was it made by an ME? I forget.
LOL it was made by the local gynecologist who doubled as the coroner. I don't think Louisiana was using the medical examiner system at the time and this guy was probably an elected coroner. It is highly unlikely he had any forensic or pathological training.
The reason why I (MOO) believe strongly that this is CW is because there are some unique identifiers. Primarily both CW's own dentist and the odontologist Plaquemines was using verified that the dentals of BCJD and CW matched. Personally I find this pretty conclusive. In the era before DNA, dentals were the main tool used to identify people and they are still widely used today where DNA is not available, or to validate a potential match before using DNA. Dentals have been used successfully to identify millions of people, so why do we doubt that this one is accurate?
Secondly both CW and BCJD had a large scar on the inside of their mouth. I believe this is a unique identifier indicating a match.
I add in the circumstantial elements that Mrs Wallace claimed his feet matched CW's and his letter sounded like CW speaking to her and I get a positive match in my mind.
Height, weight and hair colour to me are not unique identifiers and may be shared by millions of people. I also think that the drawing should be taken with a pinch of salt; this is merely an artistic representation of what BCJD looked like; we have no idea if it was made by a forensic artist. The fact that it is in black and white is not helpful at all. There are many, many young men who have been shared here who look alot like this drawing, but do they also have the unique identifiers? HOWEVER--I want to remind everyone that The Wallace's neighbours ran round to show Mrs. Wallace the newspaper article because they recognised this as CW. That tells me it did indeed look like CW at the time (even though I don't see a massive similarity between BCJD and his High school photo, he may have changed since then).
Regarding age; again I don't think this can be so specific as 16-17. I can't think how you would narrow it down to that 1 year of age. What I would like to point out is that of all the things Mrs. Wallace said when trying to convince herself that this was not Charlie; she never said "because he looks too young". Therefore I think the age estimate should be more like 16-20.
I don't thinks Wallace said the UID hair was "dark" brown did she? Just that the hair seemed to dark for Charlie, but she also seemed to note that it could have been because the body was so pale.
Yes you're right, I believe she said the hair looks too dark to be Charlie's but then qualified the statement with "but how can you tell, his skin is so pale" (paraphrasing) so really she couldn't make a positive or negative ID based on hair colour and admitted as much.
Regarding the Does mentioned above:
- Earl Joggerst; I think he looks like a great potential match; but if his eyes were blue then that would seem to rule him out, no? He was also a good 3 inches shorter than BCJD's lower estimate.
-Orin Anderson also looks like a great match but his eyes were also blue. He had acne scars, but these weren't noted on BCJD.
-Anthony Andrzejewski had brain damage and an intellectual disability; it is stated specifically he couldn't write so that would rule him out.
-Roger Merton Day had a unique identifier in that his middle finger was crushed. This was not mentioned for BCJD.
-Edward Martin Zajac. The only thing that didn't match for him was that his hair was sandy blonde. Apart from that I couldn't rule him out.
