Criminal Investigation - Forensic Sculptor

Intuitive Forensic Facial Reconstruction by Frank Bender

Dec 10, 2007

In criminal investigation, facial reconstruction or forensic sculpture is as much art as science. Frank Bender from Philadelphia is one of the world's best.

From his Philadelphia studio, Frank Bender makes the invisible visible. He is one of the world’s leading forensic sculptors who is sought after by those in charge of criminal investigations. Frank's job is to make facial reconstructions out of clay of the deceased and of fugitives, many who have been on the run for a long time. He is also quite an unusual man who deals with his business phone calls from his claw foot bathtub.

Born and raised in Kensington, a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood, Frank joined the Navy after school. He then took a job as a commercial photographer doing art part time. It was fate the day Frank Bender decided to visit the medical examiner's office to get a quick anatomy lesson.

Pathologist Halbert Fillinger told him about a badly decomposed female body with three gunshots to the head. During the criminal investigation into the incident, dental records failed to identify her. DNA testing led nowhere. Fingerprinting was virtually impossible. But Frank said he knew what she looked like. Fillinger asked Frank Bender to sculpt a bust of the woman in clay. The sculpture appeared in Philadelphia newspapers, and five months later the woman was identified through the lifelike clay facial reconstruction as Anna Duval, 62, of Phoenix.

A Career as a Forensic Sculptor

That was the start of Bender’s career as a Forensic Sculptor or a "recomposer of the decomposed" as he calls himself. He allows about a month to complete each sculpture and is generally not paid very much, but he regards his work on criminal cases as his contribution to society.

Frank Bender, who is also co-founder of the The Vidocq Society, a society of international forensic experts:

Forensic Facial Reconstruction

Numerous unknown homicide victims have been identified from Frank’s skull to face sculptures. He has no formal training in medicine or forensics or anatomy. He does however; use a facial-tissue-thickness chart, which tells him roughly how much clay to apply to the different parts of the skull. Law enforcement officials he has worked during criminal investigations agree that Frank Bender has a sixth sense.

ForensicSculpture - Criminal Cases

John List was a wealthy, religious man who in 1971 killed his whole family. When Bender got the case, List had been at large for 18 years. Frank constructed the bust of List from old photos aging the man by 18 years. List was apprehended eleven days after the sculpted bust was aired on America's Most Wanted.

Rosella Atkins. In late 1987, The Philadelphia Police Department asked Frank Bender for help with an unidentified body found in a field behind a high school. He imagined this young woman as someone looking for something better in life. When he created a bust of her head, he had her looking up with her head tilted back.

After two years of canvassing the neighborhood with the bust, the police had got no leads so they handed the bust back to Bender who donated it to the Philadelphia College of Physicians where they put it on display. Three weeks later a woman felt drawn to the display – the clay bust turned out to be her grand niece, Rosella Atkins.

Using forensic facial reconstruction, Bender has managed to solve many criminal cases, and the cases don't always involve violence; many are manhunts. He has assisted in the capture of six of America's Most Wanted criminals, including Alphonse Perisco, the Colombo crime family boss; Robert Nauss, convicted murderer and former head of the Warlocks motorcycle gang; and Hans Vorhauer, a convicted methamphetamine manufacturer and burglar.

The copyright of the article Criminal Investigation - Forensic Sculptor in Forensic Science is owned by Karen Lotter. Permission to republish Criminal Investigation - Forensic Sculptor in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.