July 14, 2021 • 15 mins
What would Sneha look like today?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
From My Heart Radio. This is Missing on nine eleven,
the story of one woman who vanished on the eve
of history and my quest to find her. I'm your host,
John Wallzac. My name I go back professionalized Michael W.
(00:45):
Street and I'm a forensic facial imaging expert and certified
forensic artists. I do any type of forensic facial imaging consultation,
actual work on the face in terms of facial comparisons
for probable identities, aged progressions, age regressions, postmor imaging, skullar reconstructions,
(01:06):
such facial composites for witness descriptions, so anything involving the face. Um,
we pretty much tried to do. As a kid, Michael
loved art, but after high school he wanted a stable career,
so he followed in his father's footsteps and became a
cop art aspirations aside until one night is SI Police
(01:27):
Sketch broadcast on the news, and I had this epiphany,
this aha moment where I'm like, that's it. That's what
I'm going to do, That's how I can merge the two. Today,
Michael runs a company called Sketch cop He's one of
the nation's leading forensic artists trained by both the FBI
and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He's
in such high demand that he often has to turn
(01:48):
down projects, but he agreed to work with us to
create an age progressed image of snay Ha so we
can see what she would look like today, twenty years
after she disappeared. To start, Michael asked for high quality
images of say Hawk and her immediate family. I'm looking
for something that the head and the neck and just
below the breastplate, pretty much Philip. The photo field. Sometimes,
(02:12):
you know, the graduation pictures or professional pictures are taken
from a few feet back, and there's usually like a
flag in the background, a bookcase or some other sort
of decore. You know, those are okay, But again the
Porkerd's ideal. You get full face, you get some sort
of expression of emotion, and the photos of the family,
it gives us an opportunity to see how the person
(02:35):
is likely to age. All a lot of it has
to do with lifestyle, medical condition, exercise, diet, alcohol, drug abuse.
All these different things factor in turns to the aging.
But the family is always a good place to start,
and sometimes if there's enough of a resemblance. I'll actually
merge some of the photograph of the family member into
(02:55):
the missing person, so that always helps. Then, of course,
you have to have photo references of your own, because
hairstyles changed quite a bit and it's unlikely that that
person is going to wear the same hairstyle throughout the
course of their life. And then there's preferred colors of
clothing and styles of clothing and such. So you know
(03:16):
between the parker of the person, the last known porker
of them taken, the family reference photos, and your own
reference photos. You kind of mix all those up together
and a little bit of science, a little bit of
artistic license, and come up with something that resembles the
person at least. So talk about this specific case. I
sent you photos of snay Haw and of her family.
(03:38):
Was there one in particular a reference photo that jumped
out immediately is well, this is the one that I
want to use to start from. When their kids, it's
a little bit different. I may integrate a photo of
a parent because there may be something that jumps out
in terms of a resemblance, and it's good to blend
photos and such, But when they're adults, I only look
(04:00):
the parents pictures of the siblings pictures at that particular
age as a guide in terms of how I'm going
to proceed, and I may not even use them at
all because they become not so much irrelevant. Like in
sneahousekis because she was a doctor. She wore her hair
a certain way, her skin looked a certain way, her
the way she dressed very professional. It didn't appear to
(04:21):
me that she had the environmental issues that came into
play with aging like her parents did. In terms of
growing up in in UM, I think India, yeah, and um,
I have a lot of associates, a lot of friends
in India, and it's a it's a very modern country.
But at the same time, you know, the lifestyle some
parts of the country, they're a huge country, is going
(04:41):
to be a little bit different and caused the aging process.
And even if the parents were professionals, again that the dress,
the lifestyle, a lot of things were different versus her
being Americanized. So I just went ahead and looked at
the brothers and the parents, and there were some things
that took into consideration in terms of way to the face.
