Faces of Evil

by Lois Gibson

  On November 15, 1990, after serving seven years of that sentence, Dutton and a buddy, both of whom worked in the prison kitchen, climbed over a fence and escaped from the Ramsey I Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Rosharon, in Brazoria County. The other guy was caught by law enforcement within hours, but Dutton stole a pickup truck from a residence and made his getaway in a dense fog, slipping through a police perimeter.

  From there, stealing cars and license plates as he went along, Dutton drove to Houston. He lived on stolen credit cards and numerous burglaries of private homes.

  On January 5, 1991, Dutton once again donned a plaid shirt and began cruising the general vicinity of Houston’s Galleria mall, his old stomping grounds. Located near the busiest freeway in the United States—the West Loop—the mall and its surrounding developments have since become the nation’s eighth-largest business district, marked by the kind of soulless gray monotony that characterizes Houston’s out-of-control oil-boom growth that soon went bust.

  Though I confess I do like shopping there, the Galleria was unfavorably described in a December, 2003 Texas Monthly article, “The Accidental City,” by Michael Ennis. In the article, a former University of Houston writing professor named Phillip Lopate is quoted as saying, “Managing to combine the twin nightmares of claustrophobic congestion and anemic vacuity, the Galleria is my idea of hell…Houston suffers from this malaise of placelessness and nowhere more so than in the Galleria area.”

  If the Galleria vicinity is “hell,” then surely Donald Eugene Dutton was the devil. On the night of January 4 and the wee hours of the morning on January 5, Dutton kidnapped and attempted to sexually assault a woman near the Galleria mall. Whether he intended to kill her is unclear, but the terrified woman managed to get away from Dutton and ran for her life.

  Just a few minutes later, about 2:30 A.M., while Dutton was driving around (no doubt searching for easier prey), he rolled through a stop sign, thus attracting the attention of thirty-four-year-old Patrol Officer Paul A. Deason.

  Deason, stocky with a military-style crew cut and built like a wrestler, was a ten-year veteran of the Houston Police Department and known for being tough. When he switched on his cruiser lights and pulled over what looked like a new Buick Electra with spoked wheels, Deason did not notify police dispatchers or radio in the license plate number. This is because the departmental safety and procedure policy had recently undergone a change and officers were no longer required to make such reports.

  Getting out of his patrol car on the deserted, dimly-lit street, Officer Deason was completely alone and he had no warning as to just how dangerous the driver of the car he had stopped was.

  “In this line of work,” he often said, “we don’t know who we stop, who we come in contact with, or who we’re dealing with.”

  This is the very reason that law enforcement’s number one commandment is, There is no such thing as a routine traffic stop.

  When Officer Deason approached the vehicle, Donald Dutton climbed out of the car, walked straight toward Deason and shot him with a 9mm handgun point-blank in the face.

  The impact of the bullet entering Deason’s left cheek spun him around. As he was going down, Dutton shot Deason again in the back. The officer fell to the ground, but that wasn’t enough for Dutton.

  Calmly, he got back into the car, pulled a U-turn and deliberately drove over the inert form of Paul Deason.

  As Deason rolled and tumbled beneath the car, his utility belt, which contained his gun and holster, got caught on the underbelly of the vehicle and Deason was dragged over the pavement for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty…sixty feet.

  Unbelievably, the tough cop was not only still alive, but conscious. He reached up and pushed against the undercarriage of the car. One of his hands happened to land on the hot muffler and the skin of the palm of his hand was burned off before his belt broke away and he fell free of the speeding car, which roared off into the distance.

  Incredibly, this brave officer staggered to his feet and stumbled all the way back to his patrol car, where he radioed in his own assist call.

  Astonished police dispatchers recorded Officer Deason, in a voice amazingly calm and coherent, saying, “I’ve been shot and run over,” before requesting back-up and an ambulance.

