It's a mystery that has baffled Akron ever since a human skull was found on a sidewalk in 2016. Now investigators hope cutting-edge technology, showing what the man could have looked like, finally leads to his identification.
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Some of the features vary, including the hairstyles, but Samantha Molnar, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation artist who created 3D renderings, revealed what the Akron John Doe, believed to be between 30 and 55 years old, may have looked like.
"His skull was rather unique with some tooth loss, having that dental plate," Molnar said. "The nose region looked like maybe his nose had been broken at some point."
The mystery has freaked out neighbors over the years since a passerby found the skull on a sidewalk on Marcy Street on January 8, 2016.
"They find a skull on your sidewalk. That's like, whoa! That's kind of spooky, man," one neighbor said a year the discovery.
Additional remains from the man were found inside a nearby abandoned home.
"It looked like as though the skull had been placed carefully on the sidewalk. It hadn't been thrown," said Summit County Medical Examiner Dr. Lisa Kohler.
In 2017, we spoke with Molnar, who used 3D scans to create a clay model of the man. Those models, and now the images showing photorealistic detail, may finally lead to the man being identified.
Molnar got help creating the digital images from Ohio State University using a software program that can create video game characters like something you would see in Fortnite.
"And they actually have a couple of other people that work in their gaming departments, and what they do is the take a bunch of pictures of my reconstruction, and then they can generate a 3-D image of my reconstruction," Molnar said.
Investigators said that there was a fire at the same house in 2012, but the remains were not found then, and the medical examiner said that he may have been a squatter who died before the fire. How he died is also a mystery.
"So because all we have are the bones and no soft tissues to do any testing, we do not know what happened as far as the cause of death," Kohler said. "I don't have any physical evidence to say it's a homicide, but I can't exclude that."
Now, authorities hope tips from the public can lead to the man's identification.
"I just really hope that the right person calls and we can render a name for this family," Molnar said.
Anyone with information about the man's identity is asked to call BCI at 740-845-2406 or Akron Police at 330-375-2490.
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