And I may have gone back and grab some old
(05:03):
eyebrows from one of seeing hows earlier pictures in which
she was younger, because the way I age progressed her
was in a way that a smart, intelligent, professional woman
who is likely over time to relax into a more
casual yet still professional, fresh young for her age at
the time, I progressed her too. So I believe be
(05:25):
fifty one, very breezy and laid back, but with that
still professional demeanor and still you know, keeping up her appearance,
so to speaking, being very interested in keeping up her apparents.
It's interesting the impact that the hair and the clothes
have because the face seems more straightforward, and the hair
and the clothes, like you said, that seems more just subjective.
So you've just taken into account somebody's biography and just
(05:47):
whatever you know about them, and when you choose how
to express what their hair might look like at a
certain point, or what clothes they might be wearing. I do.
I look at myself as a as an artist, but
not in the sense of like a lot of artists
to and you know, my art is the vehicle that
gets me to where I need to be in terms
of an investigation, and or you know, creating a facial image,
(06:09):
and in the case of age progression, in the case
of skelped remains reconstruction. That's where you really get to
be an artist. In terms of expressing some sort of
lifestyle imagery, you're almost like imposing your own experience and
a lot of other things. And so in her case,
I didn't believe for a minute that she would be
(06:30):
any different than she was when she was younger. I
had a look and project and say, Okay, she worked
really hard to become what she was in the generations
she grew up in, and the way she saw herself
in terms of the way she dressed, the way she
kept her appearance, her skin, she kept herself up well,
(06:52):
and I didn't think that that would change over time.
I didn't think that. And again, we can't predict the
person is going to get sick. We can't predict that
they're gonna become an alcoholic. But I assume, because of
the discipline that she had to get through medical school
to achieve that all that she had done before she disappeared,
(07:14):
that that wasn't going to change if she was still alive.
And again, until you find a body, always have to
presume someone's alive out there. That she would still age well,
so to speak, and maybe by then she was able
to either be retired SIMI retired, and the clothing, although nice,
(07:35):
didn't have to be so professional, and the hairstyle could
be a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more length,
a little bit looser still. But at the same time,
I wanted to be able to keep that smile on
those friendly eyes that she had, that very approachable appearance.
I wanted her to keep that. So how long did
it take you to to do this? I probably worked
(07:57):
on this, um nearly all old day for eight hours.
Imagine I'm you, You're sitting in front of the computer.
How do how do you even start? Well? Tip of day.
I started out trying to learn as much as I
can about the person. So I actually googled her name
and read and read a Wikipedia story and it was
pretty consistent with what I heard to begin with. So
(08:18):
I get kind of a sense or of flavor of
who the person was, and what they've been through and
how they got to where they were and what led
up to disappearance. I looked at the pictures that you provided,
and I took the targeted photo, which was the most
portrait like one had her in the front of you,
and I made some adjustments in terms, so I cropped
the photo. I made some color adjustments and some skin
(08:40):
tone adjustments, and from there I looked at the reference
photos and decided what I was going to use, if
I was going to use any at all, and then
start researching my own archives as well as pictures on
the Internet of different hairstyles and clothing types and such
signs of aging, you know, skin tones, skin textures, things
like that, And then I spend the time, you know,
(09:01):
putting it all together, and sometimes it works and you've
got to replace the part and use another one. And
once you pull everything together, it's a matter of scaling,
setting opacities on your on your layers, and you start
layering wrinkles over the face or hairstyles, just to make
sure anything fits together and blends well. Michael emailed me
the age progressed image. It was really bizarre to see
(09:25):
today smiling. What am I looking at? I don't know
how to ask this. Am I looking at some blend
of photos and like artistic photoshop tools or what exactly
is the final product? The final product is my interpretation
of what she would look like. If she were found today,
and the photoshop and the tools I use in nothing
(09:48):
more than tools. And there's a misconception that it's photoshop
that drives it is the software programs that drive the
age progression when a reality is just the opposite. I
could have take in this and got the same result
by drawing it or by tracing it with a pencil
or drawing it with a pencil. So you know, what
you're looking at is basically a portrait based upon my
(10:10):
knowledge of aging, in my interpretation of what she would
look like, based upon the information I'd have from the
photos in accomplishing that through Photoshop and other tools I used,
and looking specifically at the layers this rendering that you did,
is this? Are there pieces of photos in this? How
do all the layers come together? Like? Is this a
mix of art and photos? It's um, it's it's both.
