YAKIMA — The summer after a woman’s skeleton was found in the Lower Yakima Valley in February 1988, her skull was delivered to Central Washington University for a forensic facial reconstruction.
Despite extensive media coverage months later, the clay model generated only about half a dozen calls, and none panned out. With blankly staring eyes and a nondescript black wig, the model looked like a mannequin, though the effort was considered cutting edge at the time.
In September 2021, the Yakima County coroner released another likeness of the woman known as Parker Doe. The digital facial reconstruction by forensic artist Natalie Murry shows her with smooth, long black hair and blond highlights around her forehead. Her eyes are slightly close-set under asymmetrical eyebrows.
She has a face someone might recognize — and that’s the goal.
“The whole point of doing the work is to get it out for people to see the work,” Murry said. Hopefully in some way, that will help identify the person.
Murry is a freelance digital forensic artist who lives in Texas. Along with creating fine art, she is hired to do 2D facial reconstructions, postmortem drawings, composites and age progressions. In Washington, Murry has worked extensively for the King County Medical Examiner’s Office along with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office and various medical examiners, coroners and other investigators.
She does the best she can to create the most accurate and the most human portrait of the person as possible. The smallest details can make a big difference. “That’s how you get an identification,” Murry said.
Murry shares her skill and technique with others through publications and videos. Her second book, “Reading the Skull: Advanced 2D Reconstruction,” was released in September.
“I’m hoping to help out other artists coming along,” Murry said. “A lot of artists don’t do a lot of reconstructions.”
The mystery of Parker Doe
The woman was discovered by a horseback rider on Feb. 16, 1988, near a dirt road that leads from Parker Bridge Road to the Sunnyside Diversion Dam on the Yakima River. She is known as Parker Doe because she was found near the unincorporated town of Parker.
She is believed to have been Indigenous and was about 30 to 39 years old, approximately 5 feet tall and weighed less than 120 pounds, investigators have said. Petite clothing and distinctive shoes were found with her and her teeth showed no signs of dental work. Authorities estimated she had lain there, her face to the sky, for four to 10 months before she was found.
The cause of death is undetermined, Yakima County Coroner Jim Curtice has said, but the manner is presumed homicide because of where Doe’s skeletal remains were found.
Curtice appreciates Murry’s passion for locating and identifying missing people and unidentified remains.
“She provides a great service, not only to law enforcement and coroner’s offices,” Curtice said, but also to families and loved ones.
Parker Doe is among dozens of Indigenous women who have gone missing, have been found murdered and have died mysteriously on the Yakama Reservation and in the region. Countless others have disappeared and have been murdered in an epidemic that has impacted generations of Indigenous people around the world.
She is still unidentified, but experts have created a DNA profile for her and it will be compared to profiles of potential relatives. If those efforts don’t identify her, forensic genetic genealogy is an option.
Traditional and forensic artist
When Murry creates a digital forensic facial reconstruction, the skull guides her. A forensic artist works with a forensic anthropologist to create the victim’s appearance as closely as possible from clues on the bones. She explains the process in detail on her website, Natalie Murry Forensic Art.
“The forensic anthropologist will provide information about the sex, age and derivation of the bones (African-derived, Asian-derived, European-derived, or a mixture of two or more of these),” her website says.
Along with specific measurements and detailed photographs of the skull — which she often takes herself — and even the skull itself. Murry may have other information, such as what the person was wearing, maybe the person’s hair or a piece of jewelry or other accessories.
Studies have taught that the bone indicates the size and placement of specific facial features, according to her website. Murry knows what to look for when she reconstructs a face from a skull.
Her expertise at seeing subtle differences in skulls and creating detailed reconstructions of decomposed or skeletal human remains makes the difference.
“That’s what make the face recognizable to somebody, is that there’s subtle little differences on the face. That’s what you’re looking for on the skull that makes it different,” Murry said during an interview in Pasco earlier this summer, when she was in Washington visiting family.
