The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry - Softcover

Botha, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425246833 ISBN 13: 9780425246832

Publisher: Berkley, 2012

Synopsis

MORE THAN THIRTY MURDERS, NINE FUGITIVES, AND ONE OBSESSED MAN

In this thrilling and fascinating account of Frank Bender and his work, readers will be drawn into the cases he has solved, the intricacies of his art, the colorful characters he encounters, and the personal cost of his strange obsession. Through breathtakingly realistic sculptures, Frank Bender reconstructs the faces of the missing and the dead based in part on forensic science, and in part on deep intuition, an uncanny ability to discern not only a missing face but also the personality behind it.

His skills have led to the solving of many murders and other serious crimes, and have given faces to the victims, including the infamous case of the feminicidios—in which hundreds of murdered women were found outside Juarez, Mexico.

With a conclusion as shocking as its story is gripping, The Girl with the Crooked Nose will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

“A compelling glimpse into a gruesome profession.”—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

“Frank Bender is one of the unsung heroes of crime detection . . . In an original and highly readable nonfiction thriller, this book brims with authenticity and the complexities of crime-solving procedurals . . . [A] fascinating story of a brilliant forensic artist’s quest to solve some of the most baffling murder cases ever. It is exceptional crime writing that is timely and informative.”—Tucson Citizen

“Action-packed . . . Botha’s work relays Bender’s surprising conclusions about the case and imparts more information about reconstructing the faces of the dead than most readers will expect.” —Booklist

“[A] crackling account of a quirky, maverick forensics artist, Frank Bender, and his largely successful efforts in facial reconstruction of murder victims . . . What is extraordinary is Botha’s writing, with his unerring depiction of Bender’s painstaking work and the eventual unraveling of the brutal crimes it solves . . . The tales in this book accurately capture the dark motives and complexities of senseless murder, and even the most savvy true crime reader will not be able to resist the author’s insightful storytelling.”—Publishers Weekly

About this title

About the Author:

Ted Botha is the author of Mongo: Adventures in Trash, Apartheid in My Rucksack, and the novel The Animal Lover. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. He lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Nightmare
June 2003

Frank was used to the bad dreams. They came with the strange hours
and the heads. It was a trio that he had learned to live with ever since
the murder of Anna Duval.

The dreams returned at random, like old acquaintances—the man
hanging in the tree, the boy tied up and strangled and burnt and shot
through the temple, the man cut in half by a train—especially when he
was working on a new case.

It was very early. He had come to bed only at two A.M., after working
on a skull that he had just gotten from the New York police. He could
hear Jan breathing faintly next to him. Boy lay at his feet while Guy, black
and haughty, was barely visible on top of the video recorder in the corner,
his eyes the only thing that gave him away.

Frank knocked his knee against the side table as he got up. Boy shifted
slightly and then settled back into place. Frank turned to see if he had
woken Jan, but she hadn’t moved.

He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. He looked good for a man who
had just turned sixty-two—a flat hard stomach from years of exercising
his abs by hanging off the sofa, skin tanned from cycling along the banks
of the Schuylkill River, an eagle tattoo on his sinewy left forearm that
he’d gotten in the navy. He resembled the English actor Patrick Stewart
with a goatee, or, in his more serious moments, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Over the years he had cultivated a habit of trying to appear mysterious
by bending his head forward slightly so that he looked at a person
through his eyebrows. If it worked on men, it made women uncomfortable.
But as soon as he smiled, the jig was up. His mischievous grin was
infectious, and most people couldn’t help liking him.

He had immortalized the grin in a life-size self-portrait that he’d
painted several years earlier. Anyone standing close enough to it would
see the silver tooth near his upper right incisor—that is, if they weren’t
first struck by another part of his anatomy. Not only was Frank naked,
but he had done his penis in 3-D.

The unframed painting was propped up against a wall near the entrance
to his studio door, which meant that anyone who came in—
friends, FBI agents, artists, journalists, policemen, criminal profilers,
U.S. Marshals, even his grandchildren—had no choice but to see Frank
and his penis. It was as much a joke as his statement to the world: Here I
am. Take me or leave me.

Cocked head, wide grin, upper right incisor glinting.

Frank walked from the bedroom into the studio, which was flooded
by a full moon shining through the skylight. The luminescence lit up the
rows of heads that either looked down from several shelves along the
eastern wall or stared up from the floor, at least three dozen bodyless
saints and devils.

Yvonne Davi took up a corner near Rosella Atkinson, who was next to
James Kilgore, the last member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Ira
Einhorn was situated comfortably far from Brad Bishop and the 5,300-
year-old man. Near the front of the studio was the icy-eyed Hans
Vorhauer, a version of whom Frank had done in concrete to show off the
man’s pitted skin. John List hid behind Anna Duval, who looked slightly
shocked under her ten-dollar wig, as if Frank had sculpted her a split second
before the bullets had entered the back of her head.

Some of the busts were unpainted, identified even before Frank had a
chance to add their skin tone or the color of their corneas. Other busts
had almost too much color, like the girl with green eyes, sculpted when
National Geographic was trying to track down the peasant from
Afghanistan who had become one of its most famous cover girls.

The heads that hadn’t been identified—at least not yet, or not that
Frank knew of—were usually known by an epithet that he or the police
had given them, one that came with the manner or location of their
death. The Boy in the Bag. The Girl in the Sewer. The Burnt Boy. The
Girl in the Well. The Man in the Dumpster.

The victim Frank had dreamed about tonight, The Girl in the
Steamer Trunk, was inconspicuous between all the others on the shelves,
smaller, darker. She had braids that Vanessa had helped him with. Her
body had been found dumped under a Philadelphia bridge in the winter
of 1982.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0425246833
• ISBN 13: 9780425246832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400