(10:35):
I mean, I grab a hairstyle here, I grab a
shirt there. Her original photo that you provided is the
base image within that photo. I took that photo and
I added way to the face. You know, use the
warping tool to pull a couple of features downward, because
(10:56):
as we get older, gravity takes effect. But large day
after that was just taking aging artifacts like facial lines
in hairstyles and showing just and just layering those on
top of the original image and blending them in. I
had to do some digital painting. I had to do
some air brushing and stuff like that, and some blending.
But how frequently do you get asked to do age
(11:19):
progression for adults versus children? I imagine it's it's less common,
it's less commons It's mostly most of the requests I
get are from people who want to see how child
would look had they lived to adulthood. It's it's a
great tool if nothing else, that helps get their case,
especially in the case of the missing person out in
(11:40):
front of media. Again, what about this case in particular?
Move to you. I thought that there was a person
who worked really hard, um to get to where she
was and obviously loving supportive family, and just to have
all that presumably taken and in this horrible, horrible act
(12:03):
and her life done an instance, all that work, all
that discipline, all that time and money, everything with a
life of promise ahead. In this case, I just saw
life unfulfilled. You know what's interesting is every everybody who
worked with her that I've talked to um and friends
say that she didn't actually want to be a doctor,
(12:23):
she wanted to be an artist. Mm hmm. Interesting. And
you know, the funny thing is is that I've met
a lot of people that wind up in careers lawyers.
That is, it's probably I talked to more lawyers that
never wanted to be lawyers. They absolutely hate being lawyers,
that they could do something else. They would do something
(12:44):
else in a heartbeat. And a lot of its cultural dynamics,
family dynamics, practicality. And I'm really thankful that I picked
a career that I chose. My father want me to
do it, I chose it, and it the end, I
was rewarded in such a way that I could go
off and do what I wanted. If I wanted to
(13:05):
work in a seven eleven a surfboard shop, if I
wanted to go door to do our selling back and cleaners,
or do what I'm doing, I could do it because
I could afford to do it. I'm able to do that.
But it didn't come up without a lot of hard
work and sacrifices. And thankfully my body wasn't compromised in
terms of injury or death and my my psyches turned
out pretty well though. I've seen some really horrible, horrible
(13:26):
things and heard some horrible things in my lifetime, but unfortunate.
So I'm sorry that she didn't get to realize her dream.
To view the age progressive image of snay Ha, go
to Twitter dot com slash John Wallsack. That's Twitter dot
com slash j O n w A l c z
(13:47):
a K. We're back next week with a brand new
full length episode. Next time I'm missing on nine eleven.
So you're saying that she went out without her glasses
and without her wallet. Yes, actually, I believed she used
Rawn's credit card to make the purchase at Century twenty one.
She didn't even have her own I d s she
(14:08):
had his credit card. You can reach us by phone
at one eight three three new Tips that's one eight
three three six three nine eight four seven seven again
one eight three three six three nine eight four seven seven,
or you can read speed via email at tips at
(14:29):
iHeart media dot com. That's tips, T I P s
at iHeart media dot com. Ben Ballen is our executive producer.
Paul Deckan is our supervising producer. Chris Brown is our
assistant producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson is our producer, Sam T.
Garden is our research assistant, and I'm your host and
executive producer John Waalzack. Cover art by Pam Peacock. Special
(14:51):
thanks to to Make a Campbell at iHeart and to
Christoph Zappery in New Orleans. Also thank you to Michael W.
Street and ASoP Rock. If you want to hire Michael
or views work, go to sketch cop dot com. Original
theme music by ASoP Rock. Check out Asop's website at
ASoP rock dot com. If you like this show, check
out our first season, Missing in Alaska, about the nineteen
(15:13):
seventy two disappearance of two congressmen. Missing on nine eleven
is a co production of I Heart Radio and Greenfork
Media
From My Heart Radio. This is Missing on nine eleven,
the story of one woman who vanished on the eve
of history and my quest to find her. I'm your host,
John Wallzac. My name I go back professionalized Michael W.
