Frank Bender's Philadelphia studio is housed in a converted meat shop.  Eighty-eight feet long, it's filled not only with Bender's paintings and sculptures but also a wealth of antiques, an old couch, and a friendly black-and-white cat named X24C.  You might see a molded skeleton hanging from a painted tree, a full-sized commissioned bronze sculpture, glowing skulls, or a series of pastel paintings.  Below this cluttered loft area, found by going through the kitchen, is a small cellar that also serves as a studio.

Bender moves his work around, because different lighting conditions have different effects on how a sculpture looks.  He might also be working on more than one case at once, and most likely is.  Among his many tasks might be to:

• age-enhance a fugitive’s photo with sketches
• create a three-dimensional sculpture from a decomposing murder victim
• reconstruct a traffic accident
• evaluate or authenticate fine art
• devise architectural models for buildings
• create a memorial sculpture

Bender got his start as a fine artist and photographer. He never intended to work with the dead and the missing.  “I always drew and painted and never had any interest in sculpting,” Bender said.

That all changed one day in the morgue.

“Back in 1976, I was taking courses part-time at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, but they didn't have an anatomy course for evening students.” 

Bender wanted to learn more about the structure of human anatomy so a friend took him to the medical examiner's office and gave him a tour of the morgue. “While showing me around, he pointed out the decomposing body of a woman known only by a number, 5233, and said, ‘This is one of our unknowns.’”  

Bender took a closer look.  She'd been shot three times in the head at close range and left near the Philadelphia airport.  No match was made with dental records or DNA. Her fingers were too decomposed to take prints.  The possibility of identifying her seemed hopeless.

Yet Bender said, “Well, I know what she looks like.”

Just looking at her remains, although profoundly disfigured, was sufficient to evoke a vivid impression. The pathologist, Dr. Halbert Fillinger, overheard him and asked Bender if he knew anything about forensics.

Puzzled, Bender responded, “I don't even know what the word means.”

Nevertheless, Fillinger believed that Bender could help, and Bender agreed to give it a try.  “Fillinger asked me to come down to the morgue at midnight on a Friday night.  So I went, and since he was busy, he asked me to get the body.  I went into this room that had about 50 bodies.  He'd told me to just look for the toe tag to find her, but those weren't always visible.  Some were covered up, so I had to go around and lift up the sheets.  There was a woman who'd been cut up and all kinds of things in that room.”

Bender finally located the subject and took her facial measurements.  When  Fillinger asked him why he didn't just do a drawing, Bender replied that it was easier for the public to relate to a three-dimensional model. “Because I was a commercial photographer at the time, I knew how different people look under different lighting conditions.”

Back at the Academy, Bender's teacher for a sculpture course, Tony Greenwood, showed him how to make a mold and cast the bust.  When he managed to make the bust to match that of the woman he imagined, he photographed it and the photos were published in the newspaper.  That led not only to the identification of the 62-year-old woman, but also to the arrest and conviction of her killer, John Martini.

“That was my first one,” Bender said offhandedly.

How does he do it?

“It's a gift,” he said. “I pay attention to details and then get the picture in my head.”

Asked why he gets involved in such cases when he could just stick with art, he echoes the ideas of many of those who work in forensics. “We believe in what we do.  That's what keeps us going.  Like the [rescuers] working at the World Trade Center [on September 11, 2001.]  It's the need to do good and help cut the cancer out of society, and to find truth. I felt that from the very first case.”

It wasn't long before he began to get more referrals.