A new partnership between the RCMP, the B.C. Coroners Service and a New York art school is hoping to put a face to some of the 700 unidentified remains in the Mounties’ national database.
The partnership began this week with skulls of 15 unidentified men provided by the medical examiners in B.C. and Nova Scotia.
Technicians from the National Research Council in Ottawa scanned the skulls and printed 3D versions of them using “powdered, laser-melted nylon.” Each batch of four took about 48 hours to complete.
Students from the New York Academy of Art will now reconstruct the faces of the 15 strangers using clay to create as close a version as possible of the victims’ real faces.
“We hope to give a face and a name to people whose loved ones don’t know what happened to them,” said Chief Supt. Marie-Claude Arsenault, the officer in charge of the RCMP’s Sensitive and Specialized Investigative Services.