(00:45):
Street and I'm a forensic facial imaging expert and certified
forensic artists. I do any type of forensic facial imaging consultation,
actual work on the face in terms of facial comparisons
for probable identities, aged progressions, age regressions, postmor imaging, skullar reconstructions,
(01:06):
such facial composites for witness descriptions, so anything involving the face. Um,
we pretty much tried to do. As a kid, Michael
loved art, but after high school he wanted a stable career,
so he followed in his father's footsteps and became a
cop art aspirations aside until one night is SI Police
(01:27):
Sketch broadcast on the news, and I had this epiphany,
this aha moment where I'm like, that's it. That's what
I'm going to do, That's how I can merge the two. Today,
Michael runs a company called Sketch cop He's one of
the nation's leading forensic artists trained by both the FBI
and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He's
in such high demand that he often has to turn
(01:48):
down projects, but he agreed to work with us to
create an age progressed image of snay Ha so we
can see what she would look like today, twenty years
after she disappeared. To start, Michael asked for high quality
images of say Hawk and her immediate family. I'm looking
for something that the head and the neck and just
below the breastplate, pretty much Philip. The photo field. Sometimes,
(02:12):
you know, the graduation pictures or professional pictures are taken
from a few feet back, and there's usually like a
flag in the background, a bookcase or some other sort
of decore. You know, those are okay, But again the
Porkerd's ideal. You get full face, you get some sort
of expression of emotion, and the photos of the family,
it gives us an opportunity to see how the person
(02:35):
is likely to age. All a lot of it has
to do with lifestyle, medical condition, exercise, diet, alcohol, drug abuse.
All these different things factor in turns to the aging.
But the family is always a good place to start,
and sometimes if there's enough of a resemblance. I'll actually
merge some of the photograph of the family member into
(02:55):
the missing person, so that always helps. Then, of course,
you have to have photo references of your own, because
hairstyles changed quite a bit and it's unlikely that that
person is going to wear the same hairstyle throughout the
course of their life. And then there's preferred colors of
clothing and styles of clothing and such. So you know
(03:16):
between the parker of the person, the last known porker
of them taken, the family reference photos, and your own
reference photos. You kind of mix all those up together
and a little bit of science, a little bit of
artistic license, and come up with something that resembles the
person at least. So talk about this specific case. I
sent you photos of snay Haw and of her family.
(03:38):
Was there one in particular a reference photo that jumped
out immediately is well, this is the one that I
want to use to start from. When their kids, it's
a little bit different. I may integrate a photo of
a parent because there may be something that jumps out
in terms of a resemblance, and it's good to blend
photos and such, But when they're adults, I only look
(04:00):
the parents pictures of the siblings pictures at that particular
age as a guide in terms of how I'm going
to proceed, and I may not even use them at
all because they become not so much irrelevant. Like in
sneahousekis because she was a doctor. She wore her hair
a certain way, her skin looked a certain way, her
the way she dressed very professional. It didn't appear to
(04:21):
me that she had the environmental issues that came into
play with aging like her parents did. In terms of
growing up in in UM, I think India, yeah, and um,
I have a lot of associates, a lot of friends
in India, and it's a it's a very modern country.
But at the same time, you know, the lifestyle some
parts of the country, they're a huge country, is going
(04:41):
to be a little bit different and caused the aging process.
And even if the parents were professionals, again that the dress,
the lifestyle, a lot of things were different versus her
being Americanized. So I just went ahead and looked at
the brothers and the parents, and there were some things
that took into consideration in terms of way to the face.
And I may have gone back and grab some old
(05:03):
eyebrows from one of seeing hows earlier pictures in which
she was younger, because the way I age progressed her
was in a way that a smart, intelligent, professional woman
who is likely over time to relax into a more
casual yet still professional, fresh young for her age at
the time, I progressed her too. So I believe be
(05:25):
fifty one, very breezy and laid back, but with that
still professional demeanor and still you know, keeping up her appearance,
so to speaking, being very interested in keeping up her apparents.
