
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 3, 1994                   TAG: 9405030167
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FAIRFAX                                 LENGTH: Short

MYSTERY SKELETON BEING RECONSTRUCTED

Homicide detectives routinely look for clues by reconstructing the scene of a crime. In the death of a woman nicknamed the Bone Lady, police also are trying to reconstruct the victim.

She was a short, white woman with brown hair, perhaps 30 years old. She had a distinctive gap between her front teeth.

She was stabbed to death and her body dumped at a desolate construction site in Fairfax County sometime in the last five years. One of the main problems in such cases is that no one is sure what the woman looked like. Without a photograph, it is hard for local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to solicit leads from the public.

So police and scientists are trying to recreate her face in hopes someone will recognize her.

A police artist did a rough sketch soon after the bones were found, but the picture produced no solid leads.

So police turned the skeleton they nicknamed Bone Lady over to the Smithsonian Institution in March.

Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist, and scientists at the FBI are working on a three-dimensional computer drawing based on his study of the bones.

``I feel that this is somebody that we will be able to get identified,'' Owsley said.

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB