Man missing for 30 years realizes that he's someone else

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I understand the family probably wants some privacy now, but Iā€™d really be interested to find out how well that age-adjusted rendering matches up with his current appearance.

How do they judge how good the forensic artists are in the first place? Do they test them by providing childhood photos of non-missing-persons and then compare the resulting portraits with the real adults to see how close the artist got?

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Itā€™ll be no use their putting their heads down and saying ā€œCome up again, dear!ā€ I shall only look up and say ā€œWho am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, Iā€™ll come up: if not, Iā€™ll stay down here till Iā€™m somebody elseā€ ā€” but, oh dear!ā€™ cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, ā€˜I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!ā€™

ā€“from Aliceā€™s Adventures In Wonderland

That story had a happy ending too, but for some reason I prefer his.

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I saw a missing personā€™s age progression of 40 years on a 10 month old baby the other day, and wondered the same thing. How close to reality could that progression be?

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This happens everytime I go with the chronic, I lock the doors and bolt the windows now when the mood hits me.

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I can only imagine how odd this must be for the family. To come to terms with your sonā€™s disappearance and likely death after so many years of absence, and then to have him back again. It must be a tumbler of emotions.

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I wonder what tipped him? It would be fascinating to read his story from his point of view. Maybe he opened a steel attache case and a DVD player said, ā€œYouā€™re not you, youā€™re me. Now get your ass to Mars.ā€

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The ā€œage progressionā€ basically amounts to taking the personā€™s picture, retaining any features that arenā€™t likely to change with time, and Photoshopping out everything else with features taken from pictures of family members who look similar. In the case of a baby, I imagine it would be entirely about taking adult family member pictures who the baby was thought to resemble and mixing them up a bit. Sometimes that works really well and sometimes it doesnā€™t at all.

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Probably not that close. You figure, the appearance could range from:

Greatful Dead groupie
Powerful Businessperson
Morbidly Obese
Harry Potter
Godzilla
Ethel Merman
Picasso painting

A lot can happen in 40 years.

Iā€™m really @TobinL

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Or is @TobinL really me? It is confusing.

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No wonder I am tired all the timeā€¦ working two jobs and all.

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Two wives?

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that, and jeez the commute time between seattle and wherever else it is I liveā€¦

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I live in Oakland. I was born on Capitol Hill in Seattle though.

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This happened before: http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-29/news/mn-25937_1_bus-driver

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I keep hoping that this is what happened to Richey Edwards, despite the most of the evidence pointing towards suicide.

I really wouldnā€™t care if he came back and never wrote another song, I would just prefer to know that he didnā€™t kill himself.

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What an amazing coincidence! I too am somebody else!

Edited: Apparently we are not all Spartacus after all.

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Thatā€™s exactly where my thoughts went. They gave the age 40-ish guy the same color hair as the baby (yeah, right), and gave him a rather conservative haircut. As in, he votes Republican, conservative haircut that hasnā€™t been stylish since the 90ā€™s.

For six months I couldnā€™t sleep. With insomnia, nothingā€™s real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy ā€¦ of a copy ā€¦ of a copy.

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