It's interesting the impact that the hair and the clothes
have because the face seems more straightforward, and the hair
and the clothes, like you said, that seems more just subjective.
So you've just taken into account somebody's biography and just
(05:47):
whatever you know about them, and when you choose how
to express what their hair might look like at a
certain point, or what clothes they might be wearing. I do.
I look at myself as a as an artist, but
not in the sense of like a lot of artists
to and you know, my art is the vehicle that
gets me to where I need to be in terms
of an investigation, and or you know, creating a facial image,
(06:09):
and in the case of age progression, in the case
of skelped remains reconstruction. That's where you really get to
be an artist. In terms of expressing some sort of
lifestyle imagery, you're almost like imposing your own experience and
a lot of other things. And so in her case,
I didn't believe for a minute that she would be
(06:30):
any different than she was when she was younger. I
had a look and project and say, Okay, she worked
really hard to become what she was in the generations
she grew up in, and the way she saw herself
in terms of the way she dressed, the way she
kept her appearance, her skin, she kept herself up well,
(06:52):
and I didn't think that that would change over time.
I didn't think that. And again, we can't predict the
person is going to get sick. We can't predict that
they're gonna become an alcoholic. But I assume, because of
the discipline that she had to get through medical school
to achieve that all that she had done before she disappeared,
(07:14):
that that wasn't going to change if she was still alive.
And again, until you find a body, always have to
presume someone's alive out there. That she would still age well,
so to speak, and maybe by then she was able
to either be retired SIMI retired, and the clothing, although nice,
(07:35):
didn't have to be so professional, and the hairstyle could
be a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more length,
a little bit looser still. But at the same time,
I wanted to be able to keep that smile on
those friendly eyes that she had, that very approachable appearance.
I wanted her to keep that. So how long did
it take you to to do this? I probably worked
(07:57):
on this, um nearly all old day for eight hours.
Imagine I'm you, You're sitting in front of the computer.
How do how do you even start? Well? Tip of day.
I started out trying to learn as much as I
can about the person. So I actually googled her name
and read and read a Wikipedia story and it was
pretty consistent with what I heard to begin with. So
(08:18):
I get kind of a sense or of flavor of
who the person was, and what they've been through and
how they got to where they were and what led
up to disappearance. I looked at the pictures that you provided,
and I took the targeted photo, which was the most
portrait like one had her in the front of you,
and I made some adjustments in terms, so I cropped
the photo. I made some color adjustments and some skin
(08:40):
tone adjustments, and from there I looked at the reference
photos and decided what I was going to use, if
I was going to use any at all, and then
start researching my own archives as well as pictures on
the Internet of different hairstyles and clothing types and such
signs of aging, you know, skin tones, skin textures, things
like that, And then I spend the time, you know,
(09:01):
putting it all together, and sometimes it works and you've
got to replace the part and use another one. And
once you pull everything together, it's a matter of scaling,
setting opacities on your on your layers, and you start
layering wrinkles over the face or hairstyles, just to make
sure anything fits together and blends well. Michael emailed me
the age progressed image. It was really bizarre to see
(09:25):
today smiling. What am I looking at? I don't know
how to ask this. Am I looking at some blend
of photos and like artistic photoshop tools or what exactly
is the final product? The final product is my interpretation
of what she would look like. If she were found today,
and the photoshop and the tools I use in nothing
(09:48):
more than tools. And there's a misconception that it's photoshop
that drives it is the software programs that drive the
age progression when a reality is just the opposite. I
could have take in this and got the same result
by drawing it or by tracing it with a pencil
or drawing it with a pencil. So you know, what
you're looking at is basically a portrait based upon my
(10:10):
knowledge of aging, in my interpretation of what she would
look like, based upon the information I'd have from the
photos in accomplishing that through Photoshop and other tools I used,
and looking specifically at the layers this rendering that you did,
is this? Are there pieces of photos in this? How
do all the layers come together? Like? Is this a
mix of art and photos? It's um, it's it's both.
