Abstract-In this paper, a fully automatic 2.5D facial technique for forensic applications is presented. Feature extraction and classification are fundamental processes in any face identification technique. Two methods for feature extraction and classification are proposed in this paper subsequently. Active Appearance Model (AAM) is one of the familiar feature extraction methods but it has weaknesses in its fitting process. Artificial bee colony (ABC) is a fitting solution due to its fast search ability. However, it has drawback in its neighborhood search. On the other hand, PSO-SVM is one of the most recent classification approaches. However, its performance is weakened by the usage of random values for calculating velocity. To solve the problems, this research is conducted in three phases as follows: the first phase is to propose Maximum Resource Neighborhood Search (MRNS) which is an enhanced ABC algorithm to improve the fitting process in current AAM. Then, Adaptively Accelerated PSO-SVM (AAPSO-SVM) classification technique is proposed, by which the selection of the acceleration coefficient values is done using particle fitness values in finding the optimal parameters of SVM. The proposed methods AAM-MRNS, AAPSO-SVM and the whole 2.5D facial technique are evaluated by comparing them with the other methods using new 2.5D face image data set. Further, a sample of Malaysian criminal real case of CCTV facial investigation suspect has been tested in the proposed technique. Results from the experiment shows that the proposed techniques outperformed the conventional techniques. Furthermore, the 2.5D facial technique is able to recognize a sample of Malaysian criminal case called "Tepuk Bahu" using CCTV facial investigation.