"JOHN MEBANE DOE" - 10 yo (1998) - Mebane NC

Philadelphia forensic sculptor Frank Bender
has spent a lifetime helping police solve unspeakable crimes,
contouring in clay the faces of murder victims -- those without
identities, whose families have never come to claim or weep for them.
His meticulously painted busts have led to the prosecution of fugitive killers for the FBI, Scotland Yard and even the television crime show "America's Most Wanted." He helped nail Colombia crime lord Alphonse Perisco and Warlocks motorcycle chieftain Robert Nauss.
But to Bender, children "are a different ball game." He has just
unveiled his last sculpture -- a 10-year-old boy whose skeletal remains
were found dumped in the tall grass over a North Carolina highway in
1998.
Bender, known for his intuition as much as his forensic skills,
has an 85 percent success rate, but he likely won't know the outcome of
the case of John Doe 98-21372.
After a career launched from the city morgue and 30 years of
handling skulls and mummified remains, Bender faces a swift-moving
cancer -- pleural mesothelioma linked to asbestos exposure during his
days in the Navy.
"I am used to being surrounded by death," said Bender, 68, who
doesn't expect to live past June. "I have done everything I ever wanted
to do. I drove a race car, I have sky-dived and I helped identify a lot
of people, including fugitives on the most wanted list."
"The only thing I didn't do was make financial gain," he said "I got by."
In hospice, Bender now struggles on $2,800 a month on full
disability as a veteran. Though he never had wealth, he has earned
mountains of respect.
Bender was recently honored for a lifetime of good deeds by NC
Smart, a nonprofit organization that works to resolve missing person
cases. The group raised $1,700 to hire Bender to find out the identity
of little John Doe.
"There will be a line waiting in heaven -- all the people he
has helped," said Linda Denton, who organized the unveiling of the
boy's bust for Guardian Digital Forensics, which works with NC Smart.
"They will welcome him with open arms."
Bender, who never went to college or studied forensics, says he goes by his gut to  give a real face to lost souls.
The first child he ever reconstructed -- a Philadelphia girl
whose body was found under a bridge -- was an impossible case until,
Bender says, the pig-tailed girl came to him in a dream.
"She looked at me and smiled," he said. "Five years later her
real father saw the flyer. He came to me in court and said, 'I don't
know how you did it so accurately. The skin color and details are
right.'"
Bender said he hopes John Doe's killer can also be apprehended.
On Sept. 25, 1998, a groundskeeper mowing the grass found the
child's scattered bones and decomposed remains under a billboard in
Mebane, N.C. Only a few clues pointed to the identity of the boy: He
wore tube socks and new size-three sneakers. Folded inside his pocket
were two $20 bills and a $10.
Police ruled the death a homicide, and no one ever reported the
boy missing. Bender said he believes the boy was from out of state and
was killed by a "caretaker" -- a family member or adoptive parent.
His detailed sculpture reveals a Caucasian, perhaps Hispanic,
boy with "longish" dark hair with a "distinctive" overbite, which may
identify him.
"He's clearly recognizable as an individual," said Bender.

North Carolina Boy Might Be Recognized




"The next step is to try to get as much media coverage as we can,
hoping that someone out there will recognize him -- a family member, a
friend, a dentist, someone who knew him in school," said Denton. "We
are hoping someone who remembers the child will come forward."
She doesn't dismiss the idea that Bender might live to see the crime solved.

