The Taylor brothers, Charles (top) and Allen (bottom) in facial reconstructions and actual photos.

Often new life is breathed in forgotten cold cases when an unknown John or Jane Doe turns up in a shallow graves or washes ashore. But the investigation can only go so far. This is where the forensic art of facial reconstruction helps to reverse the aging process and put a face and, hopefully, a name on bare bones.

In 1993, unusually heavy rains in Riverside County, Calif., uncovered two full skeletons. Still clad in full motorcycle regalia, the medical examiner concluded they had been buried since the late 1970s. Mike Streed, an Orange Police Department patrol officer and forensic artist, did a facial reconstruction and the resulting sketches looked very similar.

"Maybe they are brothers," he thought.

Detectives began scouring cases of missing brothers. With the help of a tip from someone who recognized the sketches, the remains were identified as murdered brothers Charles and Allen Taylor. A rival biker had already been convicted of the killings, and later set free on a technicality, long before the remains were discovered.

Finding the bodies did not result in enough evidence to retry the suspect, said Streed, "but it gave the Taylor family some closure."

Rudy Findley in one of the earliest known three-dimensional reconstructions and a photograph.

The use of facial reconstruction to identify crime victims started with a skull pulled from an Oklahoma creek in 1966. The following year, medical illustrator Betty Gatliff constructed a three-dimensional clay model from the skull. When a photo of it was published, a man recognized it as his son, Rudy Findley.

Typically, remains are first examined by forensic anthropologists and forensic dentists who determine factors like sex, race, age and stature. Then the skull, along all of the evidence reports, is sent to a forensic artist like Karen T. Taylor, who has done dozens of reconstructions over 20 years in law enforcement with the Texas Department of Public Safety and now as a freelancer.

Using scientific charts based on race and sex, Taylor is able to craft a face around 21 "landmark" points on the face — spots on the brow, cheeks, chin and elsewhere where the relative depths of skin and other tissue are known. Pegs are cut to those depths and attached to the points.