SOMERTON MAN CASE: PAUL LAWSON DISCUSSION PART 2

CREATING THE BUST

The comparison images above show the face of the Man of whom the bust was made by Paul Lawson and then an image of the plaster bust itself. You will immediately notice the difference between the two and that is down to Paul having used the original Police photographs to assist him in creating the features on the face. He was not at ease with the appearance of the actual face of the man.

But, as you will read shortly, there was another reason why the face of the man on the left was not a good match from Paul's perspective. But first:

THE SKULL

Please bear with me for a short whilst I relate to you a part of the most recent discussion with Paul Lawson. We talked about an unusual occurrence when he started to look at removing the man's skull at the request of Coroner Cleland.

He had just made a start on this task when a Detective burst into the morgue, in Paul's words he had never seen anyone so uptight, he was almost shouting at Paul telling him to stop what he was doing immediately, to leave the body alone, not to touch it at all. The reason he gave was that the man was about to be buried but as it turned out, he wasn't buried until 6 days later.

Why, then, was the Detective so worked up about Paul's actions? Who had told him of what Paul was about to do?

THE PROCESS

Below is the process that Paul was about to undertake.

The two human skull images below show what a skull looks like after it had been prepared for display.  

The process gets a bit gory for which I apologise but it needs to be explained.

Step 1

The head is removed from the body

Step 2

The head is then skinned

Step 3.

The skull cap is removed and the brain taken out

Step 4. 

Any and all tissue remaining inside the skull is manually removed

Step 5.

The skull is then thoroughly cleaned using a powder bleach and water solution

To this it is an approximate 2 hour process, it is important that you note the duration.

Step 6. 

Fashion a replacement head to put in the place of the one that had been removed and then sew the loose skin back in place. 

This would add another 2 hours or more to the process. All up then you would need to allow 4 hours for this work to be completed.

However, the work was stopped almost as soon as it had started because the Detective had called an end to it.

But there was another reason why Paul would not have proceeded, one that sheds entirely new light on the case and not just on the question of the bust.

I will publish another post on this very soon, and be prepared for some startling new information.