The Girl Next Door
This special report focuses on two instances in which forensic sculptors were called upon to help identify murder victims.
On the night of May 1, 2003, a teenage girl's body was found in a trash bag left behind a restaurant in Castro Valley, California. The gruesome discovery became detective Scott Dudek's obsession and touched the entire community, which came to call the young girl "Castro Valley's Jane Doe." The community rallied to raise money to bury her. Then, two years after "Jane" was found, as a last-ditch effort to identify the girl, Detective Dudek of the Alameda County Sheriff's office made the decision to exhume the body to search for clues that might have been missed. Forensic artist Gloria Nusse created a forensic reconstruction of Jane's face based on nothing but the skull in the hope that someone might recognize her. Detectives have tracked down over 800 leads to identify "Jane", and more than 350 missing girls have been ruled out.
Gregory May disappeared in January 2001 from Bellevue, Iowa -- his children suspected foul play. When May's antique collection turned up for auction, police found the seller to be May's former friend and house-mate Doug DeBruin. Subsequently police found a skull at a truck stop hundreds of miles from Iowa and brought it to forensic sculptor Frank Bender of Philadelphia. After Bender's reconstruction of the face, authorities were able to identify it as May. Other portions of May's body were located providing sufficient evidence to bring DeBruin to trial for murder.


