Back in 2005, a headless and handless torso was dumped in Williamsburg, while the skull of the body was left in Bed Stuy with the teeth removed. The dismemberment thwarted efforts to identify the victim.

Deputy Chief Emanuel Katranakis, commanding officer of the NYPD's forensic investigations division, announced today that the department is using phenotyping to help solve cold case murders.

It’s a special type of analysis where a forensic lab creates a composite picture of what a person might have looked like based on DNA. In this case, an outside lab used the partial skull along with DNA to create a composite picture of a young, African-American man. The department has used the testing three times to try to help identify mutilated bodies from cold case homicides.

For now, they're only using the technique to identify victims, but in the future, they say it could be used to build composite photos of suspects too. 

The NYPD is asking for the public's help identifying the victim.