Faces of Evil

by Lois Gibson

  As Angelica’s devastated mother-in-law later explained, she was “the backbone of the family,” caring not just for her own two children and her loving husband, but for her elderly grandmother who was ailing and had no one else to care for her. She was beloved by her entire family and greatly liked by her co-workers. No one could understand how such a terrible thing could happen to such a good person.

  No one, that is, except for maybe Theodore Goynes.

  But even before Goynes was arrested, Vivien Jackson mounted a protest on behalf of her beloved daughter-in-law. At the time, the state of Texas had some 300,000 people on probation and 70,000 more on parole—more than any other state in the country. The neighborhood where the abduction had taken place was crowded with halfway houses and loitering, ill-supervised parolees—a neighborhood Mrs. Jackson referred to as a “rape nest.”

  Mrs. Jackson notified media outlets of her outrage and involved everyone from the governor’s office to the Houston City Council.

  “This is not someone you will forget,” she said. “We will not let this story die.”

  Homicide Sergeant John Silva called me in on a Saturday morning to do a sketch from the grocery-store parking lot witnesses.

  Now a fulltime employee of the Houston Police Department, I was in my very own office. Sunlight streamed through the windows that looked out on the Houston city-scape of tall, mirrored-glass buildings; but the dark world of hawk-faced, scowling men in dusky parking lots, brandishing guns at terrified young mothers before dragging them off to their deaths, was very much in the room as the two clerks described the killer to me in careful detail.

  When I was done, uniformed officers whisked me off to a previous engagement—painting the faces of children at the Heights Festival, a local fall carnival where I had volunteered to help my church raise money.

  Having spent the early morning sketching the glowering face of a brutal murderer, I spent the rest of the morning painting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bart Simpsons, rainbows, clouds and butterflies on the faces of children who squealed with enchantment whenever I handed them a mirror.

  Light and dark. That is my world.

  Over the weekend, I’d though a lot about Jane Carr—the woman who’d been stuffed in the box like a corpse. I don’t know why, but I felt strongly that her case was somehow linked to Angelica Jackson’s. So first thing Monday morning, I followed up on my powerful urge and called Sgt. McClelland.

  “Sgt. McClelland…There’s something about this Jackson murder that makes me think it’s linked to your Jane Carr case.”

  Of all the reactions I would have come to expect from McClelland, laughter was not one of them, but that’s what he did—laughed out loud.

  “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “I just this minute got off the phone with Homicide!”

  Sgt. McClelland had spotted a connection between the two cases, too, but his was based on fact, not the hunches I had: the similar locations of the abductions, the similar automobiles of the victims, the way the abductor got into the back seat—not the front—and pressed a gun to the ribcage of both victims and the way they were both taken to abandoned buildings.

  Homicide agreed and soon with renewed vigor McClelland was hot on the trail of Jane Carr’s abductor.

  That same night, officers responding to a “domestic disturbance” call noticed that the man at the apartment resembled my sketch of the man who had abducted and murdered Angelica Jackson.

  The officer who recognized the resemblance was an officer whose head was in the game; he was paying close attention; he was taking compositry seriously. And because of his alertness, a case that spanned two states and twenty years and involved untold suffering by numerous victims, was eventually cracked.

  The key was a forensic sketch that took less than an hour.

  Officers respond to hundreds of domestic calls every year, but the patrolman answering that call was alert to the fact that a composite sketch had been done regarding a particularly vicious unsolved murder and because of that, a very bad man was caught.

  A man named Theodore Goynes.

  They hauled Goynes in for a line-up and McClelland made sure that, along with the grocery-store clerks who had witnessed Angelica Jackson’s abduction, Jane Carr was also there.

  A week later, while I was at the Artesian building working another case, I saw Sgt. McClelland coming down the hall.

  “Did you do a line-up?” I called out.

  He gave a triumphant, “Yes!”

  “Was Jane Carr there?”

  Again, he yelled jubilantly, “Yes!”

