by Sue Black
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The intricate manner in which the fourteen separate bones of the adult viscerocranium develop, grow and respond to our lifestyles is what creates the character in our faces. It is the skill of the expert in replicating the strong relationship between the underlying skull and the overlying face that makes the facial reconstructions so reliable.
Sometimes, all forensic experts have to work with is a skull and a possible lead to a missing person. In these circumstances, they may attempt a superimposition. This involves overlaying a photograph of the head of a missing person on to a photograph of the skull, taken in the same anatomical position. If the anatomical points (orbital margins, chin shape, cheek bone position and so on) can be aligned, it is possible to determine whether the skull “fits” with the face.
The first forensic application of superimposition is still viewed as the classic example. It helped to secure the conviction of Buck Ruxton, a physician who killed two women and was hanged in 1935 for the murder of one of them, his common-law wife. This investigation, which was notable for the use of various innovative forensic science techniques, is discussed in greater detail in the final chapter. It remains best known for the groundbreaking work of the pathologist, John Glaister, and anatomist James Brash in reconstructing the mutilated and decomposed bodies of the two women. The most famous image from the case is the superimposition of a photograph of one of the skulls on to the face of Isabella Ruxton. The incongruity of a composite combining a smiling face and a skull, crowned proudly by a diamond tiara, is unforgettably affecting.
Superimposition had a greater following in the past than perhaps it does today, simply because in the twenty-first century, scientific advances have opened up so many other avenues of investigation. But there are still times when we elect to go back to the methods pioneered by Glaister and Brash eighty-five years ago.
One of those arose in the mid-1990s, when we were assisting with a case that remains notorious in Italy. I was working as a consultant forensic anthropologist with the University of Glasgow, having moved back to Scotland from London, when I was dispatched to visit the carabinieri in Verona, charged with transporting some “material” back to the UK for analysis.
This being Italy, I met the police not in a featureless room with rickety tables and scuffed chairs, but over coffee in a high-end Veronese café. It is not by accident that the carabinieri are seen by some as Europe’s most stylish police force. The officers recounted how, in 1994, a man called Gianfranco Stevanin had picked up a sex worker in his car in the northern town of Vicenza and offered her extra money if she would go home with him and allow him to take pictures of her.
They drove back to his remote farmhouse in Terrazzo, in the countryside south-east of Verona, where he engaged in several hours of increasingly violent sexual games. When the prostitute refused to continue, Stevanin held a knife to her throat. She offered him all her life savings if he would let her go and he agreed to take her home to collect the money. As the car slowed down at a toll booth she managed to escape and approach a stationary police vehicle. Stevanin was arrested for sexual assault and extortion and sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
This proved to be merely the start of the story that would unfold around the man who became known as the “Monster of Terrazzo.” When police searched his house, they uncovered several thousand pornographic images of other women, thought to be prostitutes, files of detailed notes on them and items belonging to at least two of the women, including Biljana Pavlovic, a prostitute who had been reported missing the previous year. Alarm bells began to ring even more loudly when it became clear from one of the photographs, which showed significant violence to an intimate area of one victim’s body, that she must have been dead at the time it was taken.
This was now a murder inquiry, and when, in the summer of 1995, a farmer found a sack containing a mutilated female corpse on land near Stevanin’s house, the investigation escalated and heavy digging equipment was brought in to search the farm thoroughly. The badly decomposed remains of four more women were discovered, some with bags over their heads and ropes around their necks. The most pressing question was: who were they? Sex work can be a transient trade, and a haphazard lifestyle often goes with the territory. Girls appear on a particular “patch” for a while and may then move on without warning. Few will notice a missing prostitute, and their fellow sex workers are reluctant to talk to the police for fear of inviting trouble.
The police were now faced with the difficult challenge of linking the bodies with the photographs, descriptions and trophies in Stevanin’s possession. The postmortems conducted by the pathologists had determined the sex and age of the women, and it was assigning names to them that was now of primary importance and the reason why I had been sent to Italy. They believed they had strong evidence that one of the victims was Biljana Pavlovic, and that another was likely to be a missing woman called Blazenka Smoljo. Both were eastern European and to date they had been unable to track down any relatives of either of them to gather any further information or samples for comparison.
In the café, the officers laid out pornographic and crime-scene photos on the table in front of me between the cappuccino cups. Looking at these horrific images in the beautiful city of Juliet’s balcony and glorious open-air opera, as its citizens greeted one another cheerily and chatted over coffee and cake, felt somewhat surreal. For once I would have preferred to have been in a dingy police office where I could have looked at these pictures freely without fear of offending. But the carabinieri, it seemed, were not troubled by the sensitivities I was used to observing. The bodies were very badly decomposed and the police wanted to establish whether skull-to-photo superimposition, which they had neither the equipment nor the experience to undertake in Italy at that time, was a realistic possibility.
