Televised Photo of Dead Man Yields ID

Displaying the tightly cropped picture of a dead man’s face on television in an effort to identify him and solve the killing was not something detectives really wanted to do.

But detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division were down to their last resort. So in front of TV cameras and newspaper photographers, they showed a picture of the face of the dismembered “John Doe” found behind a building in South Los Angeles three weeks ago.

The man’s hands were missing, negating the fingerprint route. Detectives didn’t have an inkling who he was, so they couldn’t compare his teeth to the dental records of missing people.

“You don’t want to put something like that on TV, for a family or a mom to see,” said Det. Richard Arciniega, a lead investigator in the case. “I know I’d hate to see my son one morning during the 6 o’clock news with a ‘He’s dead, do you know who he is?’ ”

But just hours after the photo appeared on local TV news broadcasts Wednesday, relatives and friends called to identify Clinton Mejia, 30, of southwest Los Angeles.

The identification could open avenues of investigation, including who killed Mejia, where, and why, said Det. Jesus Linn.

In most cases, authorities are able to identify bodies. Even the county’s thousands of homeless normally carry some clues to their identity, or their fingerprints are on file, authorities said. But in a few cases, the coroner’s office cannot identify the dead and no one comes forward. Increasingly, Arciniega said, killers sever victims’ hands to complicate identification.

“It’s just recently that knuckleheads are learning from ‘The Sopranos’ and other shows to cut the hands off,” Arciniega said. “Now, I think we’re going to see more of this.”

The Los Angeles County coroner typically has more than 350 unidentified bodies a year. In 2001, the county had 393, but, by the year’s end, investigators had identified all but 31, said David Campbell, a coroner’s spokesman.

So far this year, there have been 188 unidentified bodies, Campbell said.

“We have a pretty high success rate,” he said.

At times, when the normal avenues of identification fail, sketches of the dead are circulated. Still, detectives try to steer clear of showing pictures of dead people to the public.

“It doesn’t happen very often, thank God,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Frank Merriman. “You don’t go to the photo unless, quite frankly, it’s the only thing to do.”