artistic Facial analysis

Joseph Smith was tarred and feathered (and beaten) the 25th of March, 1832,

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"I found myself going out of the door, in the hands of about a​ dozen men; some of whose hands were in my hair, and some hold of my shirt, drawers and limbs... I made a desperate struggle, as I was forced out, to extricate myself, but only cleared one leg, with which I made a pass at one man and he fell on the door steps...

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"They then seized me by the throat, and held on till I lost my breath...they had concluded not to kill me, but pound and scratch me well... They then tried to force a phial into my mouth, and broke it in my teeth...

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"My friends spent the night in scraping and removing the tar, and washing and Cleansing my body, so that by morning I was ready to be clothed again... With my flesh all scarfied and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual, and on the afternoon of the same day baptized three individuals."

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Second hand accounts state that Joseph Smith permanently lost chunks of hair, he was scratched, beaten and possibly burned by the tar. Levi Hancock's journal states that he was show where the mob had pulled Joseph's hair out (several years later, so clearly the hair didn't grow back) stating, 

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" "...the Prophet Joseph Smith sent for me. I went and saw him again and had a conversation with him. Heard him tell about him being mobbed in Hiram and how they pulled the hair out of his head then he showed me the place where they had pulled the hair out of."

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In Dec. 1835 William Smith attacked Joseph Smith, in a heated argument over ending a debate. Joseph Smith penned a letter referring the event,

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"having once fallen into the hands of a mob, and now been wounded in my side, and now into the hands of a brother...abuse, anger, malice, hatred, and rage <​with a lame side​> with marks, of violence <​heaped​> upon my body me by a brother, were the reflections of my disapointment..." 

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Second hand accounts also described the result of this beating, how Joseph Smith was beaten so badly he could not sit-down or stand up without help. Suffice to say, the two worst beatings on record, that happened to Joseph Smith, happened 9 years before his death, and broken facial bones would be seen on his skull, and scars seen on his death mask, and in any real photograph of him would show specifically a "step deformity"- as noted by a Surgeon working with Shannon Tracy, in 1995. 

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It wasn't until I flew to Utah fall of 2021, and spent a week researching, was I handed the popular books on artwork and possible images of Jospeh Smith and found that the skulls had been identified and verified by six doctors, this was huge- glad news to me. Some of these books were no longer in print, such as, "In Search of Joseph", Shannon Michael Tracy's first ever book- aimed at getting a 3-D model of what Hyrum and Joseph Smith looked like, which required knowing which skull was whose. He recruited two doctors: Dr. Niles Herrod (Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery) and Dr. Van de Graff (who Anatomy and Physiology at BYU, and has since passed away), with the added help of Zygote Media did computer analysis of the death masks and skulls, then made computer models using the concluded skulls and verified death masks.

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Dr. Herrod noted injuries on the skull buried as Hyrum Smith, which were only seen on Joseph Smith's death mask (namely what he calls a step-deformity is seen broken and remodeled, and a flattened left cheekbone, this deformity is seen on Joseph's NOT Hyrum's death mask); Herrod also stated the bullet wound, to the left of Hyrum's nose, would have shattered the surrounding bones, or all the facial bones, as is seen on the skull buried Joseph Smith (no mid facial bones were present)  likely Joseph's Skull is a better candidate for Hyrum Smith. The common belief today is that the break on the maxilla of "Hyrum's Skull"  merely grazed and did not break the maxilla directly below the large wound on Hyrum's face, that made no sense to this Maxillofacial surgeon. Furthermore, Dr. Niles Herrod said the break in the maxilla look too fresh and lacked signs of decay, seen on all the other bone breaks of "Hyrum's skulls"; very likely it was broken day the photograph was taken, probably with a shovel as they disinterred the brother's bones, and was very unlikely to have been broken in 1844 (as there WOULD have been some decay on the break in the Maxilla, of the skull identified as Hyrum in 1928, so- it was not caused by the bullet that hit Hyrum in the face, in June of 1844, but more likely in 1928). Additionally, Dr. Van de Graff's analysis of Skull buried as Joseph's frontal bone, brow bones having such similar curvature on the death mask on Hyrum, which I have concurred with and talked about for many years (so reading this statement, four years into researching all of this, was VERY validating). 

 

More recently, Joseph Lyons (sixth doctor to publish the SAME findings) and his brother David W. Lyon, wrote "Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What It Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith",  who concur with the 1995 study by Dr. Herrod and Dr. Van de Graff, that the skull buried as Hyrum, was not Hyrum's skull. 

 

In death, Joseph sustained major head injuries from two things: first falling head first out a two story window and hitting the ground head first, and falling on his "left side a dead man", according to Willard Richard's account (in Joseph Smith's journal, June 27th, 1844, he was his clerk, for many years) and an account by William Daniels. Secondly a man with a pewter fife was seen beating Joseph in the head with it, explaining the broken parietal bones, on the skull SIX doctors have concluded was Joseph Smith's skull.

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The death masks are described on page 9, of "In Search of Joseph", Tracy makes a mistake in stating that the masks were prepared 28th of July, likely meaning June (as all accounts conclude that the masks of the slain Smith Brothers (Joseph and Hyrum), were made within 24 hours, Tracy continues,

 

"...between the arrival of the bodies about 3pm and the inception of the viewing at about 6:00 pm, he [Cannon] made plaster casts of the faces of the slain brothers." 

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With the murders occurring around 5pm, the masks could have been made in less than 24 hours after their death. 

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Below, is the 2022 Artistic Analysis, done by Debra Hatfield. I had already drawn the facial features of the man in my CDV and overlayed them onto the Dibble Death Mask of Joseph Smith and having created individual layers for each eye, brow, the nose, mouth and the facial outline, I only adjusted the location of the eye brows (more outward in my CDV, Rigor Mortis very well may have placed the brows closer together; it causes all muscles to tense up, although we do not know if this was still happening when the masks were made- might have been over) and just the outline is adjusted in size, otherwise the likeness "falls into place". Many state that Joseph's nose appears larger because of cotton balls being shoved in there, but no where was that stated, simply that the bullet holes in his chest, hip and back were stuff with cotton, as to likely keep his white clothing white as possible.