SAN ANTONIO—Dumped in a ravine about 10 miles southeast of downtown Lubbock, the skeletal remains went undetected for eight months.

Just four days after Christmas in 2005, a motorist in east Lubbock County noticed something on the ground—a grim discovery that spawned a 2 1/2-year investigation into what authorities described as a brutal killing.

In a small, wooded area just west of the road lay the skull of a teenage homicide victim, beaten and stabbed multiple times. And while the bones gave experts some clues—the victim was believed to be a black male 12 to 19 years old and about 5 feet 9 inches tall—his identity remained a mystery.

After nearly a year with no leads, the case went cold. That’s when the Texas Rangers, assisting local authorities with the investigation, called in its forensic artist, Suzanne Birdwell.

Her specialty: re-creating faces. Where the average person sees a weathered skull, Birdwell sees skin and flesh. Using a reconstruction process to identify people who have been relegated to nothing but bones, she gives a face to the dead.

“To a layperson, a skull is a skull is a skull,” said Birdwell, one of only two forensic artists employed full-time by Texas law enforcement. “I’m at the point now where I look at one and can already be visualizing in my mind what they look like in terms of their facial features.”

Working with investigators in 2006, Birdwell sculpted the victim’s face based on skull measurements, but the clay cast turned up no leads. Birdwell, 35, knew the case was solvable, so she went back to the drawing board.

The complete picture came about a year later in the form of a second reconstruction—this time a drawing based on measurements from a life-size photo of the skull. In December, nearly two years to the date after the teen’s remains were found, Birdwell’s drawing was circulated to media across four states.

And with it, the identity of Bernard Wilson, a 17-year-old high student described by family as a teen who hadn’t yet found his way in life, emerged.

Within a day of putting out Birdwell’s second reconstruction, investigators had new hope. A man saw the image on TV and called detective Terry Stephens claiming to be the victim’s father. DNA tests would confirm Wilson’s identity by late February.

After Bernard Wilson was identified, police started tracking down his killers. Within a month of identifying the skull, two suspects were arrested in connection with the slaying, Stephens said. Arrests of four others believed to be connected to the killing would soon follow.

Growing up, Birdwell developed a natural aptitude for art. But it wasn’t until 1999, when she saw an interview with a courtroom sketch artist, that she took an interest in pursuing it as a career. Birdwell did what many young people do when they research a job: she googled it. From there, she knew exactly what path to follow.

It turned out to be a perfect match. Birdwell was looking for something that would allow her to use her natural gift for drawing to help people in a law enforcement setting. Forensic art provided her with just the right formula: A job that blends elements of science and art with criminal justice.

But the work is grisly and demanding. No university degrees or licenses are offered in the field. To learn the craft, artists attend specialized workshops across the country that focus on interviewing victims, analyzing bones and creating sculptures out of skulls.

And while thousands are trained, most are employed on a freelance basis. Only a handful of forensic artists have scored full-time jobs with law enforcement, including two in Texas.

Birdwell has completed about 300 seminar hours and in 2006 graduated from Texas State University-San Marcos with a Criminal Justice degree, which has helped her maneuver within various law enforcement agencies across the country.

She joined the Rangers soon after graduation as a non-commissioned officer—no gun, no badge and no investigative detail—and in that time has completed about 140 pieces of art. Her work consists, in part, of facial reconstructions and other post-mortem art, for which she’ll take a homicide victim who has suffered severe trauma or is in advanced stages of decomposition and draw a clean facial image for the media.

Birdwell also creates drawings of items found near or on the body. Such was the case of a San Antonio woman whose decomposed body was found in May 2007 by ranchers in Live Oak.

Originally asked to do a facial reconstruction to help identify the woman, Birdwell instead examined clothing, jewelry and a tattoo that depicted two butterflies and the initials “R.T.” to create an article exhibit. Martina Trevino Alderete, a 33-year-old mother of four and the shortest of her five sisters at only 4 feet 11 inches, was identified within a day of the drawings’ release after a family member saw the tattoo on TV.

In March 2007, she created a composite sketch of a woman posing as a nurse who had abducted a 3-day-old infant from the maternity ward of a Lubbock-area hospital, according to court documents.

Within 24 hours, the baby was safely returned to its parents, and police arrested a suspect in New Mexico.