by Lois Gibson
Unfortunately, thousands of law enforcement agencies have purchased composite sketching software, buying into the illusion that the present technology will allow any cop to sit down and voila!—create a composite sketch any time, anywhere.
And when agencies find that the software doesn’t work, they often buy upgraded software, still searching for that magic-potion program that can create a forensic sketch from computer bytes.
However, any computer program is only as good as the person who is operating it. So first, there has to be a person skilled at interviewing traumatized victims to be able to pull from those victims a viable description of their attackers.
Remember the case of the serial rapists in Kansas, Robert Lambert and Scott Hain, who, at the end of their rampage went to Oklahoma, where they burned their last victims alive? By the time I was summoned to Kansas to work with the surviving victims, one woman was steadfastly refusing even to admit that she had been attacked, much less willing to describe her attackers.
This woman had been questioned repeatedly by all kinds of detectives and even by paramedics and doctors and she still refused to talk. And yet I was able to get from her not only a complete description of what had happened, but a highly usable sketch.
This is not because I am some kind of magician. In fact, in the next chapter we’ll discuss my interviewing techniques—what I do can be learned—but as I said earlier, not every cop who sits down in front of a computer can get a victim to give them a good description.
Secondly, just because you are computer-savvy does not mean you know how to draw. With computer compositry, you are still drawing—it’s just that you are drawing with a computer. Drawing is a skill not everyone can do.
In Chicago, Joy Mann, a very talented forensic artist, once was called on to do a composite for a high-profile home invasion case in Warrenville, Illinois. The police had already been circulating a computer sketch with no luck. With Joy’s outstanding hand-drawn sketch, they were able to nab the criminal within hours.
To the chagrin of the investigators, they found the suspect to be an almost identical likeness to Joy’s sketch—but to bear no resemblance at all to the computer composite, which is what the victim had been saying all along.
Another problem with the computer software available for forensic sketching today is that it is cumbersome, time-consuming and user-unfriendly. It takes a tremendous amount of patience to work with these programs and it can still take hours to get a usable drawing. Overworked, underpaid detectives simply don’t have the training—much less the time—to deal with it. Consequently, the expensive programs are seldom used.
So far, there have been more than 50,000 software programs purchased by law enforcement agencies in this country for use in forensic sketching. If only 1 percent of those programs had produced viable sketches that had resulted in the capture of hard suspects, 500 suspects would have been identified!
But so far, there has been no such recorded success rate by computer compositry programs. So I think we can safely assume that computer software compositry can’t even claim to have solved 1 percent of its cases.
That’s why not only I, but other forensic artists all over the United States are called in to do composite sketches in cases where the computer has already been used, to no avail.
And our success rate is much higher, not only vastly more than computer compositry, but in another area of criminal identification that just might surprise you:
Fingerprints.
MYTH #2: Fingerprint identification is more accurate than compositry.
Everyone who has watched a crime program or movie or read a newsmagazine “true-crime” story has seen crime scene technicians painstakingly go over every surface with their soft brushes and their graphite powder, then carefully lift the fingerprints for identification.
There are so many untrue assumptions about fingerprint identification that have been perpetrated by fiction that I hardly know where to begin to lay them to rest. First, all fingerprints have to be used in comparison to other fingerprints that may be catalogued in the federal Automated Fingerprint Identification System—AFIS—or may be compared with a known suspect’s prints. However, only individuals who have been charged with a crime and fingerprinted are kept in the database, as well as federal employees or military personnel who have to pass security checks.
So it’s not as easy to find a match as it may seem on some popular TV shows in which the investigator-computer whiz taps into a federal database and bibbity-bobbity-boo!—they’ve got a match! In truth, the search can go on for hours, if not days, and turn up nothing. That’s if investigators check. You’d be surprised how many cases are simply not checked through AFIS.
Secondly, it’s surprisingly difficult to get a good fingerprint from someone. Officers have to be trained how to do it when booking a person who has been arrested and even then, it’s tricky. With crime scenes, few fingerprints show up with clearly-demarcated ridges and planes that make up the loops for comparison identification. Most of them are partial prints or are too smudged to identify.
If the fingerprints are gotten from a crime scene.
More and more criminals are wearing gloves of some kind to hide their fingerprints. In addition, some cold climates yield few usable prints anyway, because the sweat glands are not as active in cold weather. Furthermore, fingerprints fade over time, sometimes as quickly as a few days. And finally, though crime scene techs may lift hundreds of prints from a crime scene, most of them can usually be eliminated as having been left by people who either lived there or had good reason to be there, including the victim.
And I’m not even going to get in to the whole debate about how many points of comparison make a match.
I have talked with fingerprint technicians from all over the country and I can say that they are relieved that I’m finally shedding some light on this subject, because they’re sick of hearing defense attorneys claim in court that, because there were no good prints from the defendant left at the scene, then it proves the defendant wasn’t there.
