Mark Degner and Bryan Hayes

The Science of Updating Missing Children's Pictures












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By Roger Weeder
First Coast News

JACKSONIVLLE, FL -- The mother of a missing Jacksonville boy is seeing new pictures of what her son Mark Degner may look like.

"I really had a big chill about it, just to see it," said Linda Alligood, Mark Degner's mother.

Degner and his friend, Bryan Hayes, were last seen on Feb. 10, 2005, leaving Paxon Middle School. They are classified as missing children and considered in danger.

Forensic compositing is involved in using existing pictures and developing an image of what a person may look like two, 10 or 20 years down the road.

"It’s part science, definitely a lot of science, part art, also part intuition" said Emy Craciunescu, who works with Photojoe, and makes age progression and regression pictures.

When aging a person, Craciunescu says an artist, assisted by a computer, will build a photograph based on "the eyes…the facial shape. We kind of take a look at the bone structure, the cheeks, the mouth."

The challenge, he says, is capturing the personality that comes with facial expressions like the smile.

The pictures - age-progressed by two years - were released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last week.

"It is like, you know, he's big, gotten a lot thinner and taller," Alligood said.


Created: 1/15/2007 5:24:46 PM
Updated: 1/15/2007 7:44:32 PM
Edited by Roger Weeder, Reporter

© 2007 First Coast News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=73453