Staff photo / Ed Runyan... Sam Molnar, forensic artist for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, stands near the facial reconstruction she created based on a skull found off Liberty Road near Mount Hope Cemetery on Youngstown’s East Side on Sept. 10, 1987, by two squirrel hunters. The clay image is a reconstruction based on the skull, which is believed to have been at the site three to five years before it was found. Details on the bust such as eye color and hair are artist estimations only.

YOUNGSTOWN — Do you know the face pictured at left?

Does it look like someone you knew close to 40 years ago in the Youngstown area?

That’s the question the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Youngstown Police Department and Mahoning County Coroner’s Office are asking.

They had a news conference Thursday at the Youngstown Police Department to show the public a facial reconstruction of a skull found Sept. 10, 1987, off Liberty Road near Mount Hope Cemetery on the East Side.

Forensic artist Sam Molnar of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation created the reconstruction — her 10th such bust in the last seven years for the agency, and the first such reconstruction BCI has done in the Youngstown area.

BCI says the reconstruction is believed to represent what the person might have looked like — a black male 30 to 44 years old, whose skull may have been in the spot where it was found for three to five years.

Other identifying information, such as eye color, height and weight or type of hair are unknown. The clay reconstruction eye and hair characteristics “are the artist’s estimations to complete the image,” according to BCI.

Anyone who thinks they may recognize the man is asked to call the coroner’s office at 330-740-2175.

“Today we are hoping there is a family, a friend — someone who can say, ‘That looks like somebody.’ If it resembles anybody you think it looks like, we ask you to contact us,” Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said during the conference. “It may not be exact,” he said.

A Liberty Road man, Charles Humphries, 71, and his grandson, Jason Scnich, 11, found the skeleton in a wooded area off of Liberty Road while squirrel hunting and called police, according to a Vindicator news article. The area was along a closed portion of Liberty Road about 200 yards north of the weed-covered Mount Hope Park Cemetery, the article states.

The remains were turned over to a Youngstown State University anthropology professor in October 1987, where they remained for decades.

A year or so ago, Detective Dave Sweeney with the Youngstown Police Department, who has worked on cold cases and unidentified remains cases for several years, was alerted to the remains at YSU and began working on the case with Theresa Gaetano of the coroner’s office, who later turned over the remains to BCI.

Molnar said in this John Doe case, she had only skeletal remains. After BCI received them, the remains went to an anthropologist who provided sex and race and estimate of age, which were given to Molnar. She took the skull to a hospital, where a CT scan was done to generate a three dimensional image and print on a 3D printer, “essentially generating a three-dimensional image of the skull.”

The reconstruction was created over a plastic replica of the skull, preserving the skull for DNA and other analysis.

She said if anyone seeing the re-creation thinks the image might look like a loved one from this time period, “even if you never reported them (missing) back then, you can still and report them now,” she said. “The most important thing is trying to get DNA submitted so that we can match the DNA from this John Doe to your loved one.”

The DNA from the John Doe is on file, and it is loaded in the database used by law enforcement, so if someone wants to see if this John Doe is their loved one, they can submit DNA to try to find out, she said.

She said people living away from the Youngstown area can contact their sheriff’s office to submit DNA and compare it to this John Doe.

BCI has compared John Doe’s DNA to the people already in the state’s DNA database, and it has not matched, she said. “Whoever this John Doe is, his family members have not come forward yet …”

Molnar said of the 10 reconstructions over the last seven years, five have resulted in identification of the person.

Joe Mortitzer, superintendent of the Ohio BCI, told reporters the reason BCI does facial reconstructions is to “bring closure to the families. We were able to bring closure to two families in Franklin County in Central Ohio. To watch the family members and the sense of relief was fulfilling to us.”

He said facial reconstructions go “hand in hand with our work in the DNA lab. We have made great strides in DNA today to identify bodies not just directly but through familial genealogical DNA. We have really tried hard, and this has been a high priority for the attorney general, and that is to bring peace by solving these kinds of cold cases.”

erunyan@vindy.com