As Kidnap Case Ages, So Do Victim’s Photos : Pictures of Missing Children Updated to Show How They Would Look Years After Vanishing

For 10 years, Stephanie Michno’s mother tried desperately to find her missing child, kidnaped at age 3 by Stephanie’s father. But as the years passed, the fact that Stephanie looked less and less like the 3-year-old in her mother’s worn photograph made the search seem near impossible.

In early 1987, the mother contacted medical illustrators Lewis Sadler and Scott Barrows at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Using techniques they had been developing over the preceding four years, Sadler “aged” the photo of Stephanie, producing a detailed drawing of what the 3-year-old would look like at age 13.

Printed on Flyer

The aged photo was printed on the back of a flyer that was mailed to half the homes in the nation, and within two weeks, a woman in Rio Rancho, N.M., contacted authorities to say that Stephanie was her neighbor. Stephanie was reunited with her mother in North Carolina--although she ultimately chose to return to New Mexico to live with her father.

The two illustrators have created aged pictures of 80 other children. Twenty-seven of the children have been recovered, at least 19 of them as a direct result of the aged photos, according to John Rabun, deputy director of the 5-year-old National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Washington, which helps search for the 150,000 children that are parentally kidnaped each year.

Sadler and Barrows are two of a handful of artists who create aged photos of missing children, but their work is unique in that it is based on data collected by surgeons, anthropologists and dentists on how the bony structure of children’s faces changes as they age. The pair have so far worked primarily with white children because more information is available about them, but they are collecting information about other races.

“There’s an incredible amount of information out there on faces, more than you could possibly use,” Sadler said.

The illustrators have selected 26 landmarks that appear on a full-frontal photo of a child’s face. They know how the distances between these points will change as the child matures. The distance from the bridge of the nose to the base of the chin, for example, typically increases 12% between the ages of 6 and 13.

But their aging process is a tedious undertaking that requires 20 hours per picture. There is a backlog of 7,000 children who have been missing for at least three years and 12,000 for two years.

Mathematical Manipulations

Sadler and Barrows have had to manually measure each of the distances between facial landmarks on the photo, then determine what each distance would be at the new age. “All the time involved in making the drawings came from mathematical manipulations on a hand calculator,” Sadler said in a recent interview in Los Angeles.

Beginning next month, however, Sadler and Barrows will bring their innovative procedure into the computer age, a step that they and others hope will reduce the backlog of cases significantly.

A computer system they developed will be used to update the photos, dropping the time required for each photo from 20 hours to 20 minutes. Each of three graduate art students at the university who are assigned to the project will be able to age 20 to 25 photos a day, bringing new hope to parents from around the country.

“It’s really exciting,” Rabun said. “I’ve been in this for 20 years, and this is the one process that I would call revolutionary in nature.”

The computer performs a speeded-up version of Sadler and Burrows’ technique. The process is begun by scanning the old photo with a laser that transfers the image to the computer system. In seconds, the photo appears on the screen, scaled to conform to the software used in the system.

Image Broken Down

The computer is unable to identify the appropriate landmarks accurately, so an artist must use a light pen on a video terminal to locate them. The computer then breaks the image down into 100 polygons--multisided geometric shapes, each of which carried gene-like information on skin color, texture and shading.

The computer then increases the size of each polygon by an amount appropriate to the change in age. After the computer has aged the image, the artist can then change hair styles appropriately or make other cosmetic changes based upon family histories.

The computer, in effect, “warps” the faces to the new dimensions, Sadler said. “It’s not like blowing up a balloon because different parts of the face grow at different rates.”

Noses and mouths are the most difficult parts of the face to change, he added, because they are mostly soft tissue that is more variable than bony structures. And mouths, in particular, can be affected by later dental work or braces.

One of the first photos aged by this process is of Danyel Lou Sparpana of Woodland, Calif. Danyel was 3 when she was last seen in November, 1985, shortly before her mother was murdered at home by an unknown assailant. It is not known whether she wandered off on her own or was abducted by the killer.

Sadler and Barrows’ first attempt to age pictures came in 1985 when, at the behest of producers of a syndicated television show on missing people, they aged the photos of Kathleen and Deborah Caruso, who had been kidnaped by their father 7 1/2 years earlier at the ages of 5 and 7.

3 Sightings in 20 Minutes

“Within 20 minutes after the broadcast, there were three sightings, and the next day the girls were back with their mother,” Sadler said. “After that, people just came out of the woodwork” wanting pictures aged.

Shortly after that, the pair began working with the center for missing children, which screens the cases to make sure they are legitimate and makes sure all necessary permissions are obtained from parents so the aged pictures can be publicized or aired on television.

About a year and a half ago, Sadler and Barrows got a $1.3-million grant to computerize their technique so that images can be obtained more quickly. A team of graduate students has spent most of that time writing the software for the program.

Early in February, the computer was used for the first time to age pictures of non-missing children to ensure that it works properly. “We’re still debugging the system now,” he said, “but there is intense pressure to apply it.”

The computerized technique has other applications as well. As part of their regular job, for example, the illustrators help physicians design prostheses to replace body parts lost to cancer or trauma.

Sadler cited the case of one 8-year-old boy who lost his nose to cancer. Using their program and photos of the boy taken before the cancer surgery, they were able to design an appropriate new nose for the boy and, because the computer uses engineering-based software, their data can be used directly by a computer that mills a new nose from plastic.

The design can be updated every six months as the boy ages to provide a new nose that matches his age.

Nonetheless, the excitement focuses on the prospect of finding lost children. “Over a period of the next 12 to 18 months,” Rabun said, “I think we are going to see a plethora of locations, especially of parentally kidnaped children. What they really want to do is hide underground, and this is going to bring them to the surface.”