  By this time, he’d drawn close to me and I said, “Well, did she pick him out?”

  Suddenly, he lunged down onto one knee, pumped a fist in the air and gave a cheerleader shout: “YES!”

  When he got to his feet, I laughed with happiness and said, “Did she cry?”

  With a relaxed grin, he answered, “Ye-e-es.”

  “And did you hug her?” (I already knew the answer.)

  In a satisfied, peaceful tone, he nodded and said, “Of course.”

  It was over, for us, but for the victims of Theodore Goynes and their families, it would never be over. In Illinois, for example, three women, who had believed the monster who had tried to kill them would be locked up for forty years, now had to come down to Texas to testify, once again, as to the horrors they’d experienced at his hands years before.

  After sitting, dumbstruck, through hours of testimony by women who’d been raped, sodomized, bludgeoned, stabbed, tied up and set on fire by Theodore Goynes, the jury two hours later convicted him of capital murder in the death of Angelica Jackson. They sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

  Vivien Jackson was there. She praised the homicide detectives who she said “didn’t get any sleep at all” during the investigation. She also thanked God and the jury, saying, “The system is still broken, still needs fixing,” but stated that the trial had helped her come to terms with her loss and had drawn the family closer.

  And she continued the fight. “They’ve put a lot of Theodore Goyneses out there,” she told newspaper reporters, “and every one of them can hurt a lot of people.”

  She added, “They’re just like cockroaches…and one cockroach can lay a thousand eggs.”

  Eventually, this determined lady testified before both the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice and the Texas Pardons and Paroles Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Because of her efforts—and those of others like her—reforms were eventually instigated in Texas, such as the “three strikes you’re out” law, that locks felons up for life after the third conviction and the “life without possibility of parole” sentencing guidelines which had not been available to Texas juries before then.

  Her brave and determined efforts came too late to save her own family from the vicious consequences of Theodore Goynes’s crimes, but untold numbers of unsuspecting potential victims of other savage criminals like Theodore Goynes are going about their lives today, thanks to the protections put in place by the reforms Vivien Jackson helped to bring about.

  Theodore Goynes was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who experienced auditory hallucinations too—but from the very beginning he stalked his victims, eventually took them to isolated locations he had clearly already checked out, tied them up and made every effort to kill them before leaving them for dead.

  The FBI considers violent paranoid schizophrenics to fit a profile they refer to as “disorganized.”

  How, exactly, is what Theodore Goynes did disorganized?

  The problem with such obviously mentally ill criminals is that, no matter whether they are confined in prison or in forensic hospitals, they respond well to the routine and structure and when they are forced to take their medications every day, they blossom. Their symptoms subside, they go about their lives in a visibly “normal” fashion and eventually, it seems as if there is no longer any reason to keep them incarcerated. They are paroled or released or jud
ged “of sound mind” by psychiatric staff and, after being encouraged to continue taking their medications, are released on an unsuspecting society.

  Here’s where it gets sticky, though. Once he or she is free, someone who is mentally ill can choose not to take his or her medication. Now, at some point, they have to know the consequences of not taking their meds. And yet some, like Theodore Goynes, steadfastly refuse to continue taking their medication.

  When they stop taking their medication many slip back into insanity, they commit more crimes, they are incarcerated or hospitalized, they are medicated, they calm down, they are released, they stop taking their meds… and if they are Theodore Goynes, they start prowling the streets almost immediately, looking for hideaways, looking for victims to kill.

  And, just like the fictional character in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Goynes then took great care to hide his crimes.

  The most terrifying aspect of this story is that it happens so many times, in so many places, all over this country, because we as a nation seem incapable of hitting upon a solution for handling the Theodore Goyneses of the world.

  In her book, The Mad, the Bad and the Innocent: the Criminal Mind on Trial—Tales of a Forensic Psychologist (Little, Brown, 1997), Barbara R. Kirwin, Ph.D., draws upon twenty-five years of experience working with the criminally insane and those who claim to be. She has consulted on more than a hundred homicide cases and often appears on television.