"It could happen tomorrow, today or 10 years from now -- you never know," she said. "And Frank's record speaks volumes."
Last year Bender helped solve the case of a homicide victim in
Boulder, Colo., 55 years after her remains were found beside a creek.
Bender sculpted a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who was later
identified as Dorothy Gay Howard of Arizona. She was 18 when she
disappeared in 1954.
"Frank told us that she would have blue eyes and she did," said Denton. "How did he know that?"
"I just know it," said Bender.
After looking at photos, Bender takes a series of minute
measurements of the skull's bone structure. He then calculates the
average tissue densities and builds them up with non-hardening clay.
When that's done, he pours reinforced plaster into a synthetic rubber mold, then sands and paints the sculpture.
Bender began his career as a commercial photographer. Enrolled
at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, he couldn't find an evening
anatomy class.
But his best friend worked at the morgue. "I'd love to come down and watch autopsies," Bender said.
There, in 1977, Bender saw a corpse of a woman who had been shot
in the head three times. He announced instinctively, "I know what she
looks like."
The coroner on duty invited Bender to join him on the
"graveyard shift" to learn more. Within five months, he helped identify
Anna Duval, 62, of Phoenix, and helped police convict her murderer,
notorious hit man John Martini.
By 1989, "America's Most Wanted" was after Bender. The show
asked him to produce a sculpture of John Emil List, an accountant from
New Jersey who killed his wife, mother and children in 1971, then
parked his car at New York's Kennedy Airport and disappeared.
After 18 years, the sculptor used old photos and produced the
killer's exact image, complete with receding hairline, wrinkles and a
pair of tortoise-shell glasses that he chose from an antique dealer.
Two weeks after the show, List was arrested.
"It's interesting that I have cancer, because I have always said
through the years that catching fugitives and identifying people takes
a piece of cancer out of our society," said Bender.
His doctors told him last October he had stage-four cancer and
eight months to live -- 16 at the outside. Now the disease has invaded
his abdomen. Tumors surround his heart and ribs.
To ease the pain, Bender relies on the same visualization
techniques he uses to conjure up the faces of missing persons. No
morphine.
"As far as the pain goes, I image it away," he said.
He is also the primary caretaker of his wife of 39 years, Jan,
who is also fighting her own battle against non-smoker's lung cancer at
61. Her cancer returned just before Bender himself was diagnosed.
"I can't believe it, boom, boom," said Bender, of the double whammy that changed a blessed life.

"Going through the same thing at the same time as Jan is in some strange, surreal sense, kind of romantic," he said.

Exposed to Asbestos in the Navy


Bender was exposed to asbestos while serving on two Navy destroyers
from 1959 to 1961, making repairs in the engine room and sleeping near
the laundry where chemical-laden clothes were strewn.
A photo of Bender in the Navy's official magazine, "All Hands," shows him handling asbestos on the steam lines.
"All that time I was exposed, for two years solid," he said. "We
did more sea time than most sailors who signed up for four years. I
wasn't just working around it, I was sleeping with it."
His daughter Vanessa, an unemployed graphic artist living in Brooklyn, N.Y., is making plans to move in with her parents.
"I talk to Frank on the phone every day," said Vanessa, 37.  "He has been a great caretaker for my mother."
"He's an incredible guy," she said, "He does what he does by gut and intuition and some people think he's nuts. He can be very intense to be around sometimes."
Bender had his studio at home and growing up among skulls and
bone parts wasn't always easy on Vanessa and her younger sister Lisa.
"It didn't give me the creeps at all, but it did my sister," said Vanessa Bender.
"It was on the kitchen table when I was a kid and eventually
when the tenant moved away, he went upstairs," she said. "Then he
bought a studio in the city."
"It was easy to explain to the kids," said Bender. "But it was
hard for the kids to explain to their friends, except when it was
Halloween and they thought it was really cool."
Now, he thinks about what's ahead for his daughters.
"Vanessa is taking it so hard, losing both her parents," he said. "I am absolutely worried more about my daughter than myself."
Bender, who has spent his life with the dead, retains his hearty
sense of humor in the face of his own death. "Sh*t happens," he laughs,
crediting his upbeat attitude to his upbringing.
"My parents raised me that way in North Philly," Bender said.
"I played on the railroad, hopping freight trains, playing in old
factories."
"My whole life has been a constant field trip, a balance of art
and science," he said. "I am always learning something through my
work."
How does he want to be remembered? he was asked. "By what I have done trying to help other people," he answered.

Maybe it's Adam Herrman. Although his adoptive family claims he ran away early 1999 the last time he was seen for sure was Feb. 1998 when he was pulled out of public school. ??

cindmo wrote:Maybe it's Adam Herrman. Although his adoptive family claims he ran away early 1999 the last time he was seen for sure was Feb. 1998 when he was pulled out of public school. ??

Here's a pic of Adam.

Saturday, April 9, 2011
Young boy's death stays mystery for over a decade




MEBANE, N.C. — Mystery still surrounds the death of a young boy whose body was discovered 12 years ago in Orange County. His identity hasn't been discovered – much less, those of his killers.