  Help came screaming up within sixty seconds and officers thronged from squad cars, thunderstruck to see the injured cop still standing, blood pouring from his face and back, uniform hanging in tatters, body bruised and scraped and grease-stained from his ordeal.

  In clear, cognizant language, Deason described the vehicle he had stopped, what he saw of its driver and told what happened. Then he added, “I’m not feeling so good and my back hurts.”

  An ambulance arrived with lightning speed and Paul Deason was raced to the hospital, where things got grim and serious very, very quickly. He was rushed into surgery and operated on for three hours. Then he was put in Intensive Care where after two days he was still in guarded condition.

  That’s when they called me.

  Homicide paged me just as I was emerging from the elevator in the lobby of my doctor’s office, where I’d gone for an emergency Monday morning visit. The Friday night before, a freak accident at home had left me with a serious puncture wound in my upper thigh, near the buttocks. Unwilling to brave big-city hospital emergency rooms alongside victims of gunshots, stabbings and car wrecks, I’d waited until my family doctor’s office hours began.

  By then, the spreading infection in my thigh and buttocks had reached such a ferocious state that the doctor ordered me hospitalized. When I begged off he handed me a bottle full of pills and demanded that I go straight home and stay in bed.

  “Don’t get up for four days,” he commanded. “Don’t get up for anything except to go to the bathroom, do you hear me? You mess around with this wound and you are flirting with amputation.”

  Amputation. Four days. Straight home. Bed. Got it.

  And then Homicide called.

  I’d been with the police department long enough by this time that these cops were my brothers and sisters. I’d heard on the news about Officer Deason two nights before and had been grief-stricken along with the law enforcement officers who served alongside him. I assumed he might die, but the detective who called me assured me that Paul not only was still alive, but ready to talk with me so I could do a sketch of the vicious criminal who’d assaulted him.

  Listening to the officer from Homicide tell me the details I knew I couldn’t go home. Not yet. This was family.

  The emergency sketch would have to be done at the hospital, where Officer Deason, heavily sedated, was drifting in and out of consciousness. Nobody knew who had done this terrible thing to such a fine and good man, but whoever it was, he was still out there and he had to be stopped.

  Cop-killers and potential cop-killers engender such passion for justice, such an intense urge to catch them, from other cops because, hey, first it’s one of our own. You hurt him or her, you hurt us. And I won’t lie to you, that is definitely part of it.

  But not all. There’s another even more compelling reason.

  If a man is willing to shoot a police officer point-blank in the face, run him over in a car and drag him sixty-five feet…then what do you think he would do to a civilian?

  Let’s say a young mother is in her car waiting for a traffic light to change and this killer wants her car. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her, yank the car seat with screaming child out of the back seat, throw it over his shoulder and take off in the car. If he wanted a pack of cigarettes, he wouldn’t think twice about killing the convenience store operator who was too slow to get them down for him. Cop-killers are known to be the most dangerous criminals out there. When a cop-killer roams the streets, not one of us is safe.

  So I’d have to wait to follow my doctor’s orders to go home and rest. I limped out to the car, went to retrieve my easel and drawing supplies and drove—sitting sideways avoiding my one throbbing buttock-chee
k—to Ben Taub Hospital where Officer Deason lay near death.

  Hobbling out of the elevator, wincing with pain, I grappled with my easel and supplies, nodded at the handsome officer guarding Officer Deason’s door and entered Paul Deason’s room.

  All it took was one glance at him and I forgot all about my own discomfort.

  There he lay, swathed in so many bandages that he easily could have passed for a mummy in some Hollywood B-movie, tubes dangling from every orifice, his strong body draped with sheets like a child.

  He was sleeping. I set up my easel and sketchpad as quietly as I could, blinking back tears the whole time. Seeing his wounds and condition and having had the details of the attack told to me by Sergeant Boyd Smith from Homicide, I, like all the rest of the Houston Police Department, marveled that Deason was still alive.