If I thought that meeting was surreal, I’d seen nothing yet. The upshot was a decision that the heads of the two victims they believed to be Biljana Pavlovic and Blazenka Smoljo, for whom they had photographs for comparison, should be transported to Scotland for analysis and superimposition. The heads were isolated from the corpses and sealed in a two white plastic buckets. To further conceal their contents, each white bucket was placed in a carrier bag bearing the name of a well-known, high-quality Italian designer. The bags were unceremoniously handed over to me, together with two letters, one in English and one in Italian, explaining what I was carrying and that I had the authority to do so.
The first hurdle came at the airport check-in desk, where I was told that madam could only take one piece of hand luggage on board and that the other must go in the hold. I duly produced the Italian letter. The woman behind the counter turned a little grey and issued my boarding pass without further comment. Now for security. I couldn’t put my carrier bags through the scanner—think of the shock for the poor person looking at the screen—so I called the security guard aside and showed him my Italian letter. He turned a similar shade of grey and shepherded me through a side gate, bypassing the scanner.
As I boarded the plane, the lovely English flight attendant told me again that I must put my luggage in the hold. I handed over the English letter and explained that I could not do this because I was responsible for ensuring continuity of evidence. At least she didn’t turn grey, but she did become most officious. She moved me into the almost empty business-class cabin, which I thought was very nice of her, until I realized that this was merely to isolate me from the other passengers. Far from receiving special treatment, I was effectively quarantined for the entire flight. Not so much as the offer of a glass of water. Unquestionably I was being viewed as undesirable and possibly even contagious. There was no warm goodbye as I disembarked at Heathrow, although I think I might have heard a sigh of relief.
The next dilemma I faced was at UK customs: should I declare or not declare? Having been brought up to be a good Scottish Presbyterian girl, I opted to declare. As I approached, the bored guard with his feet up on the desk looked up at
me over his glasses to inquire whether the contents of my two designer carrier bags were “for my own consumption.” After he read my English letter, he spluttered and ushered me away as swiftly as possible. By this point, I had travelled all the way from Verona to Heathrow and nobody had scanned or inspected my unusual cargo. I can’t imagine that would be allowed to happen today. I sincerely hope not.
Now I had to get to Scotland. I queued up at security for a second time, clutching my English letter. The official told me that he didn’t want to put my bags through the scanner but he would need to have a look inside them. At last! Someone was going to check. But as he started to lift the buckets out of my bags, I realized that he was intending to open them right there on the table in the midst of my fellow passengers and their belongings. I had to stop him and warn him he couldn’t do this in public. We would have to go somewhere private, and with air-conditioning. These were heads, not skulls, and they still retained a lot of decomposing tissue that was very wet and smelly, and possibly even a few maggots. Up to this point his face had remained its normal healthy colour but suddenly it was visibly green. He hurriedly consulted his supervisor and directed me towards the departure lounge without taking so much as a peek.
When the next flight attendant read my English letter, he let out a squeak, bless him, raised his hands in horror and sent me to the back of the plane, where once again I was ignored for the whole flight. If he’d had the wherewithal to surround me with razor wire and give me a bell to ring while shouting “Unclean!” my pariah status could not have been more obvious. People were being moved forward into spare seats at the front rather than be asked to sit anywhere near me.
In Glasgow we defleshed the skulls, photographed them from all angles and performed three-dimensional scans. The images were oriented to match the poses in the photographs supplied by the Italian police.
Both skulls were female and from individuals of a similar age, so we could not separate them on that basis. Biljana and Blazenka had both been around twenty-four when they disappeared. The first skull we analysed did not correspond anatomically with the photo of Biljana but it was a good fit for Blazenka, and vice versa. Quietly confident that the two skulls were a match, we sent our results to Verona. The carabinieri asked us to hold on to them until the trial. Some weeks later, they confirmed that they had been able to obtain familial DNA for both women which supported our findings and it had at last been possible to formally identify them.
With identity established, technically, there was no need for me to give evidence at Stevanin’s trial, but the public prosecutor did not want to miss the opportunity to infuse the proceedings with a little theatre by introducing a foreign forensic scientist and a method that would capture the interest of the media. And the skulls had to be returned to Italy anyway. If I gave evidence the court, rather than the police, would be paying my travel expenses, so the carabinieri, too, were keen for me to attend.
The return trip was more straightforward as my cargo now consisted merely of cleaned skulls, dry bone that was perfectly acceptable for anyone to check if they wished to, though again, all the airport and airline staff preferred to take my word for it. I was taken to the public prosecutor’s house on the shores of Lake Garda for dinner, which was lovely, though I was nervous about my impending ordeal in a foreign court. My evidence would need to be translated and there was no telling what sort of questions I might be asked. I dressed smartly for my appearance, even if my shoes were killing me, and took my seat in the courtroom, the picture of transfixed terror.