It’s simply not true. A person can be at a crime scene and not leave a usable print, for a variety of reasons.
So what is the success rate for fingerprint identification of viable suspects from crime scenes nationwide?
Not as good as you might think.
The most generous estimate I’ve been able to find, quoted in professional forensic journals, is barely 10 percent.
That’s the generous estimate.
Break it down by city and the statistics actually drop. The percentage of scenes with usable fingerprint identifications can go as low as 2.2 percent. Other percentages hover at around 5 percent.
The statistical average comes from the fact that smaller departments often have higher success rates with fingerprints, but overall, about the best you can hope for with fingerprint identification is 10 percent.
Now, take that statistic in mind and couple it with the fact that since the nineteenth century, fingerprints have been the universally acknowledged method of criminal identification. Every large department has its own fingerprint division.
And now…(drumroll please)…let me give the statistics for identification of viable suspects from the use of forensic composite sketches: 30 percent.
According to a study done by Terry Westbrook in 1987, the success rate of forensic sketches in identifying suspects can run as high as 80 percent.
This means in cases in which composite sketches are used to aid in identification of criminals, at least one out of three perpetrators can be identified through the use of a forensic sketch. The sketch leads to photo or live line-up and the suspect is nabbed.
And that’s the bottom-line average. In the year 2000, I was given a commendation by the Houston Police Department’s chief of police for having cleared more than 43 percent of my cases. For those cases I’ve worked in Kansas, so far, I have achieved 100 percent. I’ve also had 100 percent success rate in cases in which an infant has been kidn
apped by a stranger, 100 percent in cop-killer and cop-assaulted cases and 100 percent success rate in the small towns in which I have helped out.
I estimate that fulltime forensic artists tend to divide their time evenly between homicides, robberies and rapes.
My research adds up this way: every police department in this country considers fingerprint evidence to be dependable and reliable, when only—at best—10 percent of cases are actually cleared due to fingerprint evidence. And yet, the clearance rate from compositry is greater than 30 percent. And there are at least 2,000 trained forensic sketch artists in this country and many more who want to learn. Yet, out of almost 40,000 departments (not including federal or state agencies), there are less than twenty fulltime forensic sketch artists working today.
So the crucial question becomes, why aren’t more law enforcement agencies using compositry?
At the very least, why can’t compositry be used along with fingerprint evidence for maximum effectiveness in fighting crime?
What’s the hold-up?
MYTH #3: There’s no money in the budget to hire a forensic artist.
This is what I heard from my own department for seven straight years while I toiled to prove myself and get a job there as a forensic artist. No money. Budget cuts. We’re broke.
It’s usually just not true.
Even the most cash-strapped departments can google-search online and find a plethora of law enforcement-related state and federal grants that are available for everything from a high-tech crime-scene camera to bullet-proof vests to other things needed in law enforcement.
You may recall, when I first started, detectives paid for my services from their coffee-fund jar. Later, the Houston city hall provided a “line of funds” to pay me and that line of funds was a state-related grant that had been made available to the city of Houston. When I was hired fulltime, the chief of police at the time paid for my salary out of a grant with which he also hired a lieutenant, a sergeant and several detectives, along with several thousand dollars’ worth of audio-visual equipment.
That’s right. He signed me up with the VCRs.
The money’s out there. It’s just a matter of finding it.
It’s not just money, keeping police departments from employing forensic artists, though. In some cases, that’s just the excuse. Police departments are slow to embrace change. The Houston Police Department did not use photographs of known criminals in their files until thirty-five years after the method was in use in other departments.
But once a method has proven to be worthy, departments can come on board with breathtaking swiftness. In 1989, Joseph Wambaugh wrote a book called, The Blooding (William Morrow), in which he described the very first ever mass use of DNA blood evidence to eliminate suspects and close in on a serial sexual killer. Since that time, DNA evidence has come to be relied on almost as universally as fingerprint evidence. What I’m trying to say is that, once a method is proven to law enforcement agencies as being effective in criminal investigation…the money for it will be found.
It would behoove aspiring forensic artists who are having trouble finding work—especially if they’re being told there’s no money in the budget—to track down their own sources of grant money that they can then use to approach law enforcement agencies.
There are ways to pay for forensic artists. For a thirty percent success rate, isn’t it worth it to at least try?
MYTH #4: Every single police department has to employ a forensic artist in order to have them available to help solve crimes.
This is not true. For instance, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department does not have a forensic sketch artist on staff, but they call me to help them with cases.
It’s the same way with my friend Joy Mann in Chicago. Although Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, they do not have a fulltime forensic artist, but Joy freelances for them as well as for other departments. She drives to many places and does sketches in suburban Chicago as well as for the metropolitan Chicago police force.
