Artists Draw On Experience To Help Police Find Kids

August 31, 1989|By Elaine Bennett Of The Sentinel Staff

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS — Artists from 13 Florida police agencies met Wednesday to update pictures of 32 missing children, one of whom hasn't been seen for 15 years.

Officials billed the meeting as the nation's first effort that combines artistic ability and scientific information about how children age to get more up-to-date drawings of missing youngsters.

The artists are expected to complete their drawings Friday. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will then mail the ''aged'' drawings to police and schools throughout the country.

Many of the artists are members of a Law Enforcement Artistry Task Force that met in March to update pictures of eight of the state's most wanted criminals. Five were taken into custody as a result of the drawings, said Linda Galeener, task force coordinator and a forensic artist with the Leon County Sheriff's Office.

The task force plans to train more police artists and to update as many pictures of missing children as possible to help find them.

''We are so excited about this because it is the first workshop of its kind ever to be held,'' said Anna Marie Whatley, an information supervisor with FDLE's Missing Children's Clearinghouse in Tallahassee.

Whatley said the department gave the artists pictures of 32 children who were between 9 months and 15 years old when they were reported missing. Most haven't been seen for two to three years, but one child has been missing for 15 years and would be 30 today.

The pictures include children missing from Florida and other states. Foul play is suspected in some of the disappearances, but several children are believed to be missing after they were kidnapped by a parent during a custody dispute.

Before the artists began their drawings, Winter Park dentist Don Tillery Jr., an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, told them how the jaw, nose, mouth and other facial features change as children go through infancy and puberty and become adults.

When aging a picture, he explained, artists should know that the shape of a child's eyebrows and eyes remain the same during his development. Tillery said all children have short noses because they have not yet developed cartilage. But a child with a long bone structure in the nose will have a longer nose as an adult.

He explained that facial development occurs as the brain grows and causes bones to push forward. As a result, older children have more pronounced foreheads.

Muscles and teeth, he said, help support and shape the face and bring about skeletal changes that will produce cheekbones and cause the face to lengthen as the child's jaws grow.

Tillery told the artists to find out as much as they can about the missing children. If there is a history of baldness in the family, the artist should consider that in drawing a missing child who would now be in his 20s or 30s. Artists also should determine if the child had suffered a facial injury that might alter or delay facial development, he said.

The artists began their work by reading a history of the child and his family. They then traced the child's photo. On that drawing they began altering the nose and face. Chins were lengthened and noses were thinned. The ''older'' children were given more pronounced cheekbones and more shadowing on the face.

Assisting the artists was Carolyne Boyette, a consulting cosmetologist from Tallahassee. She told them that all people have a natural hairline and part that determines the direction of hair growth. Boyette also gave the artists examples of hairstyles that are typical of various age groups to further help them age the missing children.

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