Frank Bender is an autodidact forensic and fine artist. His talent for forensic facial reconstruction, working first with the Philadelphia police department, then with the FBI, America’s Most Wanted, Scotland Yard and the governments of Mexico and Egypt, has made him widely recognized as a leader in his field. Frank began his career as a commercial photographer. He had little formal training in sculpture, but one day, his fascination with anatomy brought him to the Philadelphia morgue. There he discovered a remarkable ability: the capacity to intuit the form and personality of a human face from its fleshless skull. Entrusted with the skull of a murder victim, he returned shortly with his first bust. Soon he had the first of many IDs: Anna Duvall. Several years later, after he received his first large monument commission, he closed his photography studio, ceased his advertising work, and set out on a second, very different career as a forensic and fine artist. Since the early 70s, Frank’s ceramic busts have led to the identification of numerous murder victims and the apprehension of fugitive killers. He has also provided faces to Akhmim mummies and the remains of a 5,300 year old man. In 1989 America’s Most Wanted commissioned Frank to produce a bust of John Emil List. List was an accountant from New Jersey who, in 1971, killed his wife, mother and children, parked his car at Kennedy Airport and disappeared. The challenge was to show List as he would have looked after 18 years on the lam. Frank’s bust was perfect, down to the pair of square glasses that he intuited List would wear. Based on Frank’s model, List, now remarried and living in Denver, was identified by a neighbor, captured and convicted. America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh called it the most brilliant piece of detective work he had ever seen, and kept the John List bust in his office for many years. Frank has a duel career as a fine artist. His watercolors, pastels, sculptures and monuments are in many private and public collections. These playful, emotionally charged works not only display his skills working across several mediums but, often informed by his forensic work, they are also exemplary cases of the connection between fine art and public service. In April 2008 Frank had a fine art exhibit at the Phillips Museum of Art (brochure from show). Currently he is working on a series of civic landscapes, commissioned by Parviz Yathrebi, owner of Woven Treasures. Two of these have been completed in oil on unusually wide canvases (2.5’ x 9) that show Philadelphia in a dimension at once realistic and magical. Here are links to canvases completed so far: Schuylkill River and Early Fall. To learn more about Frank’s life, particularly his work with the Mexican police in Ciudad Juarez, see Ted Botha’s recent book, "The Girl with the Crooked Nose" (Random House). If you are interested in discussing Frank's work please contact Vanessa Bender at benderarts@gmail.com.

blurb fr. inside The Girl With the Crooked Nose cover:

"In The Girl with the Crooked Nose, Ted Botha tells the absorbing story of Frank Bender, a gifted, self-taught artist who can bring back the dead and the vanished through a unique, macabre sculpting talent. Bender has been the key to solving at least nine murders and tracking down numerous criminals. In 2003, he was called upon to tackle the most challenging and bizarre case of his career.

Someone is killing the young women of Juárez. Since 1993, the decomposing bodies of as many as four hundred victims, known as feminicidios, have been found in the desert surrounding this gritty Mexican border town. Prodded by local political pressure and international attention, the Mexican authorities turn to the United States to help solve these horrific crimes. The man they turn to is Bender.

Through breathtakingly realistic sculptures, Bender has made it his career to reconstruct the faces of unknown murder victims and of fugitives whose appearances are certain to have changed over years on the run. The busts are based in part on the painstaking application of forensic science and art to fleshless human skulls and in part on deep intuition, an uncanny ability to discern not only a missing face but the personality behind it.

Arriving in Mexico, Bender works in secrecy, in a culture of corruption and casual violence, braving anonymous threats and sinister coincidences to give eight skulls back their faces and, hopefully, their histories. Drawn to one skull in particular – ‘the Girl with the Crooked Nose’ – Bender gradually comes to suspect that perhaps he is not meant to succeed, and that the true solution to the mystery of the feminicidios is far more terrible than anyone has dared to imagine.

Ted Botha brilliantly weaves Bender’s story – the cases he has solved, the intricacies of his art, the colorful characters he encounters, and the personal cost of his strange obsession – with the chilling story of the Juárez investigation. The Girl with the Crooked Nose will haunt readers long after the last page is turned."

Please note that the books is least expensive on Amazon however if you want to read actual pages from the book you can click here to read sample pages on the Random House site.

~~~~~~~~~~UPDATE~~~~~~~~~~

Latest "The Girl With the Crooked Nose" reviews:

Newsweek _ June 16,2008

The Newspaper Tree from El Paso, Texas _ July 11, 2008

The London Financial Times (full color layout click here)_ July 12, 2008
for link to online version w/ no photo click here

St. Petersburg Times _ June 8, 2008

LA Times Book Review _ June 8, 2008

Book of the Month Club top ten pick _ June 2008

The Vancouver Sun-review and "Editor's Choice"
recommended read-6/7/2008, review below:

With his sculptures, forensic artist Frank Bender helps to solve murders.
This book tells of his work on the investigation into murders of women in
Juárez, Mexico. The woman of the title, he concludes sadly, "could or could
not be dead" and probably "has been almost forgotten," except by her family.

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this site and all artwork are copyrighted by Frank Bender 2008. do not take without permission or we will prosecute. Janice Bender works for a copyright law firm. we are serious about this. dead serious:-)