Faces of Evil
Page 33
Recently, the show on the Oxygen Channel called Relentless featured my work and the story of the “Wanted Dead or Alive” case. For the filming, they flew me to Kansas, where I helped capture those terrible serial rapists-turned-murderers in Wichita.
Once there, I was able to spend a deeply moving afternoon with the woman who had been saved from Scott Hain and Robert Wayne Lambert by her dogs rushing in to chase them off. They filmed her walking around the house as the sun was setting. She had grown strong and found an exciting career. We hugged over and over, both just glad to be alive. We were amazed to discover that her husband had worked for years with my father, doing carpentry in Wichita.
The blind girl attacked in the “Blue Justice” chapter had another baby and lives happily with her husband. Manny Zamora, the detective, is almost done with his Ph.D. in criminal justice. Periodically, he visits our witness on this case, brings her children presents, and takes the family out to dinner. He is still tall, dark, handsome, and truly methodical.
Officer Paul Deacon, featured in the chapter “Some People Just Need Killin’,” is still on patrol. He is a legend among the ranks as one of the toughest guys on the force. Looking in shape and still thick with muscles, he spoke with me before he was interviewed for Relentless. I noticed the hairs of his eyelashes; they are gold at the base, yet dark brown at the end. He has no idea how handsome he is, nor the respect he commands when he walks into a room. On the back of his head, I could see the entrance wound, barely visible, from where he had been shot and nearly killed years before.
I continue to enjoy teaching a class in forensic art at Northwestern University Center for Public Safety in Evanston, Illinois. Many of my students go on to draw an accurate picture of the suspect, helping solve the first case they work. Gil Gibli, a gifted forensic artist in Israel, traveled to our country to take the course. He was amazing. Chicago’s Cook County Sheriff’s Office began using one of my students fulltime as a forensic artist in 2005. After taking my class, he created a portrait that helped police find a murderer—it was the first time he did a sketch for the department.
The sheriff of DuPage County hired Joy Mann as the department’s forensic artist in 2005. She is the lady who freelanced for the Chicago area, and over a ten-year period, she had a 60 percent success rate with sexually assaulted juvenile witnesses. So there has been headway made, at least in the Chicago area, for the utilization of forensic artists to help victims get justice.
Because of low pay and lack of backing for their work, several artists nationwide have quit, notably the one fulltime artist for the San Francisco Police Department and the forensic artist for Iowa. My heart aches when I think about the hundreds of thousands of crime victims who are not helped by forensic artists because this profession is in its infancy, and the forensic artists in leadership positions are afraid to advocate for others in their line of work. I am left as the only person who promotes other forensic artists. I will not cease in my efforts to help law enforcement understand this one fact: if a law enforcement agency is serious about investigating a case, and someone lives through the scene of the crime and has seen the face of the perpetrator, a forensic artist should be brought in to create a sketch of that fact. I hope I will live to see law enforcement officials all over the world embrace this tool adequately, so that there are forensic artists everywhere.
I want readers to know the entire reason for my writing this book was to spread the word about how forensic art can help solve crimes. I urge anyone who wants to help innocent victims in his or her area to make a copy of the chapter “Making the Case for Forensic Art” and give that to your mayor, your city council member, your chief of police, anyone who can help employ more forensic artists at local agencies. All persons deserve to have a forensic artist working with their area’s law enforcement agencies. The reason is that any time forensic artists begin work in departments, they help bring in criminals quicker, and thereby help solve cases that would not have been solved without their work.
Others around me talk of retiring from their jobs. I will confess here that I never want to quit doing this work. It is just very fulfilling. I will always want to help innocent people who witness faces of evil.
Resources
BILBIOGRAPHY
Geiselman, R.E., and Fisher, R.P. “Interviewing Victims and Witnesses of Crime,” National Institute of Justice, 1985.
Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, 1995.
Gordon, Louise. How to Draw the Human Head/Techniques and Anatomy. Penguin Books, 1977.
Hammond, Lee. How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs. North Light Books. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1995.
Hogarth, Burne. Drawing the Human Head. Watson-Guptill, New York, New York, 1965.
Loomis, Andrew. Heads/2. Walter Foster Books, #197.
Peck, Stephen Rogers. Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist. Oxford Press, Oxford, New York, 1951.
Taylor, Karen T. Forensic Art and Illustration. CRC Press, 2000.
TRAINING
Northwestern University Center for Public Safety
600 Foster
Evanston, IL 60204
800-323-4011
www.northwestern.edu/nucps
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy Forensic Art Class Quantico, VA (Applicants must be fulltime employees of a law enforcement agency)
https://FBIVA.FBIacademy.edu
Stuart Parks Forensic Associates
P.O. Box 73
Cataldo, ID 83810
www.stuartparks.com
Scottsdale Artists’ School
3720 N. Marshall Way
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
International Association for Identification (Certifies forensic professionals)
Joseph P. Polski, Chief Operations Officer
2535 Pilot Knob Rd., Suite 117
Mendota Heights, MN 55120-1120
www.theiai.org
VISUAL AIDS FOR TATTOOS AND VEHICLES
Huck Spaulding Enterprises
P.O. Box 439, Rt. 85
New Scotland Rd.
Voorheesville, NY 12186-0439
Consumer Reports
P.O. Box 2109
Harlan, IA 51593-0298
www.consumer-reports.or/magazine/
EASEL and LIGHT
Testrite Instrument Co.
135 Monroe St.
Newark, NJ 973-589-6767
Or any art supplier