Chantal Milani is an anthropologist and forensic odontologist. The Egyptian gods would have liked it because with his work he tears what remains of the bodies from the “damnatio memoriae”. Starting from a bone, a tooth, step by step, in a scientific way and sometimes with 3D technology, he reconstructs bodies and restores dignity to the person “who was”. “Reforming and combining a body with a name is pure emotion, death can tell about life,” he explains. He lives in Rome, for three years he has served with the Ris of Rome, the Scientific Investigations of the Carabinieri and works as a consultant for the courts of Italy. But the other night he was in San Paolo Solbrito, his country of origin, where at a Dante dinner he explained how he managed to reconstruct Dante’s face. It is a study recently presented at the Dante International Conference in Ravenna, a project carried out in collaboration with Professor Giorgio Gruppioni of the University of Anthropology in Ravenna.
«I started from the copy of the skull made 100 years ago by the anatomist Fabio Frassetto, the last one who physically analyzed Dante’s remains. The skull, in fact, tells a lot about the individual and also about how the face is made. The soft tissues that rest on it will mimic its proportions and shapes. By modeling the muscles and skin, in 3D, the result will be a face that must stimulate a sense of recognition. In fact, the method is called Forensic Facial Reconstruction because it serves to disseminate an identikit of a body without a name that is slow to be identified in order to solicit some reports ».
The Ariadne’s thread of her childhood binds her to San Paolo Solbrito. It is his “buen retiro”. His dad is a physicist, his mom a primary school teacher. “I grew up on bread and computer science, I loved being in my dad’s studio”. At home he breathed the scent of science and the magic of Egyptian culture for which life and death are a sublime timeless intertwining. After graduating, a master’s degree, a doctorate and an unspecified number of specializations, pursuing the dream of doing justice to the dead by snatching them from the agony and oblivion of time, he wanted to deepen these disciplines in the USA and Canada which are the cradle of these subjects. applied to the judicial world. Explains. “The skeleton speaks, technologies such as CT scan and virtual autopsy allow you to travel inside the body in search of truth”. Ringed tiles that tell a story, a body and a face. And people are like they are reborn.
Bones and teeth are the starting point of every story: “In the bones, nothing is accidental. Even in living people, teeth and wrists help to estimate their age, because they are formed and change according to a precise calendar, evolution follows rigorous scientific steps so that it is possible to reveal the person’s age, as long as more skeletal methods are combined. and dental. Teeth are essential for identification, they have the same value as a DNA. Then there are the bites linked to the teeth: for example in the case of the crime in via Poma, of which he was a consultant, the bite on the breast of Simonetta Cesaroni told a lot about the attacker “.
A body is rebuilt in stages: «First we need to trace the Anthropological Profile, that is to understand the population to which they belong, the sex, age and height. If the bones are not exposed, the technologist can be used through a virtual autopsy. In this way you will have a kind of identikit to compare with the missing persons, the reports, the testimonies, the photos ».
It is not just a question of burial but to help a family move on. Because even in these cases you have to deal with the bureaucracy. For these families, in fact, administrative limbo is added to the emotional limbo of not knowing where they are and what has happened to their loved one. The presumed death of a person is triggered only after 10 years from his disappearance, therefore every contract, every document, remains in force as if the person were there even though he could not be there, decide and sign anything. Everything will fall on the shoulders of the family. “Giving a name back to a person is a great return and a little help to begin to find peace”.
In the most recent news cases, cameras are a source of images from which to start in which individuals who have committed a crime are portrayed. Here too it is a question of matching a photographic profile with a scientific one.
Chantal Milani with the discretion and reserve required by judicial cases, he has worked all over Italy on the most well-known crimes but in his heart he has the experience of Amatrice, when he was still serving at the Ris. Desperate conditions those of Amatrice, in the days of the earthquake in which he worked tirelessly to identify the victims. At his disposal his professionalism and few means, technology almost eliminated, earth that continued to tremble, immense pain and many deaths around. He remembers: «You had to work in open spaces away from walls that could collapse. The earth has never stopped shaking. In those small and mountain villages, with nothing, without the equipment of a laboratory, the dead continued to arrive, several hundred victims. We did a great team work, with fantastic colleagues. It was August and during the day it was hot: the already very traumatized bodies deteriorated easily, at night it was very cold and we slept a few hours in the tents, dressed. We had to work fast. In addition, bodies kept arriving and at a certain point it became difficult to organize those few available spaces. While my hands were busy examining the body and dictating, my colleagues wrote and photographed. Then, according to the disciplines or disciplines, the roles were reversed. All around there was pain. I remember the despair of a daughter and a granddaughter for her grandmother. It was not found. The pendant donated by her granddaughter for her ninetieth birthday was the key to being able to make her emerge from those hundreds of bodies. The shape and the words engraved, then, going deeper into the memory of that family, obscured at first, returned a memory that I still carry in my heart ». Relief and pain together, a story that ends, another that starts again. –