  All I could think about was that I knew how it felt to be almost-dead and my heart broke for him.

  Stop it, I scolded myself. You have to show at least as much courage as he has.

  The space beside his bed was very narrow, but I pulled up a chair as close to him as I could and balanced my equipment, my pastels, lapboard and facial identification catalogue in my lap. When I was ready to begin, I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear.

  “Paul, I’m Lois, the sketch artist,” I whispered. “I’m going to try to draw a picture of the guy who did this to you. I’m sorry to put you through this, but I can sketch very quickly so it won’t be so hard for you.”

  In a soft tone I continued to talk to him until he began to awaken, but because his sleep was drug-induced, he was very groggy.

  His voice slurred, he muttered, “All I saw was the fire coming out of his gun. I never saw his face.”

  This is a very common reaction from any victim of a point-blank gunshot. In their conscious mind, all they can remember is the barrel of the gun; often it assumes exaggerated proportions in their imaginations, black, ugly, deadly. They can recall the explosion of the gunshot, the deafening noise, even the smell of gunpowder, but in most cases, they insist that they did not see the faces of the gunmen.

  Still, I knew that there were 5,000 law enforcement officers waiting for me to produce a likeness of this vicious criminal. I couldn’t let them down and I couldn’t let Paul Deason down.

  Over the years, I had developed a technique that had proven to be highly effective in helping witnesses recall the faces of their attackers. I decided to try it here. With no argument, I dropped the idea that he had to remember. Instead, I spoke about how good it was that he was alive and safe. I assured Deason that he was going to make it and I teased him gently, saying, “You look cute all wrapped up like that.”

  He gave a soft, hesitant chuckle at my little joke, so I said, “You are so tough and it’s so wonderful that you have survived. I can’t believe what a crummy person this guy must be. What kind of person would do this? What kind of expression did he have?”

  Then, biting my lip, I fell silent and waited. Inside, I was praying that my little ploy had worked.

  It did.

  After a breathless moment, Deason’s voice became strong and clear and he said, “He didn’t have any expression. He looked like a shark. Like he didn’t care about anything at all.”

  My mind screamed YESSSS! and it was all I could do not to pump my fist in the air. He had seen the face.

  So maybe…maybe…I could get this done.

  I asked him standard questions about an attacker any cop is trained to notice: race, height, weight, average build and age. Then I got to the hard part.

  Opening the FBI Facial Identification Catalogue, I turned to the first page of eyes and said, “Just pick out the eye shape that is as close as possible. I can make any changes you want, no matter how small.”

  I had to stand up, hold the book horizontally over his face and wait. There were 180 different eye shapes in the catalogue. Paul pointed to the third pair of eyes on the page. Unsure if he was clear about what we were supposed to be doing, I turned a few more pages, but he stuck to his first selection.

  While I drew, he began to slip in and out of consciousness. When I was able to show him noses, he pointed to the first nose on the page—again, out of 180 examples.

  I was starting to get worried. Was he just trying to get rid of me? Not that I blamed him, but it was so important that we get it right. I asked him about the hair and forehead.

  Again, he chose the first example on the page.

  Trying not to show my concern, I sketched as quickly as possible.

  “He had a moustache,” Paul said.

  Though it takes me less than a minute to draw moustaches, we were abruptly interrupted by hospital orderlies, who banged into the room, unhooked various IV drips and proceeded to roll Paul’s bed right straight out the door!

  Yanking up the basics of my gear, I flew out of the room, racing after them, hollering, “Where are you taking him?”

  As they disappeared into an elevator, I thought I heard one of them say “CAT scan.”

  Almost in tears, I ran back to the room, grabbed my purse and took the next elevator.

  Scanning directions posted on hospital corridors, I managed to find the room where they’d taken Paul and pushed my way through swinging double doors after him. They were positioning his bed in a long line behind other beds along the side of a large open room. At the head of the line, patients’ beds were being rolled through a large machine that I guessed to be a CAT scan.

