No one has come forward to claim his body. It’s been nearly 15 years. The identity of a man who was bludgeoned and burned beyond recognition and found inside the doorway of a vacant rental property at 329 E. Louise St. remains a mystery to investigators.

“Could he be connected to gangs?” asked Long Beach Police Sgt. Patrick O’Dowd, who works the violent crimes detail. “Could this guy have a drug history? What’s this guy about?”

Found dead Sept. 29, 2001, his slaying is among 545 homicides in Long Beach from 2000 through 2010, with 38 percent of those cases still unsolved. Of the 11,244 homicides committed in Los Angeles County during the 11-year span, 46 percent of those for which a case status is known remain unsolved, according to an analysis of law enforcement data done by the Los Angeles News Group.

Someone hit John Doe No. 213 in the back of the head, poured gasoline on him and lit a fire, investigators said. Neighbors said transients were known to take shelter in the vacant rental property where John Doe No. 213 was found dead.

Creating a face

He was a faceless man. John Doe No. 213 had no identification on him. Investigators couldn’t lift fingerprints because his body was so badly burned. A search of his dental records proved fruitless.

In May 2002, investigators announced they had an image of John Doe No. 213.

He might have been between 23 and 35 years old, of mixed-race heritage, standing between 4 feet 11 and 5 feet 3, and weighing 100 pounds. Sketches at the time showed John Doe No. 213 with both light and dark skin. He may have had an odd haircut — which could have religious or cultural significance — a layer of shoulder-length hair in the back that fell from a mostly bald head.

How did they ascertain what the victim may have looked like?

Mike Streed was an officer in the Orange Police Department, a part-time sketch artist who had done facial reconstruction work since the early 1990s.

When he was called on to help with the case, Streed asked that the skull of John Doe No. 213 be detached from the body and stripped of its flesh. Streed said removing the flesh gives him a clean look at the skull without the burnt flesh, which at times obliterates the features or greatly distorts them.

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“It’s actually the perfect marriage between art and science because the science tells you the direction to go, especially with unidentified remains, because there’s so much they can tell from the skull in terms of previous injuries, previous illnesses and such,” said Streed, a retired police sergeant based in Southern California who runs SketchCop Solutions, a digital service that offers law enforcement agencies a platform to create high-quality digital composite images.

Streed worked with a forensic anthropologist who helped determine John Doe’s features based on what they believed would be his ethnicity, age, height and weight.

In addition to looking at autopsy photographs, Streed used a tissue-depth chart and facial landmarks to determine the thickness of John Doe’s skin. Streed filled in the eye sockets, and placed the ears based on photos from the autopsy. The skull was then photographed, enlarged and mounted on a drawing board, with transparent paper placed over it so Streed could draw the face. John Doe No. 213 had worn an earring with blue and red stones, and a necklace with a feather pendant.

“Some of it’s very exacting,” Streed said. “Anthropologists do a lot studies — measurements of the nose and lips and things like that, tissue studies and how muscle and fat grow.”

Police ran images of John Doe No. 213 in publications, but with no one coming forward with information or to claim him, detectives theorize that what typically happens in murder cases also has happened to John Doe. Witnesses and relatives fear retaliation if they step forward.

In the case of John Doe No. 213, it could be that he was an immigrant, possibly undocumented, and his friends and family either don’t know how to work with American authorities or fear coming out of the shadows themselves.

What detectives do know is that a killer could still be walking the streets, and they need someone to come forward with information to find who killed John Doe No. 213.

“You can’t have people like that running around out there,” O’Dowd said.

Streed said he always hopes his work results in a conviction but understands he is providing only one piece of the puzzle.

“Every victim is important but some are going to garner more attention than others, just based on the circumstance and victimology,” Streed said. “However, when you have a signature image that goes with that, it provides a personality for the case, some sort of anchor for the people to keep going back to.”

Technology and ethics

The Long Beach Police Department wants to update the image created of John Doe No. 213. With advancing technology, they could get an improved image of the victim and don’t want the image Streed created to be released again, they said.

That’s not a surprise to Elana Quinones-Conant, former director of the department’s Forensic Science Services Division and Crime Laboratory, and a forensics lecturer at Cal State Long Beach.

“The technology has significantly changed since 2001, so I can see them wanting to update it,” she said.

Quinones-Conant said DNA technology is advancing to the point where scientists and investigators can work with biological samples that have been severely degraded by fire, water or other components.

DNA will at some point be able to help investigators create images of victims and suspects based on genetic markers, she said.

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“What they are looking at now is the way those certain genes would express themselves,” Quinones-Conant said. “So is that person going to have blue eyes or brown eyes? Are they going to be blond or are they going to have black hair?”

There are ethical issues involved as well. How will the public react when investigators and scientists produce images based off what they consider how people groups look?

“It is controversial,” Quinones-Conant said. “We can look at someone’s genetic material now and tell you if they have certain medical conditions. A lot of times that information is private. It could create some sort of stereotyping, or prejudice or discrimination. In forensic science, we’re supposed to be unbiased. So we can introduce these things, but the consequences of it take it to a different level when you take it to a community. But if I was a criminal investigator, I would want all the tools in the tool box for my case, and I would want the technology and the science.”

But with all the technology in the world, in some cases, like that of John Doe No. 213, investigators can’t crack a case without the help of witnesses.

Sgt. Robert Woods of the Long Beach Police Department’s homicide detail wants anyone with information on the case to come forward, so that a killer can be taken off the streets, if he isn’t already dead or behind bars.

“Whoever started the fire knew this guy was going to die,” Woods said.

Anyone with information on the John Doe No. 213 case is urged to call detectives at 562-570-7244.