Some states, such as South Carolina and New Jersey, have two artists who work the entire state. I’m not setting up this situation as a model, because I want as many artists working in this field as we can get, but what I’m saying is that one artist can easily work multiple jurisdictions.
In Texas, Shirley Timmons, a very fine artist, works for the Texas Rangers. They fly her all over the state in a helicopter and plane to do forensic sketches. One of Shirley’s sketches identified one of this nation’s worst serial killers. The victim was a twelve-year-old girl whose throat had been cut so badly that she couldn’t talk. (Her best friend had been killed in front of her eyes.)
Shirley Timmons managed to pull a sketch from that child that was immediately recognized by her friend’s father, which led to the arrest of Terry Lynn Sells. Sells confessed that he’d murdered so many people he couldn’t even remember them all.
In Georgia, Marla Lawson, another talented artist, works for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.
In Klamath Falls, Oregon, I knew a gifted artist, Yvonne Schmid, who has never had one hour of formal training, just numerous telephone conversations with me. The third case of her career, on September 1, 2002, she helped identify Maximillano Cilero Esparza, a psychopath who had brutally raped and strangled two nuns, killing one—Sister Helen Chaska. Within hours of her sketch, the perpetrator was in custody.
So far, Yvonne’s earliest sketches have produced a 33 percent success rate. She could easily sketch for the Medford, Merrill, Grant’s Pass and Bonanza, Oregon area (maybe even half the state) and she could clear three times more cases for law enforcement there than fingerprint evidence.
The states of New York, Florida and California each have three fulltime forensic artists. These are the most populous states in the union, home to cities with some of the nation’s highest crime rates. How many more artists should be working in them, sharing the load, catching more bad guys?
MYTH #5: We can’t trust “outsiders” (like artists) with sensitive information on open, ongoing cases still under investigation.
In major metropolitan areas, there are literally dozens of “outsiders” who help investigators piece together cases, from laboratory technicians to medical examiners to DNA analysts to psychologists to doctors to people from the district attorney’s office and sometimes, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
That’s not counting crime reporters from newspapers and television personalities who are sometimes used to “leak” information for various motives.
I believe a good investigator will not hesitate to use any resource available to solve a case and put a brutal criminal in jail or on death row.
Remember, sometimes a sensitive artist who has been trained in forensic interviewing techniques can draw information from a traumatized victim or witness that the person either did not or would not tell detectives. That’s what my friend, Deputy Chief Charles McClelland of the HPD meant when he referred to me as an “adjunct detective.” Whenever we worked cases together, he always came in after the sketching session was complete and talked to me about my impressions and what the witness had said. Together, we often came up with just the key piece of information needed to crack the case.
I don’t mean to imply that I consider myself a cop. I’ve tried very hard to demonstrate that I consider myself part of an investigative team—another tool that an astute detective can pull out of his or her toolbox.
It’s not about my ego or the detective’s career or anything else.
As I’ve said before, it’s about getting justice.
MYTH #6: All forensic artists need to BE “outsiders.”
A few years ago, I was approached by Adrian White, a very fine HPD officer. Adrian confessed that, in his spare time, he was an artist, too and that he had always longed to learn how to do composite sketches.
I was thrilled. This was good news for me, because it meant that I would no longer be the only forensic artist in the area
. It meant I could go on vacation, for instance, without fretting about cases I would not be working in my absence.
So I started working with Adrian. He took my class and the very first case he worked, he helped bring down a serial killer!
Whenever his initial sketch aired on television programs, the killer’s wife later told reporters, her husband would get very nervous. I made a video recording of the news broadcast in which she said this and gave it to Adrian for encouragement.
Sadly, in many places there are talented artists who also happen to be cops and who would love nothing better than to be allowed to do compositry fulltime for their departments. Instead, they’re forced to fill mundane paperwork jobs or perform other tasks that hundreds of other officers—who are not uniquely talented artists—could do.
As I said before, money can be found to create fulltime forensic art positions for these cop-artists and with a 30 percent success rate (at least), there is justification for the expense. Partnered with fingerprint identification, DNA analysis and other investigative tools, many more cases could be successfully closed each year. Isn’t that law enforcement’s true goal?
MYTH #7: Witness descriptions are often too sketchy or otherwise poor to enable an artist to get a workable sketch.
By this time, having read about the cases in this book, you will know that almost all crime victims and/or witnesses believe that they did not see the perpetrator well enough to provide good descriptions. The bus driver in “Blind Justice” swore she’d only caught a glimpse of the bad guy out of the corner of her eye while she was busy with passengers. She was so sure of it that she actually wanted me to throw my sketch in the trash. But the detective, Manny Zamora, ignored her protests and trusted me; consequently, he caught a monster who had raped a blind pregnant woman.
Nine-year-old Annie Tyson thought my sketch looked “too much like a girl,” but the investigator, Billy Belk, trusted me anyway and they caught her mother’s killer within twenty-four hours.