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Coroner, RCMP partner with NYC art school to put a face to unidentified remains

RCMP hope to reconstruct the faces of 15 missing Canadian men
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New York City art students are working with the RCMP to reconstruct the faces of 15 missing people based on a model of their skulls. (RCMP)

A new partnership between the RCMP, the B.C. Coroner’s Service and a New York art school is hoping to put a face to some of the 700 unidentified remains in the Mountie’s national database.

The partnership, which will run Monday to Friday of this week, began with skulls of 15 unidentified men provided by the B.C. Coroner’s Service and the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service.

Technicians from the National Research Council scanned the skulls and created 3D printed versions of them using “powdered, laser-melted nylon.”

Mounties said skulls were printed in batches of four, with each batch taking 48 hours to complete. Staff then cleaned off the skulls to create a perfect model of the unidentified remains.

Students from the New York Academy of Art will now reconstruct the faces of 15 missing people using clay to create as close a version of possible of the victim’s real face.

Chief Supt. Marie-Claude Arsenault, the officer-in-charge of the RCMP’s Sensitive and Specialized Investigative Services, said the project was a “unique opportunity” to reconstruct the faces of 15 Canadians.

“We hope to give a face and a name to people whose loved ones don’t know what happened to them,” Arsenault said.


@katslepian

katya.slepian@bpdigital.ca

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