BOSTON -- At first, chimney sweep Mike Scanlan thought the long spindly thing was a tree branch as he pulled it free of the debris behind a piece of particle board at the bottom of a disused Dorchester apartment complex incinerator.

His flashlight showed the object in its beam. Red plastic fingernails glinted. Scanlan found a body buried in the incinerator cavity. There was not a single broken bone. There were no signs of injury.

Boston Police Sgt. Paul Donovan assumed control of the investigation at 17-19 Winter St., searching for the path by which the woman's skeleton ended up at the complex.

Without available witnesses, and with only what the bones could tell his team - Donovan faced a difficult prospect.

"Usually the evidence will take you where it takes you," Donovan said. "In this case, we're lacking evidence."

The dead woman was between 25 and 35 years old. She probably stood 5-foot-2-inches. She was deemed of white heritage, but also possessed Hispanic, Asian or black features.

One outstanding identifier: her partial dental plate, either made in the Caribbean, or elsewhere by a Haitian or Jamaican dentist.

A dental expert told Donovan the plate was probably black market or underground. Find the dentist, and Donovan could find her name, her family, where she lived. Unlicensed plate-makers, however, mean unlisted dentists.

Donovan looked for witnesses.

"I think she was there since 2002," Donovan said. "Somebody who had some association with the building -- a resident, an employee or someone familiar with a resident or employee -- has some knowledge about whatever happened."

Between January 2002 and January 2005, Donovan said, an access door to the building basement was typically left unlocked. Whoever buried the woman knew that, he said, and knew of the chimney as a hiding place.

Another way to break the case, Donovan surmised, was to find anyone who knew the woman before she disappeared. He needed a picture of her in life. He turned to Boston Police forensic artist Gregory Mahoney.

Mahoney was able to produce a computer reconstruction of the woman's features. Until someone recognizes her picture, Donovan is in charge of a file full of questions.

"In all my other cases, you try not to let your gut influence you too much," he said. Now, for Donovan, gut feeling is critical to the completion of his investigation.

He's watching Winter Street, waiting, and reaching out to Boston once again for anyone who saw anything around that basement.

Computer facial reconstruction

Forensic artist Gregory Mahoney works in Scotland at The Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design - where he is a course coordinator and module leader at the The Centre for Forensic and Medical Art.

Mahoney currently teaches the next generation of forensic artists, but he still keeps his eye on the Chimney Woman. He spoke with BostonNOW about the process of bringing images of the dead back from the barest of remains.

"We tend to recognize each other first by our proportions and then we tune in to the fine details. [In facial reconstructions] you're typically looking at a 70 to 75 percent likeness," Mahoney said.

To get that close, Mahoney went to the cutting edge of his technology. He traveled to New York to meet with the people who built the modeling software he used to reconstruct the face of the Chimney Woman. With help, he was able to export the image he created to the same kind of animating software used in movies like Shrek.

"You can start adding skin tone and pores," he said. "Feasibly you can put in hair that's physically modeled - so you can have it move as you move the head. This particular [reconstruction] took much longer than it normally would because we were working through those problems."

This article is republished from BostonNow, as part of a content sharing arrangement with TheBostonChannel.com