  Dr. Kirwin explains the inadequacies of an overworked and underbudgeted system, groaning under the challenges of deciding sanity or insanity on one simple rule, the M’Naghten Rule. The M’Naghten Rule simply states that, if someone knows what he did and knows it is wrong—then no matter how mentally ill he is or what his psychiatric or criminal history—he is sane.

  Dr. Kirwin makes a compelling case for a new plea, different from the one that has so many prosecutors, defense attorneys, juries and judges hamstrung—the old and outdated innocent by reason of insanity.

  She urges that more states adopt the more sensible guilty but insane.

  If a defendant is adjudged “guilty but insane,” then he is to be incarcerated for the rest of his life, with no possibility of parole or release—not in prison—but in a tightly-guarded, high-security forensic hospital. He would be given the treatment he needs as well as any medication that helps with his symptoms, but no matter how well he responds to those medications, no matter how much he promises to keep taking them on the outside…he is never, ever, ever to be released.

  In other words, no court-appointed shrink or panel of psychologists can conduct a cursory interview and scrawl, “the defendant is of sound mind,” and turn him over to be set free, as with Goynes. No overcrowded prison can release him because, since the criminal is so well-behaved on his medication, he has added up many years in “good time,” as happened with Goynes. And no judge can simply turn this kind of savage criminal over to the sloppy care of a mental hospital on the grounds that he is “innocent by reason of insanity,” thus setting up the very real possibility that, in a few short months’ time, he can be released, as happened, again, with Theodore Goynes.

  On the other hand, convicted felons who are seriously mentally ill would not then be turned over to the prison system and blended in to the general prison population, as so many of them are now, where they may or may not receive adequate psychiatric care. After all, is it really fair for, say, a two-bit non-violent burglar to be forced to share a cell with someone who might slit his throat in his sleep simply because the voices told him to?

  As a society, we just don’t seem to know what to do about or with the mentally ill. And when it comes to the criminally mentally ill, especially those as violent as Theodore Goynes, we seem comfortable handling the problem only one way—with the death penalty.

  Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying Theodore Goynes didn’t deserve to die. He chose to stop taking his medication. He chose to stalk women, attack them, try to kill them and eventually, hide their bodies. Like Poe’s fictional narrator, on some deep level somewhere in his mind—he knew what he was doing.

  In the final analysis, I believe if any of us should ever find ourselves at the mercy of another who fully intends to see us die, there is only one thing we can do and it doesn’t have anything to do with courts or mental health professionals or cops or lawyers or doctors or anybody or anything else.

  It has to do with what each and every one of us possesses, deep within our souls: the will to live.

  That God-given will to live I pray will grant us a supernatural strength or courage, or cunning, or endurance, or wisdom—whatever it takes to survive.

  In the end, that’s what we all have to have while there are so many Theodore Goyneses out there running around loose in the world, looking for victims.

  Live.

  Like those three heroic women in Illinois and Jane Carr in Houston…we all just have to do whatever it takes to live.

  Lois Gibson during her modeling career, shortly before the attack that changed her life.

  A sketch of the rapist who attacked her.

  Wanted

  Wanted for raping a blind and pregnant woman.

  David Alberto Zayas See chapter 7, “Blind Justice.”

  Wanted for raping a ten-year-old girl.

  James Daniel Raiford See chapter 14, “Making the Case for Forensic Art.” Credit: HOUSTON, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Wanted for numerous rapes and brutal murders.

  Scott Hain See chapter 6, “WANTED: Dead or Alive.” Credit: WICHITA, KANSAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Wanted for numerous rapes and brutal murders.

  Robert Lambert See chapter 6, “WANTED: Dead or Alive.” Credit: WICHITA, KANSAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Wanted for rape and murder.

  Chester Higganbotham See chapter 11, “Look Mommy! It’s a Picture of Daddy!”

