Unidentified decedent

[1] A UID may remain unidentified due to lack of evidence as well as absence of personal identification such as a driver's license.

Where the remains have deteriorated or been mutilated to the point that the body is not easily recognized, a UID's face may be reconstructed to show what they had looked like before death.

She had been living as a transient with her husband in California for decades but returned to her native state of Ohio, where she died of unknown circumstances.

[14] Putrefaction often occurs when bacteria decompose the remains and generate gasses inside out, causing the corpse to swell and become discolored.

They were deceased a short period of time but were already severely decomposed and unrecognizable, due to putrefaction that occurred while underwater and high temperatures.

[17] When Lynn Breeden, a Canadian model, was murdered and set ablaze in a dumpster, her body was so severely damaged that DNA processing and fingerprint analysis were impossible.

Many police departments and medical examiners have made efforts to identify the deceased by placing mortuary photographs of the UID's face online.

[28] A Jane Doe found in a river in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had died months earlier, but was preserved by the cold temperatures.

Her morgue photographs were displayed publicly on a medical examiner's website, but her face had been distorted by swelling after absorbing water, with additional decomposition.

[6] When a body is found in an advanced state of decomposition or has died violently, reconstructions are sometimes required to receive assistance from the public, when releasing images of a corpse is considered taboo.

Forensic artist Karen T. Taylor created her own method during the 1980s, which involved much more precise techniques, such as estimating locations and sizes of the features of a skull.

[34] The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has developed methods to estimate the likenesses of the faces of UIDs whose remains were too deteriorated to create a two-dimensional sketch or reconstruction due to the lack of tissue on the bones.

A skull would be placed through a CT scanner and the image would then be manipulated with a software that was intended for architecture design, to add digital layers of tissue based on the UID's age, sex and race.

Aundria Bowman, a teen who disappeared in 1989 who bore a strong resemblance to a body found in 1999, was excluded, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.