SAN DIEGO — While Comic-Con is full of fun and make-believe, one man is at the convention trying to solve a San Diego cold case using 3D art.
Located in Hall F between comic books and the Nickelodeon booth, you’ll find forensic artist Joe Mullins.
Throughout the four-day convention, he’ll be working on a sculpture in hopes of solving a San Diego cold case dating back to 1978.
"It is art with a purpose. This is where I am meant to be," said Mullins, forensic artist for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Mullins has had this job for 25 years, creating images that can help identify people who have gone missing or those who have been found but never named.
"We want somebody to see this and say, hey, I think I know who this is, and it doesn't work unless the right person sees it. So that's the ultimate goal. What better place to expose this to a new audience,” said Mullins.
The case Mullins is currently working on dates back to February 14, 1978.
The remains of an unidentified female were found off Proctor Valley Road in Otay. It's believed she was between 14 and 18 years old. She was wearing a white halter top with a blue flower pattern and blue denim overalls.
She had brown shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, pierced ears, with her right ear appearing smaller than her left, details Mullins will incorporate into this sculpture, which he'll work on and complete by the end of Comic Con.
The base of it is a 3D printout model of her actual skull provided by the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office, making the image as realistic as possible.
"What joe does to help bring these faces to life has resulted directly in the recovery and in the identification of these cases that we're working on," said Callahan Walsh, Executive Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For him, the mission is personal.
In 1981, his brother Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a Florida department store.
His remains were found two weeks later. Following the tragedy, their dad, John Walsh became a child advocate, and the long-time host of ‘America's Most Wanted.’
“This case is an older case, but we know that family is still searching. We want to provide those families with those answers," said Walsh.
Walsh says the organization his parents founded is working on 600 unidentified remains right now, and while they're not all the same, it could take just a single tip to solve each one.
"Somebody out there knows who this child is. Somebody has that information," said Walsh.
"Even if one person sees it, that's all we need," said Mullins.
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