Though trained in hand-rendering, Murry has been a driving force in an ongoing movement to develop digital options to make forensic art. She creates most of her forensic work using professional art software with a stylus and a Cintiq tablet.
Murry has always been an artist, but her first career was as a police officer. That was when she learned how to draw composites before retiring from police work in 2002.
“I was working patrol and my sergeant was putting on training. She said, ‘I know you like to draw’” and mentioned a two-day composite training course, Murry said. “That’s the first time I drew people.”
She completed a composite soon after the course and a supervisor recognized the person in her drawing. “Maybe this is something I could do,” Murry thought then.
In 2001, Murry attended the Forensic Facial Imaging class at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. She’s studied under forensic artists as well as fine art instructors and is a certified forensic artist with the International Association for Identification.
Some aspects of a person’s appearance are “a guess,” Murry said, including ears, eye color and hair, though occasionally investigators locate remnants of head hair. But she can determine nose projection, placement of eyebrows and eyes. She provides several examples of each in her latest book, along with other ways to create the most accurate facial reconstructions.
“You’re looking for subtle little differences on the face,” she says in a facial reconstruction video on YouTube. “Looking at this skull, this left eye, the top of orbital cavity is drooping down more. He has a pretty strong brow ridge, (which is) a male trait.”
To hone her craft, Murry makes comparisons of what she sees on various skulls. She works with and learns from forensic anthropologists, odontologists and plastic surgeons. Her book mentions cases she has worked, along with human remains she has studied at forensic anthropology centers. They include the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Work in Washington
In January 2022, detectives with the State Patrol released Murry’s updated forensic facial reconstruction of an Indigenous woman known as Helen Doe. Murry drew the original sketch of the woman, who was dubbed Helen Doe because Mount St. Helens stands in the distance of where she died along Interstate 5 on May 14, 1991.
Helen Doe was riding in a southbound tractor-trailer when it rear-ended another semi stopped in traffic near Kalama. The driver was identified but the name of his unauthorized female passenger, who was severely burned, is still unknown.
She was Indigenous. Likely in her 20s, Helen Doe was approximately 5 feet 1 inch to 5 feet 4 inches tall and is estimated to have weighed around 110 to 130 pounds. She had high cheekbones, dark hair, a dark complexion and a gap in her lower front teeth.
Those with information about her case or think they may know who she is should contact Detective Sgt. Stacy Moate at Stacy.Moate@wsp.wa.gov.
More recently, Murry was asked to do an age progression on Alyssa McLemore, an Indigenous woman who was last heard from in Kent, Wash., where she was living with her mother and grandmother. McLemore disappeared in April 2009, when she was 21.
A relative provided Murry with family photos and photos of McLemore.
“I age progressed her to her late 30s, the age she’d be now,” Murry wrote on her website. “There aren’t a lot of changes to a face between early 20s and late 30s, but you’d show some maturity and loss of baby fat in the lower face, and possibly the beginning of some facial lines depending on genetics and lifestyle.
Those with any information that could help locate McLemore are asked to call the Kent Police Department at 253-856-5800.
And Murry also completed reconstructions of unidentified remains cases for the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Cowlitz County coroner. Both were men.
In the Snohomish County case, a man brought a cranium out of Scribner Park in Lynnwood and handed it to people nearby, saying he’d found it in the park, then left without any more information, according to a post on Murry’s Facebook page. Investigators believe the man was of African descent, was over 25 years old and died more than a year ago.
Those with any information that could help identify him are asked to call the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office at 425-438-6200.
Her other recent 2D reconstruction was of a cranium found outside Cougar. He was white and a young adult. Anyone with information can call the Cowlitz County Coroner at 360-577-3079.
Murry is well aware of the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the discussion around how it might impact the work she does. But that work still needs a human touch.
“Computers cannot do this. They cannot see details on the bone,” she said. “People are not symmetrical. Computers can’t deal with that.
“The person still has to read the skull, just as it takes the person to do the drawing. We’re still going to need the artist.”
