HAMILTON -- She was found along the dirty banks of the Passaic River without a name.

The woman's body, badly decomposed, had distinctive jewelry that investigators hoped would help identify her. Nearly three years later, her name still eludes them.

But Donna Fontana has given her a face.

The forensic anthropologist works in a tiny two-person laboratory at the State Police's technology center in Hamilton, trying to link names to piles of bone and bits of flesh by examining their markings, testing their DNA and meticulously documenting their quirks and features in missing and unidentified persons databases, searching for a match.

If all else fails, Fontana will sculpt clay atop their skulls, creating uncanny 3D models based on the bone structure and other details that bring human remains back to life.

"It is not a scientific means of identification," Fontana said during an interview at her lab Thursday, standing next to the clay model of the mystery woman's head. "It is just an opportunity for law enforcement to get -- possibly -- a name, when we don't have any name at all."

Combined with more conclusive identification methods Fontana uses, such as DNA testing or dental X-rays, the models help chip away at an ever-growing list of the unaccounted dead here in New Jersey and across the United States. And there are many unaccounted.

According to the National Institute of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs, 357 bodies that have been found in New Jersey and are now in the custody of law enforcement have never been identified. Those are just the ones police have entered into the database, a voluntary tool created in 2007 with help from the federal Justice Department.

The network, while imperfect, helps connect the missing with the unidentified dead.

The NamUs listing for the woman whose face Fontana has recreated in clay indicates that 38 possible matches -- missing persons from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania -- have been ruled out by various methods.

After the trail ran cold, detectives from Essex County Sheriff's Office and the State Police Missing Persons Unit turned to Fontana to create the 3D model.

The State Police scientist used to toil in obscurity, but the proliferation of police procedurals like Fox's "Bones" has made "forensic anthropologist" almost a household phrase.

Authorities are now looking to harness public interest to help them crack this case.

BODY BY THE RIVER

Here is what police know about the woman from the river: She was found by Newark Police along the water's edge on April 22, 2013, about a city block from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

She wore thermal clothing, hoop earrings, a black watch and a tangle of four necklaces. Three of the necklaces held what police described as "charms reminiscent of Ethiopian crosses" hung with ribbon in the green, yellow, and red tricolor of the Ethiopian flag. She was black, between 30 and 50 years old, with dark, curly hair. She stood five feet, four inches tall and weighed 140 pounds.

Through her forensic analysis, Fontana gleaned a few more biographical details. For one, the woman's skull had a healed nasal fracture, showing that at some point she suffered -- and later recovered from -- a broken nose.

The woman's name isn't the only pressing question. Her cause of death is also listed as "undetermined," records show.

In late March, State Police posted images of Fontana's clay model, along with a forensic police artist's sketch and pictures of the woman's jewelry, on their Facebook page, which is followed by more than 200,000 people.

"Hopefully someone will recognize the jewelry or the composite sketch or even the model Donna did, and they can come forward and help us identify this person," said Sgt. Jeff Flynn, a State Police spokesman who helps run the page.

They have had such luck before.

Last September, police posted images of the distinctive tattoos of a woman whose body washed up on a beach in Ocean City. Within a day, someone who had seen the pictures online came forward and named city resident Cheryl Reda as the victim.

"It wasn't a suspicious death, but we were able to identify the individual and at least bring closure to the family," Flynn said.

'NOT JUST A SKELETON'

Over the course of three decades, Fontana has focused on the tougher puzzles. The anthropologist guesses she's handled more than a thousand cases, from stray femurs found in the woods of southern New Jersey to the victims buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Positive identifications can hinge on minor details, she said.

On Thursday morning, Fontana was reviewing a case, checking the information available against what had been plugged into NamUs. One minor detail -- a mole above the mystery man's eyelid -- was in Fontana's file but not in the database.

"The family would know about the mole above the eyelid," she said. She added the mole.

Fontana, who joined the State Police in the early 1990s after more than a decade working for the state Medical Examiner's Office, said she's driven by a feeling of personal responsibility to identify the dead.

"It's not just a skeleton lying on a table," she said. "It's a person. And it's somebody's brother. It's somebody's sister. It's somebody's parent. It's somebody's kid.

"And if it were my sister, or my brother, or my parent, I would want them to do as much as possible. Otherwise, this person goes in the ground and nobody knows."

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.