There are few people in my life who have genuinely made my skin crawl, but Gianfranco Stevanin was one of them. As I stood in the witness box I tried very hard to ignore him, but his penetrating stare was disturbing, almost hypnotic. I gave my translated evidence and retired to a seat in the courtroom where I was able to observe the rest of the proceedings, even if I could not understand most of what was being said. At the end of the day the prisoner was escorted from the court. As he approached my seat he deliberately slowed his pace and turned his head to stare at me, long and hard. His mouth curved upwards in a wintry smile that never reached his cold, stony eyes. I felt my blood chill.
I knew there had been death threats against journalists who had spoken out against him and I did feel uneasy. For several months after the trial, I was more than a little jumpy when confronted by anything unexpected. This was the one and only time in my career when I was genuinely concerned for my safety and that of my family.
Stevanin’s defence was that he remembered nothing of the sexual encounters with his victims due to a previous brain injury sustained in a motorcycle accident. For dramatic purposes, he’d had his head shaved so that the huge arc of a scar could be seen across his scalp. The defence lawyers had unsuccessfully challenged a psychiatric report that declared him mentally capable of standing trial. In January 1998 he was sentenced to life for the murder of six women, including Biljana and Blazenka.
The case led to a national debate in Italy on the question of the criminal responsibility of perpetrators affected by mental illness and the capability or otherwise of such individuals to understand the consequences of their actions. Stevanin’s legal team capitalized on this to launch various further legal challenges but his sentence was upheld and the Monster of Terrazzo remains in prison in Abruzzo, where I believe he recently expressed a wish to become a Franciscan monk. Whatever comes of that, the world is a safer place with him behind bars.
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How do we use the bones of a face to tell us something about the person it belonged to? Starting at the top, in the first region we have paired orbits, the eye sockets, that are largely, but not completely, symmetrical, separated by the root or bridge of the nose. The purpose of the orbits is to enclose and protect the eyeball and the six muscles that move it, a lacrimal (or tear) sac, nerves, blood vessels and ligaments, all surrounded by periorbital fat, which acts as a shock-absorber should the eye take a direct hit.
There are seven separate bones that make up the floor, roof and walls of the orbit: sphenoid, frontal, zygomatic, ethmoid, lacrimal, maxilla and palatine. They are all relatively thin and quite fragile. A projectile directed upward into the orbit will readily pierce the thin roof and enter the lower surface of the frontal lobe of the brain.
In the adult female, the rim of the orbit is quite sharp, whereas in the male it is more rounded, a distinction that can be used to start to build a tentative identity for the sex of an individual. In the male, the area of bone above the orbit (beneath the eyebrow) can become prominent, developing supraorbital ridging or even a shelf-like protuberance known as a torus. This is quite marked in some early human skulls and is believed to be formed by the dissipation of forces associated with the larger muscle mass of the more robust jaw. There is evidence that our jaws have reduced in size as our food has become softer and more processed. The ridging above the eyes and the root of the nose becomes more obvious in the male after puberty, with the significant increase in muscle mass caused by hormonal influences. Females tend to have little or no brow ridging and to retain a paedomorphic appearance.
Between two and six years of age, the frontal bone, just above the eyebrows, pneumatizes and air cells form between the two layers of bone. These air sacs coalesce to create the frontal air sinuses, spaces lined by a respiratory epithelium which produce mucus that will ultimately drain into the nose. Why these air sinuses form is not fully understood but what we do know is that the shape of the air space within the frontal bone is probably unique to every individual. This can be of value in confirming identity when we have access to X-rays of this area of a person’s head in life which we can compare with our radiographs of a body. Interestingly, people with some congenital conditions, such as Down’s syndrome, never develop these air sinuses.
This area of the face is prime territory for body modifications or implants. We often see piercings around the eyebrow, where a cannula has been inserted underneath the brow and out through the top to allow
jewellery such as barbells and studs to be worn. Piercings may be vertical, horizontal or both, creating a T-shape. An awareness of modifications to the face is important in forensic analysis as they may be very relevant to identification of a body. There is no cavity that we will not examine, because even when the soft tissue no longer survives, the jewellery might.
Implants can sometimes be made in the eye itself, just under the sclera, the white bit of the eyeball. This part of the eye can even be tattooed by means of an injection of ink beneath the conjunctiva (the mucous membrane covering the eye and lining the eyelids) and above the sclera. This allows the normally white part of the eye to be changed to any colour you fancy, but it is a risky modification that can carry significant complications.
The position of the orbits makes it highly unlikely that the human viscerocranium will ever be confused with that of another animal and very clearly flags the human as a predator. Predators tend to have forward-facing orbits as this enables the eyes to work in stereoscopic vision, conferring the ability to judge depth. This is vital if you are a hunter and need to calculate how far away your prey is and how fast you will need to move to catch it. Animals whose orbits are on the side of their head are more likely to be prey than predator. Their optical priority is peripheral vision, so that they can watch out for the hunters. As the old saying has it, “Eyes at the front, the animal hunts, eyes on the sides, the animal hides.”