  Officer Paul Deason, shot twice and run over by a suspect’s car. Credit: Houston, Texas Police Department

  Wanted for attempted murder of a police officer.

  Donald Eugene Dutton See chapter 9, “Some People Just Need Killin’.” Credit: Houston, Texas Police Department

  Each Caught by One Sketch

  Missing

  Christina, a young woman, begged Lois to help reunite her family after three decades apart. The artist began her age progression drawings working only from copies of baby pictures of two-year-old Chris and his one-year-old brother Chip. See chapter 10, “Tricky Drawings, Successful Endings.”

  Baby picture

  Lois’s sketch

  And photograph of Chris. After seeing that Chris had a moustache and longer hair,

  Lois overlayed these features on a copy of her sketch.

  Found by One Sketch

  Wanted

  Ora David Lott in 1964. Credit: HOUSTON, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Wanted for armed robbery and murder. Sketch shown here on Lois’s easel.

  Ora David Lott See chapter 10, “Tricky Drawings, Successful Endings.” Credit: HOUSTON, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Wanted for rape, attempted murder and murder

  Theodore Goynes See chapter 8, “Portrait of a Serial Killer.”

  Each Caught by One Sketch

  Wanted

  Composite sketch/photo comparison of Kerry Ashley O’Neal, who liked to call himself, “KAOS.” He tried to hire a hit man to kill his fifteen-year-old victim before she could testify against him in court. Credit: HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  A certificate given to Lois recognizing that her artwork was instrumental in catching O’Neal.

  Wanted for the rape of nine-year-old Annie and the murder of Annie’s mother.

  Jeffrey Lynn Williams See chapter 12, “A Look of Murderous Rage.” Credit: HOUSTON, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Investigator Tom McCorvey and Sergeant J.W. “Billy” Belk bringing in Jeffrey Lynn Williams for the brutal rape and murder. Credit: PHOTO: E. JOSEPH DEERING/HOUSTON CHRONICLE

 
; Caught by One Sketch

  Chapter Nine:

  “Some People Just Need Killin’”

  John Wesley Hardin was one of the most notorious outlaws ever to ride the old West of Texas during the mid-nineteenth century. At the age of thirteen, he killed a classmate on the playground and by the time he was seventeen years old, he’d killed a dozen men. While still a teenager, Hardin is even reputed to have backed down the legendary marshal, Wild Bill Hickock. Eventually, he would put more than thirty notches on his gun before finally being shot down himself in 1895 at the age of forty-two.

  I knew an old-time west Texas cowboy who was related to John Wesley Hardin, whom the family called “Wes.” The old-timer liked to grin with a twinkle in his eye and say, “Uncle Wes never killed nobody that didn’t need killin’.” Then he added, “Wes used to always say, ‘Some people just need killin’.”

  Well, as a Christian, I can’t just come right out and say that I agree with my old friend (who has since passed on), but I will say that if such a thing were true, then there are few people who I think might need killin’ more than Donald Eugene Dutton.

  When he wasn’t thieving or fighting, Dutton liked to wear his favorite plaid shirt, crawl through open windows of women’s apartments, threaten them with a knife and brutally rape them. In 1980, he was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to twenty years, but he was paroled after serving six and a half years of his sentence.

  Almost immediately, Dutton put on his plaid shirt and went back to raping and pillaging. After seven different victims reported similar attacks in the Galleria area, he became known as the “Galleria Rapist.” In 1987, before police identified the Galleria Rapist as Dutton, I did a sketch of him from a witness description. A cop who stopped Dutton’s car on suspicion of drunk driving thought the driver looked like my sketch and when he looked closer, he saw that Dutton was wearing a plaid shirt.

  Dutton was arrested again. When the witness who had sketched his image with me picked him out of a line-up and testified in court, Dutton was convicted of aggravated sexual assault with a deadly weapon and burglary of habitation with intent to commit sexual assault. He was given a forty-year sentence.