  Resolutely, I headed for Paul’s bed.

  “You need to get out of here.”

  Blocking my way was a man in scrubs. I didn’t know if he was a doctor or a nurse or a technician or what, but he was stern and unyielding.

  “Authorized personnel only!” he barked. “You must leave now.”

  “I’m a forensic artist with the Houston Police Department,” I told him. “How long will Officer Deason have to wait until he gets to the machine?”

  The man frowned. He wore glasses and his eyes were haughty behind them. “About half an hour,” he said. “At most.”

  “Look,” I said, showing him the sketch. “As you can see, I’m almost finished. All I need is the moustache and mouth. I can do that in two minutes. Literally 120 seconds.”

  Voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “Your hearing must be bad. I said, get out.” He took a threatening step toward me.

  I stood my ground. “I have to do this sketch,” I pleaded. “We’ve got to catch the man who did this to him. You said we had a half-hour before he gets to the CAT scan and I’m telling you, I can finish this sketch in less than two minutes!”

  “That’s it,” he snarled. “I’m calling security and having you thrown out right now!”

  Something in me snapped. There was a vicious criminal who was a potential cop-killer on the loose.

  A killer.

  An entire police department was depending upon me to come up with a likeness that could get this guy caught before he did something even worse than what he’d done to Officer Deason.

  Not only that, but my own leg wound was screaming at me by now and I could only imagine what my doctor would have said if he’d seen me tromping all over the hospital when I was supposed to be in bed myself.

  I didn’t have time to wait. Period.

  I didn’t have time to put up with this little bureaucratic creep.

  And most of all, I didn’t have time for social niceties. Not when Paul Deason lay there, fighting for his life with every breath he took.

  I smiled at the man in scrubs and, leaning very close to him, I put my lips up to his ear and in my most sweet and seductive tones, said, “I’m trying to catch a mother-fucking potential cop-killer, here. The monster we’re trying to catch shot this man twice, ran over him and dragged him sixty-five feet. It’s a miracle this officer is even alive. I just told you this sketch could catch the guy!” My voice rising, I cried, “What is the matter with you? Do you want to run into this guy on your way home tonight?”

 
Stepping back from my scorching words, he blanched, blinked behind his glasses, turned on his heel and pushed his way out of the swinging doors.

  I didn’t know if Paul had heard my angry exchange or not, but I knew I had no time to waste. Holding the catalogue over his face, I asked him to select lips and a chin.

  Each time, he pointed at the first picture on the page.

  Oh, Lord.

  By this time, I was seriously worried. It was hard for me to imagine that this suspect somehow resembled the first set of features shown on every page of the catalogue. Sadly, I decided that Officer Deason must be too seriously hurt, too drugged, to be able to hold his concentration long enough to be of much help.

  “One last question,” I said with a sigh. “What kind of shirt did he have on?”

  Without hesitation, Officer Deason whispered, “A plaid flannel shirt.”

  In the back of my mind, I felt a tiny jolt of recognition, but was too busy and rushed at that moment to give it much thought. All I could think of—ask any artist and they’ll all tell you—was that a plaid shirt is one of the most difficult items of clothing you can draw. It’s not the pattern itself, it’s what happens to the lines when draped over the human body and the lines go every which way, especially near buttons and collars.

  Here I was standing on a leg throbbing from a massive infection, dodging hostile doctors and congregated cops, working with a half-dead witness…and having to draw a freakin’ plaid shirt.

  Why oh why couldn’t that son of a bitch have at least been wearing a solid shirt?

  But, thanks to all those River Walk portraits I once did (you would not believe how many male Texas tourists wear plaid cowboy shirts), I was able to complete the drawing quickly. I held the sketch over Paul’s face and asked him if there were any changes that needed to be made.

  Without a word, he slowly lifted his hand and, with his index finger, pointed at the sketch, but didn’t speak.