On Sept. 25, 1998, a worker mowing grass made an unusual, and gruesome, discovery: the skeleton of a 10-year-old boy.

The boy's body was under a billboard on Industrial Drive, a service road that parallels Interstate 85 South near the Buckhorn Road exit in Mebane.

"It's got a lot of traffic in the daytime hours. At nighttime, it's pretty desolate," Tim Horne, an investigator with the Orange County Sheriff's Office, said.

Investigators believe that someone placed the child's body at the edge of the woods, and a medical examiner estimates the child's body was left at the scene about three months earlier.

An autopsy determined the remains belonged to a white or Hispanic boy, about 4 feet, 11 inches tall, with dark brown hair about 3 to 4 inches long.

"When we got there, we actually found the child's socks and shoes, underwear, a pair of shorts," Horne said.

Investigators found white boys briefs, Polo-brand khaki shorts with a rider-and-horse emblem embroidered on cuff of a leg, white athletic socks and a pair of size 3 black-and-white athletic shoes with the brand “2XS” or “ZXS." He also had evidence of dental sealant on some of his teeth.

They also found $50 neatly folded inside the boy's pocket.

"The average 10-year-old doesn't have $50 in their pocket. That was unusual," Horne said.

He said a stranger element in the case, though, is that no one ever reported a missing child or came forward to claim the boy's remains.

"Someone's going to miss a child," said Horne.

"If a child died of natural causes – whatever the cause may have been – someone's going to report that child missing," he added. "There's going to be some kind of record, and we haven't got that."

Investigators do not know what happened to the boy, but they believe foul play was involved. With new DNA technology, they hope the case can be solved.

"A 10-year-old doesn't disappear normally, and no one reports it," Horne said.

Anyone with information about Boy Doe, found in Mebane in September 1998, can call NC Wanted's tipline at 1-866-439-2683 or submit a tip online.

Reporter: Gerald Owens
Web Editor: Anne Johnson

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/9264081/

Unsolved Mystery: Mebane Boy's Body Is Still Unidentified & Unclaimed After 14 Years

6:45 PM, May 7, 2013
Liz Crawford

Mebane, NC--  A little boy was found in Mebane, NC in 1998. Fourteen years later he has yet to be identified or claimed.

Investigators dubbed the little boy, "John Mebane Doe". His body was found on the side of Industrial Drive in Mebane, about 70 yards from Interstate 40 on September 25, 1998. No one reported him missing. No one ever claimed his remains.

"We assumed that within a short period of time someone would come forward. We had virtually zero response," said Investigator Tim Horn with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Horn is one of the only people that was in the department in 1998 and still there today.

"The bones were not as you might envision, all connected. Things had disarticulated and fallen away," explained Horn.

Investigators were stunned when no one came forward.

Horn said, "We checked schools, we checked churches, we checked the national database for missing children and just didn't have a match."

Medical Examiners believe the body had been there since the Spring or Summer of 1998. They believe the boy was between 8 and 11-years-old, either White or Hispanic. After reconstructing his skeleton, they think he was 4'11 weighing around 50 pounds.

The death was ruled undetermined, but probable homicide. Along with the boy's remains, his clothing was at the scene too. Sneakers, socks, underwear, and khaki shorts with $50 in the pocket were also recovered.

"Most young people back in '98 at any rate don't have $50 in their pocket," said Investigator Horn.

Along with a few sketches that were made earlier on of the boy, an FBI artist sculpted a face of what they think "John Mebane Doe" looked like.

Tim Horn will spend whatever time he has left on the force trying to answer: 'Who is "John Mebane Doe?"' and 'What happened to him?'

"The average career in law enforcement is 30 years in the state of North Carolina and I've spent almost half of my career on this one case."

The remains of the child are currently in Chapel Hill in the Medical Examiner's Office. They are kept in a small box.

If you know anything about the case of "John Mebane Doe", call the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or the Orange County Sheriff's Office at 919-644-3050.

Calls are confidential and anonymous.

http://archive.digtriad.com/rss/article/252202/57/Childs-Body-Unclaimed--Unidentified-For-14-Years