No doubt the FBI has dealt with a variety of unusual cases, but this one definitely belongs to the most extraordinary ones. It is about one of Robert Burns' objects of desire turning into an object of high level investigation, when the FBI's hi-tech team was assigned to picture the Bard's beloved lassie, Bonnie Jean Armour back in her 20s.
Bonnie was the mother of nine of Burns' children and inspired some of his most tender and romantic lines. The only two existing portraits of her were from her widowhood, showing her in advancing years and a silhouette executed by a French artist who was a war prisoner in
Dumfries in 1810. So no one had ever pictured her the way she looked in her youth.
The FBI's forensic digital technology had been employed in the past to "age" images of people they were trying to trace. In this case however, the opposite process had to be employed since they had to make a regression of an old person to the appearance when in youth. By processing some old portraits of her at the age of 60, they managed to reverse time and create a pixel made image of unbelievable accuracy, without being told that the woman they were trying to bring back to her youth time was Mrs Burns.
In the final picture she might not look as stunning as one would expect judging from the praise bestowed to her by the poet, but undoubtedly she has the air of a woman with a strong personality.
The image was the idea of Professor David Purdie, a retired medical professor and Burns expert who sees it as a way of filling a gap in Burns history. "Because she was in effect a missing person, I did what one should always do when faced with a missing person: I called the police," Purdie said.
So, one more mystery resolved by the FBI. This time for historical reasons.
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