recently deceased animals, like antelope, and use their tools to obtain the nutrient-rich meat. Then, they would need to work as a team in a landscape teeming with other hostile, hungry predators.

“When some were using tools to carve the meat off the bone or break the bones to access the marrow, some maybe were watching for hyenas or lions. And that’s why I can confidently say that when we revise the textbooks for the earliest evidence for stone tool use and meat eating, we will have to revise also the picture of the species Australopithecus afarensis on the ancient landscape,” he added.

The behavior suggests a certain level of intelligence and planning, which is impressive considering that “Lucy,” a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis unearthed 36 years ago, had a brain that was roughly a third the size of a human brain, which first started cogitating in modern human form about 200,000 years ago.

Humans and chimps share a common evolutionary ancestor, and chimps also use tools, such as twigs to dig for termites in mounds or rocks to break open nuts. Humans, however, are the only primate species to intentionally make sharp-edged tools to hunt or scavenge prey much larger than themselves.

Fossilized bone fragments from Dikika, Ethiopia that show evidence of stone tool use. Copyright California Academy of Sciences.

Leaving no fossil unturned

Alemseged’s latest discovery grew out of the Dikika Research Project, which he has led since 1999, looking annually for fossils in the Afar region of Ethiopia — a dry land once dotted with forests and grassy savannahs on which the earliest upright human ancestor would have taken its first two-legged steps six million years ago. In early 2009, just six miles from where Lucy was found, this “cradle of mankind” as Alemseged calls it, offered up the tantalizing find announced this week.

“We took everything back to the camp and a group of us was sitting in the camp and just everyday going through each bone. And then our paleontologist noticed something on the foot bone of an antelope, and when we looked at it, there were cut marks evidently,” Alemseged said.

Although that bone didn’t turn out to have the cut marks that were indicative of stone tool use, two bone fragments did – one from the rib bone of a cow-like animal and one from the leg of a goat-sized antelope. But the team had to be sure, because the marks could have been caused by abrasion over the years or by the teeth of another predator. So Alemseged received permission from the government of Ethiopia to send the bones out of the country to Arizona State University, where they were examined by high-tech forensic tools.

An environmental scanning electron microscope enlarged the cut marks to reveal a pattern consistent with a scraping and pounding motion from a sharp-edged stone tool. Within one of the cut marks on one of the bones was further irresistible proof of early human activity.

“We discovered a rock that has a completely different chemical composition from the bone itself. So that means that it came into the cut mark when someone was using a sharp-edged igneous rock to cut the bone or the meat. Based on chemical analysis we were able to show that that cut mark was made by stone and done before the fossil fossilized,” Alemseged said.

Since massive volcanic eruptions 3.42 and 3.24 million years ago spewed layers of volcanic ash into the basin where the cut-marked bones were found, dating the bones was relatively straightforward. The research team settled on a date of 3.4 million years because the bones were found in a sediment layer close to the layer containing the volcanic ash from 3.42 million years ago.

Under a microscope, one of the bone fragments reveals evidence of a scraping motion. Photo courtesy of Hamdallah Bearat, Arizona State University

Where are the tools?

Alemseged, a 41 year-old, Ethiopian-born paleoanthropologist, had already made a name for himself with his discovery in 2000 of “Selam,” the oldest and most complete remains of an Australopithecus afarensis child who lived more than three million years ago.

As he once more enters the world of this ancient human ancestor, a key mystery remains.

“The most obvious question is, ‘where are the tools?’”, said David Braun, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who studies fossils bearing marks of early stone tool use. “These early tools will actually represent the dawn of human culture and will likely be difficult to identify”, said Braun.

The oldest found stone tools – made of basalt, quartz and flint – were also discovered in Ethiopia, dating back some two and a half million years ago. If they still exist, it will be a challenge to find stones with sharp, flaked edges that could have been used to butcher meat more than three million years ago, now dispersed and lying hidden for millennia under layers of soil. And while these ancient human ancestors now appear to have been using tools, whether they actually made them is likely to be a subject for debate. “There is currently no evidence that they actively chipped stone to make tools. The earliest tools are most likely sharp-edged stones that were opportunistically used”, said Braun.

When they’re in the field, Alemseged and his team of scientists and graduate students works up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week for a month or more, combing an area not just for large, readily identifiable bones, but also for fragments which require further scrutiny.

“The fact that we made this discovery is because we changed the way we were collecting the fossils, so we need to continue to look for more cut-marked bones and really show that it is a standard thing to do and then find the stone tools that were used to inflict those marks on the bones,” he said.

“We’re trying to address one of the most important questions in humanity: who we are and where do we come from. This individual who carved that stone tool contributed to your genes, my genes, to every person’s genes on this planet.”

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