(10:35):
I mean, I grab a hairstyle here, I grab a
shirt there. Her original photo that you provided is the
base image within that photo. I took that photo and
I added way to the face. You know, use the
warping tool to pull a couple of features downward, because
(10:56):
as we get older, gravity takes effect. But large day
after that was just taking aging artifacts like facial lines
in hairstyles and showing just and just layering those on
top of the original image and blending them in. I
had to do some digital painting. I had to do
some air brushing and stuff like that, and some blending.
But how frequently do you get asked to do age
(11:19):
progression for adults versus children? I imagine it's it's less common,
it's less commons It's mostly most of the requests I
get are from people who want to see how child
would look had they lived to adulthood. It's it's a
great tool if nothing else, that helps get their case,
especially in the case of the missing person out in
(11:40):
front of media. Again, what about this case in particular?
Move to you. I thought that there was a person
who worked really hard, um to get to where she
was and obviously loving supportive family, and just to have
all that presumably taken and in this horrible, horrible act
(12:03):
and her life done an instance, all that work, all
that discipline, all that time and money, everything with a
life of promise ahead. In this case, I just saw
life unfulfilled. You know what's interesting is every everybody who
worked with her that I've talked to um and friends
say that she didn't actually want to be a doctor,
(12:23):
she wanted to be an artist. Mm hmm. Interesting. And
you know, the funny thing is is that I've met
a lot of people that wind up in careers lawyers.
That is, it's probably I talked to more lawyers that
never wanted to be lawyers. They absolutely hate being lawyers,
that they could do something else. They would do something
(12:44):
else in a heartbeat. And a lot of its cultural dynamics,
family dynamics, practicality. And I'm really thankful that I picked
a career that I chose. My father want me to
do it, I chose it, and it the end, I
was rewarded in such a way that I could go
off and do what I wanted. If I wanted to
(13:05):
work in a seven eleven a surfboard shop, if I
wanted to go door to do our selling back and cleaners,
or do what I'm doing, I could do it because
I could afford to do it. I'm able to do that.
But it didn't come up without a lot of hard
work and sacrifices. And thankfully my body wasn't compromised in
terms of injury or death and my my psyches turned
out pretty well though. I've seen some really horrible, horrible
(13:26):
things and heard some horrible things in my lifetime, but unfortunate.
So I'm sorry that she didn't get to realize her dream.
To view the age progressive image of snay Ha, go
to Twitter dot com slash John Wallsack. That's Twitter dot
com slash j O n w A l c z
(13:47):
a K. We're back next week with a brand new
full length episode. Next time I'm missing on nine eleven.
So you're saying that she went out without her glasses
and without her wallet. Yes, actually, I believed she used
Rawn's credit card to make the purchase at Century twenty one.
She didn't even have her own I d s she
(14:08):
had his credit card. You can reach us by phone
at one eight three three new Tips that's one eight
three three six three nine eight four seven seven again
one eight three three six three nine eight four seven seven,
or you can read speed via email at tips at
(14:29):
iHeart media dot com. That's tips, T I P s
at iHeart media dot com. Ben Ballen is our executive producer.
Paul Deckan is our supervising producer. Chris Brown is our
assistant producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson is our producer, Sam T.
Garden is our research assistant, and I'm your host and
executive producer John Waalzack. Cover art by Pam Peacock. Special
(14:51):
thanks to to Make a Campbell at iHeart and to
Christoph Zappery in New Orleans. Also thank you to Michael W.
Street and ASoP Rock. If you want to hire Michael
or views work, go to sketch cop dot com. Original
theme music by ASoP Rock. Check out Asop's website at
ASoP rock dot com. If you like this show, check
out our first season, Missing in Alaska, about the nineteen
(15:13):
seventy two disappearance of two congressmen. Missing on nine eleven
is a co production of I Heart Radio and Greenfork
Media
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com